Jacob Freedman of Treeline Terrains will discuss the group’s business designing custom 3D landscapes combining the trio’s unique craftsmanship backgrounds. Jacob designs maps using GIS to identify trails, water bodies, and buildings to highlight. His colleague Nathaniel Klein hand-joins layered wood blocks, identifying sustainably sourced hardwoods and finally Alex Gemme brings digital files to the CNC router and implements a computer-aided process to carve custom designs. All recent Middlebury College graduates, the group will discuss their entrepreneurship journey, their collaborations with Vermont organization and nonprofits, and delve into their process to create “topography you can touch.” They will explore how tactile models can further efforts toward “inclusive mapping,” helping everyone connect to the places they love.

In this lecture Professor Sarah Carter explores the creation and use of the “Mrs. M.—–‘s Cabinet” period room project at the Milwaukee Art Museum, which she collaboratively created during her time with the Chipstone Foundation. This experimental exhibition hacks into the idea of the museum period room to ask, what does a museum do and who is it for, through the collection and space of an imagined nineteenth-century collector. Sarah Anne Carter, Ph.D. is the Executive Director of the Center for Design and Material Culture and an Associate Professor of Design Studies in the School of Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She previously served as Curator and Director of Research at the Chipstone Foundation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she collaboratively curated many museum exhibitions and led Chipstone’s Think Tank Program in support of progressive curatorial practice. The “Elephant in the Room” lecture series is presented with support from Vermont Humanities.