FORT SILL, Okla.-- Dr. Scott Neel has been named the new director/curator for the Fort Sill National Historic Landmark and Museum. Neel firmly believes his experience and academic background has prepared him for this unique position.
Neel comes to Fort Sill from the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage, Alaska, where he served as curator for collections and exhibits. During his tenure there he oversaw the installation of four major exhibits. In Alaska, Neel found himself working with 11 different cultural groups that spoke 21 different languages. He had to learn very quickly how to work with the different groups so he didn't upset the cultures. And, that was one of the reasons he was picked to become curator of the Fort Sill Museum.
"Frank Siltman, director of museums and military history at Fort Sill, told me they wanted someone to be able to work with the Native American cultures in Oklahoma, and get them more involved with what we are doing here, while keeping the military history alive and growing," Neel said. That is my hope, that I can hit the ground running more quickly because I have those experiences with Native American cultures."
Prior to going to the Heritage Center, Neel was the museum specialist at the Dorothy A. Page Museum in Wasilla, Alaska, and a museum specialist at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. In this position he was team leader for receiving many objects for the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center at Washinton Dulles International Airport. This center is a companion facility to the Air and Space Museum and displays thousands of aviation and space vehicles, and artifacts that cannot be exhibited at the main museum. It was while working at the Air and Space Museum that his passion for museums was kindled.
"I had only been on staff a couple months and my boss said, 'Hey you, get the van and go to the warehouse and get this box out of storage, and take it downtown to the museum so we can photograph it.' Well the item in the box was Charles Lindbergh's flight suit that he wore on his solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean," Neel said excitedly.
"So I'm driving Charles Lindbergh's flight suit in the van by myself and it hit me, 'Oh gosh, if I get in an accident it will be international news!' I realized that I was actually touching history and dealing with major historical figures. That's when I knew I was going to be a museum person for the rest of my life."
While Neel was at the Udvar-Hazy Center he was in charge of bringing hundreds of objects of national importance into the new museum, including the space shuttle Enterprise and an SR-71 "Blackbird" supersonic reconnaissance plane. "I actually got to sit in the SR-71 cockpit, which was pretty cool," he said.
One of the major displays Neel oversaw was the reassembly of the B-29 "Superfortress" Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic bomb.
"I was one of the crane operators who put the wings back onto the Enola Gay. I also sat in the cockpit and worked the throttles back and forth so that the technicians could hook up the cables to the engines. That was pretty exciting," he added.
Neel's interest for culture and history began when he got a degree in cultural anthropology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. He went on to get a master's of arts and doctorate in Anglo-Saxon studies at the University of Nottingham in England. While cataloguing items in the Anglo-Saxon Museum, he learned the importance of proper acquisition and compiling data on historic artifacts in a museum setting.
"I have a passion for history from cultural anthropology, just an interest in studying people, cultures, society, those type of things. It kind of came together into the career that I have now," he said. "At the Alaska Native Heritage Center, dealing with the cultural objects and some of the artwork, especially the contemporary work, just really brought it into perspective that these items are important to these native cultures, and certainly to the public. The same is true for Fort Sill. Some people who come here are more interested in artillery, so they'll go down to the artillery museum. But other people are also going to be interested in Fort Sill history, and they want to know more about Western frontier life, Indians and the cavalry, so they are going to come here," Neel added.
Neel has only been at Fort Sill for a month, but he has already begun to assess the status of Fort Sill's most prized landmark. He is working with Siltman to build on the heritage of the museum. "I'd like to redo some of the exhibits because some of the text is hard to read, especially for our retirees who visit," he said. We want to have more colorful display panels. My background is primarily collections, and I developed a lot of displays at the Smithsonian and the Native Heritage Center. We want the displays here to have eye-popping appeal."
While at the Heritage Center, Neel oversaw the development of an interactive museum tour using iPods. Visitors could download a free program to an iPod Touch, an iPhone or Android phone. The program used photographs, videos, cultural music and narratives in native Alaskan voices to create a complete learning experience. Neel believes the same type of program can eventually be developed at Fort Sill.
"I want to make something that is more interactive and interesting for everyone from kids to adults but who are kids at heart. That's how excited history makes me feel, like a kid," he said.
Money and personnel are always in short supply in a museum setting, so Neel wants to rebuild the volunteer force at the museum.
"Volunteers are the backbone of museums. They can do the stuff that the staff just doesn't have the time to do," he said. "I want to have more re-enactors out in the cavalry barracks or at the guard house. We need more volunteer tour guides so our collections manager isn't taken away from doing collections-related stuff. We also would like volunteer help designing and building new exhibit displays. I hope to get the word out that we need more volunteers."
"Fort Sill is a national historical landmark, the oldest, most complete frontier fort from that time period. To be put in charge of this is monumental for me. I want to make sure we preserve the history and the cultural objects.That's a given," he said.
"But, I want us to tell the story in a meaningful way, so that visitors will go away from here with a better understanding of what Fort Sill is, where it came from and how there is still historical continuity even today. It reflects who we are as a country and where we came from. How can you not preserve that?" Neel said.
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