Speaker Details

Wayne LaBar

Vice President, Exhibitions and Featured Experiences :

Biography:

Wayne LaBar is Vice President of Exhibitions and Featured Experiences and oversees thematic content, exhibitions, large‐format films and 2D/3D/overall design at Liberty Science Center (LSC). He is also Principal‐in‐Charge of LSC Experience Services, which helps design and develop science centers and museums around the world and produces traveling exhibitions that tour internationally. LSC’s experiences are recognized as having succeeded in making the Center’s informal experiences more relevant to guests’ everyday lives and global issues; educating and inspiring action; addressing ongoing developments in science and technology and enhancing the Center’s learning and aesthetic environment - redefining the role of a modern science center.

In both positions, Wayne and the team he leads explore how new technology can encourage guests to interact with exhibitions and the exhibition process. Through these efforts and others, Wayne and his fellow team members are currently exploring how to use new advances in technology - and their resultant social changes - to advance the exhibition field. Examples are “Science Now Science Everywhere” or “SNSE” (www.snse.lsc.org), a unique cell phone application, and the Exhibit Commons initiative that invites guests to contribute the museum’s mutable exhibitions is currently using social media software to involve the public in the actual development of Cooking: the Exhibition, a groundbreaking experience on the science of cooking (http://cookingexhibitchefs.ning.com/).

Wayne helped launch and now leads Liberty Science Center’s LSC Experience Services business unit, whose recent projects include the first science center in Puerto Rico; master planning for two science centers in Turkey; taking a significant role in creating the mission and framing work for a cultural center in Saudi Arabia; leading a capital planning study for The Manitoba Museum in Winnipeg and now, creating new exhibitions for the New York Transit Museum and the historic Bell Labs.

With 23 years of museum experience and numerous papers and presentations, his former roles include Director of Exhibits at The Tech Museum (San Jose, CA), Project Manager at Krent/Paffett Associates, Inc. (Boston, MA) and Project Manager at the Carnegie Science Center (Pittsburgh, PA). He is on the Board of the National Association for Museum Exhibition and a member of IDSA, CTBUH and ULI. Wayne obtained his Bachelor’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and is a graduate of the Getty’s Museum Leadership Institute.

Status: Confirmed