Letter from
the Director
our role in global outreach, making new investments in
education and learning through our Bowes Education
Center, and creating new opportunities to explore the
landscape and environment in our Fisher Bay Observatory
Gallery and Terrace.
To Our Donors and Friends,
First, please let me say thank you. We’ve just had one of
the most extraordinary years of our existence, and you
helped make it happen.
I know that Annual Reports aren’t always the most
compelling of reads, but this one is not simply a recap of
a busy year. Rather, it traces the excitement and drama of
an incredible period of transformation for us. None of this
could have happened without you.
This report acknowledges your support, trust, and belief
in us. It honors the accomplishments of our work together.
It documents the achievement of some of our most farreaching hopes and dreams and traces the steps we took
together—imagining the future, planning for it, sometimes
fighting for it—and then building it, animating it, and
filling it with the people and experiences that have brought
it to life.
Our new environment has inspired new connections,
partnerships, and initiatives. It’s given us a platform to
make the kinds of local and global impacts we have always
seen in our future. With your support, we’ve already begun
deepening inroads into arts programming, expanding
On the face of it, these may seem like very different
initiatives, but for the Exploratorium, art, science,
education, and outreach are all of a piece. The arts, for
example, have always been central to the Exploratorium
experience. Our founder, Frank Oppenheimer, saw art and
science as two sides of a coin—two creative ways of looking
at the world. From the museum’s earliest days, artists,
educators, scientists, tinkerers, technicians, and others
have worked side by side, learning from one another’s
skills and points of view. Our community’s long held belief
in these innovative juxtapositions, and our commitment to
them today, has given the Exploratorium some of its most
successful, and most elegant, exhibits—from Bob Miller’s
iconic Sun Painting (1975), which mesmerized visitors at
the early museum (and still does), to Fujiko Nakaya’s Fog
Bridge #72494 (2013), which delights visitors at Pier 15
today.
Now, with new facilities and a renewed dedication to our
roots, we’re once again bringing arts to the fore with the
creation of our new Center for Art and Inquiry. The Tactile
Dome, first created in 1971 by artists August Coppola and
Carl Day, has been rebuilt for a 21st-century audience.
Our Cinema Arts program is jus