About Us

For more than 30 years, Cincinnati Museum Center’s Exhibits Department has created engaging permanent and traveling exhibitions, both for display at CMC and across North America. Leveraging our experience and skills in architecture, design, graphics, sculpture, fabrication, and AV systems, we bring holistic and quality attention to every facet of a successful exhibition.

As an institution that welcomes more than 1 million guests each year, we understand the mission to provide memorable and interactive educational experiences as well as the need for quality and reliability.

From single models to casework to full exhibit experiences, we are here to help you achieve your goals.

Traveling Exhibitions

Interested in renting a traveling exhibit?
Have an exhibit but need help getting it on the road?

From development and design to production and tour management, we offer a variety of services to suit each unique exhibition and partnership. Combining decades of experience hosting and managing traveling exhibitions, we work to provide the best possible experience for your audience. And we can put that experience to work for you by providing tour management services for an exhibit that you already have or are looking to create!

Civic Architecture

Civic Architecture: The Panoramic Photography of Thomas R. Schiff

Capitols, courthouses and even libraries have sought to both project confidence in the democratic process and invite citizens to participate. Through the sweeping panoramic photography of Thomas R. Schiff, Civic Architecture celebrates and studies the nation’s long tradition of civic architecture.

Faith & (in)Justice

Throughout its history, the U.S. has dealt with many social justice issues and along the way the Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – have all played important roles in both promoting and deterring the progress of these movements. This exhibit explores these intersections of religion and social justice in America.

Past Traveling Exhibitions

First Folio! The Book that Brought Us Shakespeare

In commemoration of Shakespeare’s death, CMC partnered with The Folder Shakespeare Library to bring an original 1653 edition of Sharepeare’s First Folio to each of the 50 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico in 2016. Paired with graphic panels and digital content, this exhibition gives visitors an up-close encounter with a real piece of literary history.

In the Dark

This exhibition invites visitors explore five worlds in the dark – caves, deep sea, underground, and deserts and swamps at night. Dioramas of a Kentucky limestone cavern, a deciduous forest and an underwater sea floor are all highlights of this interactive exhibition that reveals previously unseen worlds and explores adaptations through interactive games and immersive displays.

Liberty on the Border

Interactive decision kiosks, maps, sixteen cases of artifacts and audiovisuals allow visitors to examine the concept of “borders”—physical, cultural, ideological—during the American Civil War. Life-size stages—a recruiting station, a soldier’s tent, Camp Nelson and a sanitary fair—afford opportunities for first-person interpretation.

Our Weakening Web: The Story of Extinction

This exhibit helps visitors understand the process of extinction as a natural occurrence over millions of years. Through the display of lifelike dioramas and interactive components that encourage hands-on learning, visitors will learn about the ecological relationships that bind all life forms together. Our Weakening Web presents a timely, important topic in a fun and engaging fashion.

Women & Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America

Women & Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America records and celebrates the indelible legacy these women have left on the U.S. since they first landed here more than 300 years ago. Through rare artifacts, compelling photographs and videos, and vivid first-person narratives, the exhibition explores the contributions Catholic sisters made – and continue to make – in shaping the nationals social and cultural landscape.

And Still We Rise: Race, Culture and Visual Conversations

This exhibition narrates four centuries of African American history through the display of nearly 70 handcrafted story quilts created by the Women of Color Quilters Network. An art form that goes beyond simple quilting patterns, story quilting expands on traditional textile-arts techniques to record, in fabric, events of personal or historical significance.

Freedom’s Sisters

This exhibit celebrates 20 African American women—from key 19th century historical figures to contemporary leaders—who have fought for equality for people of color. Visitors enter the pages of history, meeting each of these women via large format photographs and a short biography. Artifacts and multimedia elements bring their stories to life. Visitors “sit” next to Rosa Parks on the bus. A barking dog confronts visitors as civil rights activists were confronted. A jar of jelly beans represents unfair voting restrictions.

Earthworks: Virtual Explorations of the Ancient Ohio Valley

Earthworks utilizes visual imaging technology developed by the Center for the Electronic Reconstruction of Archaeological and Historical Sites, media and touchable models to “see” earthen effigies, embankments, mounds, roadways and geometric enclosures of astonishing size and precision that were built between 800 and 2,400 years ago. Interactive components allow visitors to explore electronically reconstructed models of earthworks that time and human presence have eroded down to nearly nothing.

Children Just Like Me

Based on the DK Publishing book by the same name, this exhibit encourages kids to DO: try on clothes, play games, do chores and explore the ways in which we are not so different while celebrating the things that make us all the same. Through interactives, children are introduced to the lives of kids around the world.

Exhibit Fabrication Services

Let us bring more than 30 years of exhibit fabrication experience to your project.

We are passionate about providing the best guest experience and using our skills to provide an engaging environment for learning. From a small CNC routing project to a permanent exhibit, we want to help bring your idea to life.

Our services include:

  • Content development
  • Exhibit design and graphic design
  • Fabrication
  • Registration Services
  • CNC Routing
  • Custom model and mount making

Past Projects

Unlocking the Gates of Auschwitz 70 Years Later

The Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust and Humanity Center partnered with Cincinnati Museum Center, National Underground Railroad Freedom Center and collector Steven Cassidy to create an original exhibition commemorating the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and of thousands of other Nazi camps. Debuting at Freedom Center from Jan. 29 through May 27, 2015, Unlocking the Gates of Auschwitz 70 Years Later led visitors to discover stories of humanity and survival within the Auschwitz concentration camp, bringing together powerful local Holocaust survivor accounts with never-before-seen artifacts and rare images from Cassidy’s collection, as well as from the American Jewish Archives, Klau Library and the Holocaust & Humanity Center.

Big Bone Lick Visitor Center

In partnership with Big Bone Lick State Park and Friends of Big Bone, the popular park known as the “Birthplace of American Paleontology” was able to retell the site’s historic narrative in a more engaging way. The redesign included thematic cases containing fossils and artifacts, a bison diorama and a Harlan’s Ground Sloth display.

Aquatic Education Station

A mobile education trailer for the Muskingum Soil and water Conservation District is outfitted to educate and reinforce the importance of water quality in the large watershed that the community inhabits. Lifelike dioramas of underground and underwater systems create immersive experiences. Through interactives visitors explore specimens from Ohio’s wetlands and how they can care for the world around them.

The Tom Spellmire Water Education Exhibit

Hands-on digital interactives and a focused educational message characterize the 24-foot trailer built for the Warren County Soil and Water Conservation District. Visitors can investigate how a watershed’s flora and fauna shift with water quality, explore how water flows across landscapes by modifying a topography projection table and learn about the interconnectedness of America’s waterways.

The World Beneath Your Feet

An installation completed for the Butler County Soil and Water Conservation District. Cincinnati Museum Center staff outfitted a 35 ft. trailer with an exhibit that allows visitors to walk through an underground world highlighted by interactive question and answer tools, specimen drawers housing fossils and models of aquatic creatures, storm drains, drainage tile, plant roots and an aquifer. Realistic dioramas, specimens, question and answer flips and fossil drawers get kids into dirt and water without getting them dirty.

EnterTrainment Junction

For a model train entertainment destination north of Cincinnati in Butler County, Cincinnati Museum Center constructed several electronic units for the railroad museum, a 5,000 sq. ft. section of the 80,000 sq. ft. facility designed for train enthusiasts. Interactive kiosks quiz visitors on their train knowledge. Scrim units provide a before and after look at train icons throughout history.

Our House, Explorahouse, and The Children’s Garden

CMC collaborated with kidscommons, a children’s museum, on several permanent exhibits. Our House takes kids inside a modern Japanese household. Explorahouse gets kids interested in going “behind the scenes” of their own houses by encouraging movement and exploration into energy, light, heat and water moving through their homes. The Children’s Garden is an interactive play area that brings the outdoors inside and gives children a large, colorful way to explore their backyards.

Models

Our team boasts extraordinary skills in sculpture, taxidermy and fabrication of replicas and facsimiles. From single beetles to a full-size rhinoceros, we enjoy projects of all sizes.