USD Magazine Fall 2015

CLASS  NOTES J

Museum head Javier Guerrero ’95 believes in access for all [ i n g e n i o u s ] BUILT FROM SCRAP

by Trisha J. Ratledge

avier Guerrero ’95 (BA) quickly combs his fingers through the sand, revealing the tip of a duck-billed dinosaur as he glances over his shoulder at the glass doors leading out to Base Camp, a simulated dig site at the San Diego Children’s Dis- covery Museum in Escondido, Calif. “This place is about to come alive,” he says, a mere six minutes after the museum opens. “I can leave this exposed; the kids are going to come out here and they’ll go nuts.” And he’s right. The chatter is muffled at first, then electrifies

the air as tiny patrons burst through the doors to the out- door discovery garden, each sta- tion a natural world of its own. Beneath whimsical twists of sail- cloth for shade, the under-10ers become archeologists — that duck-billed herbivore is cast from an actual dig — engineers at the water table, botanists in the native plant and pollinator gardens, and urban farmers in the aquaponic garden. The emphasis is on authentic materials and experiences intended to make the senses — and the imagination— come

alive. “We are creating the expe- rience, but we are not dictating the experience,” says Guerrero, executive director of the muse- um, who together with his cre- ative staff design and build every exhibit in the museum. “For the magnification station, we got the microscope and screen donated. And then everything else (at the station), we built from scrap. Lit- erally from scrap.” Inside the museum, a nation of flags flutters from the ceiling over the global village, the interactive science stations and an imagina- tion zone featuring instruments,

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