![]() We brought this idea that museums are experiences that are ultimately controlled by the audience." "I don't think we ever thought of the museum as a didactic exercise, where the job is to tell people a bunch of stuff. "At that point, almost the entire exhibits department was ex-theater people, and I think there is something about that that made the museum distinctive," Pohlman said. Don Pohlman, a longtime theater colleague, convinced Maurer to join him at the Science Museum in 1979. Maurer was working at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego when an earthquake threw him out of bed, convincing him to return to Minnesota. A skilled woodworker, he began working on professional theater sets as a high school student, first at Chimera Theatre and later the Children's Theatre Company. "He started programs that really helped put the Science Museum on a national footing, and to become a leader among our fellow science centers." "Paul was not one to toot his own horn, but he had an outsized influence on the Science Museum," said Bette Schmit, the museum's director of experience planning and development. Among the survivors is his brother Peter Maurer.Paul Maurer liked to say that he pursued a degree in theater arts at the University of Minnesota because "everything else sounded too hard." But the veteran set builder and designer used those skills to bring a sense of drama to the Science Museum of Minnesota, where he was director of exhibits for almost 20 years. “It was his world, bringing order to what was chaos in his mind,” Murphy said. Bridget Murphy said Maurer saved her cookie business in the 1990s by creating spreadsheets to organize the fast-growing Koala Kookie company and track all of its orders. ![]() “He’s always been really good at recognizing other people.”įriends said they also appreciated his generous spirit. “I think the reason Paul was such a good manager is because he doesn’t attribute his contributions to other people,” Polman said. And he had no problem swearing.”Ĭolleagues said Maurer was a generous boss, building morale through weekly “rock’n’roll breaks” at 3pm every Friday, where people brought snacks and music. “Paul had an amazing set of skills,” said Carrie Force, a longtime lighting designer at the Science Museum. Maurer also created the museum’s exhibition products and services business, which has built exhibits for more than 20 other science centers across the country, including the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas and the California Science Center in Los Angeles. In 1985, he launched a travel program that eventually allowed the museum to bring a dozen of its most popular exhibits to more than 90 other locations in the United States and Canada, beginning with the Wolves and Humans exhibition. Maurer’s influence extends far beyond Minnesota. “His attention to detail was amazing … He was really thinking about the end users of an exhibition.” “Paul was just a great project manager,” Schmidt said. Schmidt said Maurer’s vision could still be seen in the Permanent Sports Laboratory, the Space Travel exhibition and the popular Experiment Gallery, where visitors could create a tornado or conduct more than a dozen other experiments. Maurer was a big believer in interactive exhibits, designing and building rooms to engage visitors with the nuts and bolts of science. We brought the idea that museums are experiences that are ultimately controlled by the public. “I don’t think we’ve ever thought of the museum as a didactic exercise where the job is to tell people a bunch of things. “At the time, almost the entire exhibit department was former theater people, and I think there’s something about what made the museum distinctive,” Polman said.
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