JFK at Your Fingertips

Sixth Floor Museum launches free digital guide to explore Texas history from home

The Sixth Floor Museum has a new digital interactive guide that covers the history of Dealey Plaza.

Photo courtesy of Sixth Floor Museum

The Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas has introduced a new free digital online experience that allows people to explore the history of Dealey Plaza and the events that happened there on November 22, 1963 without ever leaving home.

The Dealey Plaza National Historic Landmark District interactive guide offers a variety of multimedia features, most notably Friday, November 22, 1963, a narrated walking tour that lets visitors navigate the site of the Kennedy assassination. The tour goes through the final moments of the presidential motorcade as it entered and proceeded through Dealey Plaza. It features films, photographs, contemporary news broadcasts, and an oral history, highlighting seven stops in the plaza.

The three other components of the guide include:

Explore the Plaza, an interactive map that offers a self-guided, self-paced exploration of 17 different points of historic interest in and near the plaza.
The Front Door of Dallas, a visual story tracing the history of the Dealey Plaza site from the founding of Dallas to the present day.
Facing Tragedy, a visual story that chronicles the ways Dallas has honored President Kennedy and memorialized the assassination and other tragic moments in the city’s history.

The guide takes around 30-40 minutes to complete, depending on how much time a user spends in any particular section.

“The museum is pleased to bring this project to life for the Dallas community," said Nicola Longford, CEO of The Sixth Floor Museum, in a statement. "Whether you have a little bit of time or a lot of time and whether you are in Dealey Plaza in person or taking advantage of this from afar, the guide will enlighten and educate you and your family about the fascinating history of Dealey Plaza and Dallas.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, museum staff began transitioning some of their core storytelling traditionally experienced inside the museum to a virtual platform. The development of a user-friendly digital guide to the historic sites surrounding the museum was part of a goal of making historical content more accessible to broader audiences, they say.

The digital experience marks the first time that a comprehensive view of the long history of Dealey Plaza — the site where Dallas was founded — is explored in an interactive and digital format and is accessible to anyone in the world at no cost. The information presented in the guide goes as far back in time as 1841 and the founding of Dallas by John Neely Bryan and covers events in the plaza through the protests for social and racial justice in summer 2020.

The guide, which can be easily viewed on different devices, including computers, tablets, and smartphones, is available at dealeyplaza.jfk.org in both English and Spanish.

education downtown

a beautiful mind

Houston Health Museum's new exhibit shines a light on dyslexia

Sarah Sudhoff created "The Reading Brain" in honor of her son.

Photo by Rose Tylinski

"The Reading Brain" replicates neuron activity in a dyslexic brian while reading

No, "The Reading Brain" isn't the title of a B-horror film from the 1960s. It's a brand new installation at the Houston Health Museum that explores dyslexia.

The piece was created by Houston-based artist Sarah Sudhoff, in partnership with Dr. Guinevere Eden, Director of the Center for the Study of Learning at Georgetown University. Hanging from the ceiling of the Health Museum, it uses light-up colored circles to represent the frontal lobe activity of a dyslexic person while reading. MRI scans of dyslexic brains formed the foundation of the light activity. Sudhoff's own son has dyslexia, and she had to adapt her homeschooling of him to account for his neurodivergence. As much as 20 percent of the American population is dyslexic.

"The Reading Brain" grew out of a similar exhibit at the DoSeum in San Antonio. "Beautiful Minds: Dyslexia and the Creative Advantage" challenged visitors to see dyslexia not as a learning disability but as simply a different way some human brains work. The exhibit featured videos, stories, and art work by dyslexic individuals that show how they succeed and create, as well as a selection of brain puzzles used to teach dyslexic people.

“Even though your brain works differently, it still lights up and is beautiful to watch, a wonderful machine you have. It just means you have to navigate and pivot a little differently,” Sudhoff said.

Sudhoff's innovative bridge between science and art is a permanent part of the Health Museum's MindWorks exhibit. Like "The Reading Brain," MindWorks maps out thinking processes through light and hands-on activities. The exhibit will close on January 5, meaning visitors have a very short time to see Sudhoff's piece.

The Health Museum is a hidden gem in Museum District located a block away from the Children's Museum. It houses a variety of exhibits about the human body, such as a giant plastic colon that kids love to run through. Since opening in 1969, the museum has helped Houstonians and visitors from around the world learn about the way the body works as well well as public health protocols. As the only Smithsonian Affiliate Museum in the Houston Museum District, it has a high educational pedigree despite it's colorful and often whimsical offerings.

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