Museum Audio Tour Now Available for Download

If you've had the opportunity to visit the Museum in the last year or so, you might have seen that we added a free audio tour. The first phase was installed in early 2008 and featured many of the Museum's long-standing exhibits and an update was added this past November that featured our two newest installations (RESOLVED and Balad.)

(At left, that's the graphic that graces some of the audio tour materials.)

But now, you aren't limited to listening to the audio tour just while visiting the Museum - enjoy it at home, the office or on the road! Visit the new Audio Tour page on the Museum's Web site and you'll find links to the series of MP3s that make up the tour. It's listed by exhibit with associated links to relevant Web content, and note that the list runs onto two pages!

Next time you are at the Museum, consider adding the audio tour to your visit. It's free and you can check out the listening wands at the Museum's information desk. Groups can reserve the audio tour, too. More information about the audio tour is here.

Let us know if you find a link that goes awry. Enjoy the downloads and tell your friends!

Jan 7: Museum exhibit manager Steve Hill speaking on Resolved exhibit design

This is one of AFIP's professional education lectures, but I imagine if one wanted to attend, one could.

The following lecture is presented by the National Museum of Health and Medicine

Date/Time: 07 Jan 09/1100am
Location: Dart Auditorium
Speaker(s): Steven Hill
Exhibits Manager
National Museum of Health and Medicine

Title:
“RESOLVED: Turning a good idea, clinical expertise, and field experience into a museum exhibit”

Objectives:
To explain how a scientific/health museum exhibit is created from the ground up

Description:
Talk will cover all aspects of turning an idea—in this case the United States’ commitment to individual identification of its war dead—into an museum exhibit. Subtopics will include differences between museum exhibit and other forms of communication/education, how concepts are refined and broken down into topics that can be visually presented in a museum setting, selection and security of artifacts, exhibit design and visitor flow, construction and installation.

Resolved, Advances In Forensic Identification Of Us War Dead, Exhibit Design Navjeet Singh Chhina

Some shots I took of the work I did, thought I'd show them off. 

Army Times on Resolved

The Army Times that is out today gave a two-page spread to the Resolved exhibit.

RESOLVED exhibit spotlighted today

More links for you this evening, this time featuring our newest exhibit RESOLVED: Advances in Forensic Identification of U.S. War Dead.

• At the Danger Room blog, brought to you by the people at Wired magazine, they were nice enough to link to the exhibition's Web site
  
• Medical News Today published the news release today, too.
  

Enjoy!

AFIP medical examiners mentioned in Post and Times

Human remains from a long lost plane crash have been found and identified by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology's medical examiners. The story is "9 Years Later, a Fatal Mystery Solved; Experts Trace Body Part From 1948 Plane Crash to Roanoke Seaman," By Michael E. Ruane, Washington Post Staff Writer, Saturday, August 16, 2008. A similar case is reported on in "Missing pilot to be brought home; Recovered remains to receive Arlington burial," by Jennifer Harper, Washington Times Thursday, August 14, 2008.

The AFIP isn't mentioned by name in either article which is typical. The Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (AFDIL) is, but they are a component of the Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, which in turn falls under the AFIP. And the medical examiners would have done the fingerprint work mentioned in the Post article, not the DNA technicians.



Remember, the museum has on display Resolved, an exhibit on forensic identification of military dead that's just opened.

Another view of our Resolved exhibit

I think this is my favorite view of the exhibit. That's a transfer case draped with a flag and a backdrop from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command Forensic Anthropology Lab at Hickam AFB in Hawaii, showing the process of reconstructing human skeletons with the aim of identification. I always assumed it was a casket that brought our soldiers home, but it's not. The same grim purpose, a more utilitarian box.

Resolved

This image is what greets the visitor at the entrance to our new "Resolved" exhibit on identification of war dead. I think it's universal in language, eloquence without words.