Some of you know that before I came to the Harley-Davidson Museum, I was a teacher. I spent 15 years teaching mathematics at the middle school and college level. I loved my time working with students and enjoyed the opportunity to teach. In fact, one of my former students, Aneel, is an intern at the Museum! While I love my new career at H-D, there are times when I miss the opportunity to work with enthusiastic students and shape their understanding of the world. When I was asked to be a part of the Helmet project, I could not wait to jump on board.

If you have been following Jim Fricke’s blog you probably know that the Harley-Davidson Museum has partnered with the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design to co-create a temporary exhibit at the Museum. We have been working with a number of different departments at MIAD to engage students in the design and execution of the Helmet Project exhibit. Combining experts in the field, budding young designers and artists, incredible artifacts and equally interesting artistic pieces, a fantastic exhibit build out and a crazy timeline—well, we have created our own personal reality TV show to say the least! In a nutshell, we are working with exhibit design students to change our “Garage” to an exhibit gallery. The Industrial design and fine art students are creating helmet “art.” The communications students are producing the exhibit graphics design. And guiding the entire project is our amazing archives staff and exhibit team making sure that everything is getting done. When I say it takes a whole village... I’m not kidding!

For the past three weeks, I have been back in school—sitting in MIAD classrooms, listening to our Harley-Davidson team providing feedback and direction to the students. The students have been presenting their ideas, as presentations, drawings and models. Our jury consisting of Curatorial Director, Jim Fricke, Michael Davidson, artist, and Jim Donnelly, multi-disciplinary designer, are masters of their craft! They are enthusiastic teachers and have been providing amazing encouragement for the students. The MIAD students in turn are energetic, open and are creating some really incredible work.

It is exactly how education should be – real students working on real project receiving real feedback. The teacher in me cannot help but smile.

As we enter into the final weeks of the project, it is exciting to see the ideas of the students, their instructors, and the teams here at the Museum really come together. We know we will be facing some challenges in the next couple of weeks and the concept of an “all-nighter” might be a new reality for us, but seeing the magnificent sketches and sculptures definitely make it worth all of the hard work. As the communications students say about helmets, “Love them or loathe them – you can’t ignore ‘em!” Come check out the exhibit opening on October 23rd and running through November 8th.