who we are
who we are
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Tamara Biggs
Tamara Biggs
Tamara has been making museum exhibitions for over 40 years, beginning in 1981 as a preparator at Chicago’s Field Museum, followed by five years as a project manager at Denver Museum of Nature and Science. She became director of exhibitions at Chicago History Museum in 2000, where she led an award-winning team for 22 years. Together they created nearly 100 exhibitions and won 11 national awards.
In addition, Tamara has been an advisor to numerous museums in Chicago and beyond. Clients have included Swedish American Museum of Chicago, Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture, Chinese American Museum of Chicago, Korean Cultural Center of Chicago, Irish American Heritage Center, Levine Museum of the New South in Charlotte, NC, The Academy Museum in LA, and Louisiana State Museums in New Orleans.
Tamara was a founder of the Chicago Cultural Alliance, a consortium of ethnic museums and cultural centers, and has served on the boards of National Association for Museum Exhibitions and the National Indo-American Museum.
Ala’ Diab
Ala’ Diab
Ala’ is a designer and educator with over 20 years of experience creating brands, user interfaces/user experiences, exhibitions, and learning games. He has worked with NGOs, for-profits, start-ups, museums, and social issue campaigns.
Ala’s design approach is play-centric. When KAICIID Dialogue Center, an international organization based in Lisbon, Portugal, asked him to design a game that supports multi-cultural dialog and understanding, he insisted on workshopping game ideas with youth in different countries and contexts. That process took him to Japan where he conducted game design workshops with more than 400 young scouts, and to Vienna where he worked with young faith leaders to gather insight by playtesting different versions of the game. The game currently exists as a physical boxed product and as an online kit available in eight languages.
More recently, Ala’ has been designing and producing engaging digital interactive apps for museums such as Chicago History Museum, The American Writers Museum and the Swedish American Museum of Chicago.
dan oliver
dan oliver
Dan has designed over 75 exhibitions for Chicago History Museum (CHM) and other institutions since 1992, including the award-winning projects Teen Chicago in 2005, and Out in Chicago in 2013. Most of this career was spent at CHM, where he was senior exhibit designer. Duties included managing traveling exhibitions; designing exhibitions, public spaces and graphics; consulting on building renovation projects; supervising both graphic and 3-D designers; and producing detailed construction documents.
Dan earned an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1991, and has done exhibit design and installation for entities such as the Adler Planetarium, Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, Nippon Steel USA, Spertus Museum, DePaul Art Museum and the Beer Culture Center (formerly the Chicago Brewseum), where he also served as a board member.
Outside the museum field, Dan is an artist who exhibits internationally, with paintings in both private and museum collections.
alvaro ramos
alvaro ramos
Alvaro is a 30-year veteran of the museum world with extensive experience in the development, design, and production of exhibitions and specialized environments. He is an artist and educator and has held curatorial and design positions at Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, Adler Planetarium, and Chicago History Museum.
As a member of Adler’s award-winning design team, he created concepts and final designs for groundbreaking exhibitions, including A Revolution in the Sky and The Space Visualization Lab.
As Chief Curator and VP of Museum Experience at the Nature Museum, he led the design and production of both temporary and permanent exhibitions, as well as public programs. He developed the museum's first self-produced exhibits: Nature’s Architects and Bikes! The Green Revolution, and the museum's first traveling rental exhibit, Weather to Climate, Our Changing World. He directed the development of the museum’s latest permanent exhibitions, Nature’s Play Space, and The Sustainability Center.
Headshots by Jasper Oliver
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