Lynn Denton: Hi everyone, thanks for having me!

Lynn Denton: We actually have just opened a new exhibit on Davy Crockett, going from March 2 to August 18, so we won't have any other big exhibit changes in the next few months. But we have new IMAX films. On Apr 20 we will debut a film on Lewis and Clark by National Geographic, and in May, we will open (May 25) "Space Station 3-D" which is the first IMAX film footage from space. IMAX trained the astronauts to use their cameras, and the movies will debut at different IMAX venues across the nation. Our three floors of permanent exhibits are always changing as far as objects, but the three themes - encounters, identity, and opportunity - will remain the same.

Lynn Denton: Great question! Our tour guides kind of go back to school in a way. We have two classes of docents each year. They have four two-hour long sessions that introduce them to different aspects of the museum and teaching techniques. They must study the exhibits for 15 hours, observe 6 tours, write evaluations of those tours, write outlines about the exhibit floors, and pick one exhibit or artifact to write an essay on. It's quite a rigorous program. Each docent is partnered with an experienced docent for a period of time. And ongoing training is always there, with new exhibits coming in.

Lynn Denton: We will be open one year as of Apr 28. We know that we have had over 650,000 visitors so far, and that holidays are very busy, as is summer. Right now, during March, April, and May, we are busy with school groups. Fourth and seventh graders study Texas history, and Austin is the state capital, so we have about 1,000 students a day coming through the museum.

Lynn Denton: We have a cowboy singer who is here on many of our busy weekends, giving people a chance to sing along with authentic songs, and our Davy Crockett show has songs about him. With each of our IMAX film openings, we have educational activities, so when we opened "Cyberworld 3-D" we had three professional cartoonists come in and give exhibitions in cartoon art. For "Space Station 3-D", we will have an astronaut here to talk to people. So, we always have something going on, usually tied into a specific program. We have a theatre that is very unique to our museum, a special effects theater called Texas Spirit Theatre. "The Star of Destiny" is a show about Texas history that we show there. Also, we now have a Davy Crockett show there that lasts about 15 minutes. The theater seats 200 persons.

Lynn Denton: We do regular teacher training programs from our education department. We work with structuring their visits here. We have two classrooms here. There are in-classroom experiences here, teaching students how to look in museums; how to use artifacts. We have also had programs for teachers involving special learning opportunities, and we are looking at building learning models for students. We are trying to tie into the fourth and seventh graders, but also to any student looking to benefit from the museum and the IMAX events.

Lynn Denton: I went into museum work from that background, because I was interested in material culture, and how we learn from it, and what it tells us about each other and about culture and other cultures. It depends on whether you want to teach or in academic education or public education. You need to find the place that is right for you. There are summer programs where you can build on that at many museums, so you can be trained in that. Your guidance department should be able to help in getting linked to museums that would have such programs.

Lynn Denton: That's a hard one! I'll divide it into two parts. My favorite media exhibit is one called the "Reel Texas Cowboy," which is a media piece that looks at how movies represent Texas cowboys versus how real cowboys work. It's informative, and I just love it! My favorite exhibit area in the museum is...what makes this museum so powerful is that we have recreated settings for objects so that people think about them a little differently. One of those is an area that looks like the crossribs shipwreck "La Belle." Those artifacts were excavated by the Texas Historical Commission off the coast. We have exhibited them as found so people can see what was brought to help set up a new colony here in Texas. Things like coils of brass wire, boxes and boxes of ax heads (they figured they could find the wood for handles), flints were used as ballast, later to be used in flintlock rifles. It shows how they were thinking as to what to bring from Europe to Texas.

Lynn Denton: The advantages are that you can see the real thing, and you can perhaps see the real thing in a context you may not have thought about before. The disadvantages are that, just as one book cannot tell the whole story of a time or place, one museum can't do that either. They aren't meant to be books on walls, but rather an interpretation so that you can look at it in your own way, and then use other resources.

Lynn Denton: We are not a collecting museum. That was part of our organizing statute, if you will. There are ethical issues on exhibiting artifacts, though. For example, in Texas most ceramic pieces from Caddo Indians have been recovered from burials. By law and ethical standards, we don't exhibit funeral remains or related objects. So we asked a Caddo artist to make replicas for us, and we state them as such. We honor the Caddo heritage as well as the spirit of the law, as well as the letter of the law, regarding this.

Lynn Denton: (Laughing) There is! It's a different museum, but I used to work there, so I'll try to answer. It is a group of mustangs, envisioned by famous historian J. Frank Dobie. He located a herd on the King ranch, and the sculptor is A. Phimister Proctor. With Frank Dobie, the two of them went to the ranch, studied them, figured out the nature of the composition, and they did a model, but couldn't cast it right away due to World War II shortages of metal. But after the war, they were able to cast it. There is a wonderful inscription at the base (which I don't recall in detail) about the heritage of the mustang in Texas.

Lynn Denton: I think it's how complex it is, because Texas is such a big place. It's diverse, and the people...it's a huge story. There are so many levels to it. The most fascinating thing about it is that you can be completely lost in it. There are so many stories, but any time you talk to an individual family's story, you realize how rich and complex (and sometimes horrible and wonderful) they are.

Lynn Denton: I don't think I've had anything that qualifies as a hardship, but certainly long hours and the struggle sometimes to match resources with demand. It's wonderful that people expect so much from this institution, but we don't always have the budget to do all that people would like us to do. But we keep trying!

Lynn Denton: The museum is open 360 days a year. My hours normally would be - it has some flexibility - from around 8:30am and concludes at 8:30 at night. It is often 6 days a week, sometimes 7. But it is still our first year, and that requires a lot of time. Most directors easily can spend 10 hours a day in museum-related work. But it IS a joy to do.

Lynn Denton: I could not have done this without my family. I have two children, one in high school and one in middle school, and a husband who is a full-time professional. They not only support the time I spend, but they come here and volunteer their time. We're a team, and I couldn't do it otherwise.

Lynn Denton: We look at that in several different ways. In our Encounters section (first floor), we look at early Spanish exploration and settlement, and how not only missionaries, but ranchers and soldiers came and stayed. We look at the conflicts that resulted from settlement in native areas, and we look at how under the impresario system, settlers moved from the American south. In building our Lone Star Identity (second floor), we talk about Texas in the 1820s, and how people talked about it being a separate state in Mexico and how that was a fundamental base for what later became the Texas revolution. In our Revolution Theatre, we have a 12-minute media piece based on the memories of Juan Seguin and his thinking of why he fought as a tejano as a Texan against Mexico. On our third floor, we talk about the birth of ranching in the New World - cattle herding and so forth in the 1600s and 1700s, when Texas was still part of Mexico. There are many other smaller references throughout the museum regarding this period as well.

Lynn Denton: We have not started a distinguished lecture series yet, but we have a film festival related this summer to the Davy Crockett series. The first movie will be a silent film about Davy Crockett, with a piano accompaniment, and a question and answer period afterwards. The second film will be the Disney "Davy Crockett" with Fess Parker. The third film will be John Wayne in "The Alamo." Again, there will be historians there to discuss it with the audience when each film is done. We hope to do more, it's just that this is our first year, and we're just getting started.

Lynn Denton: Not specifically. We are part of the State Preservation Board, and we don't receive monies from the legislature. But rules and laws they pass do apply to us.

Lynn Denton: I'm not going to be able to answer that, as I don't know all the governors well enough. I am sure that the students here in Texas know the Handbook of Texas is online, from the Texas State Historical Commission, and you can look up all the governors there, I am sure.

Lynn Denton: She was our most famous woman governor until Ann Richards. There were lots of famous Texas woman, some important to history yet not that famous, too. One of things we talk about are the women who aren't so well-recognized. For example, there are some early Texas ranchers who were founding families of Spanish ranching. There are women who fought for women's rights during the progressive era. Minnie Fisher Cunningham was a suffragette; one of those who fought for the women's vote. Jane McCallum was also one - she was the first woman to campaign for the U.S. Senate. Adelina Cuney was an African-American woman who was the wife of a man active in politics in the 1890s, and she fought for the desegregation of railroad cars. Laredo teacher Jovita Idar started a weekly newspaper trying to raise awareness against poverty, among other things. As you come into more recent times, those such as Barbara Jordan, Ann Richards, Mrs. Oveta Culp Hobby. Mrs. Hobby was put in charge of the American Red Cross during W.W.II. She basically set up the war effort there. And then there were all the WASPs - women pilots - during World War II. What we have tried to do is show how these stories are interwoven, for Texas has always had strong women throughout its history.

Lynn Denton: Sam Houston was certainly important in shaping it, and in its outcome, but there were much larger political forces in the U.S. and Mexico that were at work as well. He didn't shape the whole revolution, I think, but economic and political factors did that. He was a forceful and effective leader, however, as was proven by his later election as President of the Republic of Texas, and later Governor of the state.

Lynn Denton: I don't really have a list of favorites. Texas historians are in number huge, and they all do wonderful work. I don't think there is one history to be told - there is lots of different information to be examined. I hope that all who have written and analyzed are of value.

Lynn Denton: I guess there are a couple of different areas. I had the opportunity to live in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and work at the Carnegie Museum of History, so I got very interested in Colonial history of that area, the Three Rivers area, with the battles with the Indians prior to the revolution, and how settlements came about, and the growth of that area. Because maybe we all have read "The Leatherstocking Tales," it has an impact. The other would be the southwestern U.S., the idea of exploration in that era. Early Spanish explorers, native Americans moving through that area, and how they helped and hindered and shaped the area.

Lynn Denton: One of the things we have on exhibit in the museum is a page from the de la Pena diary that describes his execution at the hands of Santa Ana's men. Scholars have debated as of late as to whether it's genuine or not. We know that he died at the Alamo, and everyone seems to concur he died honorably, but how that precisely happened, I don't know, and it's very much discussed and debated regarding the final answer.

Lynn Denton: I wish I had a crystal ball! Museum people talk about that an awful lot. Sometimes we get hung up on technology, and other times on other things, but we are all trying to learn how to think about the future. Those who study the future tell us it will be some version of what we know now, but something we don't consciously explore. We get together in groups and talk about what we can envision, and I think it will be like museums are now - different in different communities. Some may be comprehensive on one topic - on one thing or person. How they occupy space and interpret information may be different, but none of us know quite how. The things we can think of are probably not the things we will be doing. Museums will always be there - they are where 'real things' are. Virtual museums online are nice, you can look at it digitally, and examine it, but the power of an object, when you stand in front of it, as a three-dimensional thing, to know it was the letter that Travis wrote from the Alamo, for example, has more power for most people than seeing it on the web. Museums will continue to be where you come together to examine things and have the real experience.

Lynn Denton: We have an actor who is performing a script about Davy Crockett's time in Texas. That script was developed with the assistance of Crockett biographers and historians, so we know it is accurate. We think it is important that people have different ways to learn by history, and theatre is one thing in museums that has a whole different way of conveying a time and place to people. We will use actors and reenactments in the future. There are a group of Buffalo soldier re-enactors who we have done programs with, and we will use such actors when it fits a concept that we are trying to convey.

Lynn Denton: It depends on what is in it and whether it stays put or travels to another place. There is no fixed number. People can do exhibits in their schools, and with time and talent, it may only cost materials. But in museums, it often costs a lot, both in money and time.

Lynn Denton: I think you all had very good questions, and I enjoyed thinking about those things you think about. I hope you will all come and see us at the museum!