Sierra Nevada Virtual Museum

Location: Rocklin, CA (Sierra Nevada North Central, Placer County)
Contact: Professor Gary Noy, Director, Center for Sierra Nevada Studies at Sierra College 916-781-7184
To suggest or submit museum content: sierracenter@sierracollege.edu
For project collaboration: gnoy@sierracollege.edu
Project Stage: Active, on-going
Next Milestone: Sierra Nevada Lecture Series, Spring 2009, as part of the Sierra College course Interdisciplinary 6: The Sierra Nevada.

The internationally renowned award-winning Sierra Nevada Virtual Museum is a multimedia, interactive online museum presenting the rich history, culture and natural history of the Sierra Nevada. Sierra Nevada Virtual Museum is a project of students, faculty, and staff at The Center for Sierra Nevada Studies at Sierra College.

The museum’s Arts Gallery features regional artists like Ansel Adams, Albert Bierstadt and Chiura Obata; region-inspired art from fruit crate labels to films and Landscapes of the Mind, and music of artists like two-time Grammy-award winner and Sierra region native Mary Youngblood. The museum’s History Gallery features both past and living history, and culture; its Natural History Gallery offers everything from a Sierra primer to current research and GIS data. The site features contributions from four Pulitzer Prize Winners, a two-time Peabody Award winner, and many experts on the Sierra Nevada from throughout the state and the nation.

As a nonprofit educational website and experiential education project of the college, it partners with other non-profit environmental, heritage, education and media partners.

For example, as a project partner for Saving the Sierra: Voices of Conservation in Action, Sierra College Center for Sierra Nevada Studies’ role was to design and develop the companion website and to manage the mobile story booth. The college purchased the mobile recording equipment that will (at the conclusion of the project) be available for any campus recording projects, such as oral histories. Sierra College students and interns were trained to use these studios and they traveled to regional events to provide workshops and recording opportunities. Sierra College also designed the project logo, some promotional materials, and arranged for the web hosting for Saving the Sierra.

See also: Community and Economy: Arts: Saving the Sierra: Voices of Conservation in Action

For more about:

• Sierra College degree and enrichment programs, including Forestry, and new and emerging disciplines in environmental and interdisciplinary sciences, see Sierra College Science Division.
• The Center for Sierra Nevada Studies at Sierra College Drop-in lectures open to the public in interdisciplinary Sierra Nevada Studies (INT 006. Each week a different plenary speaker, a different topic - art, history, natural history, and public policy. See the past speakers list.
• Televised lectures in interdisciplinary Sierra Nevada Studies (INT 006), contact your local cable company in Placer, Nevada, El Dorado and Yuba counties. Many of the lectures are also online in the “SierraCasts” section of the Sierra Nevada Virtual Museum.