Practical
Visionary
Gordon Smith thought globally
and acted locally
in creating the new Exploris Museum in Raleigh
By Suzanne M. Wood
Like
many idealistic young college graduates who joined the Peace Corps in
the 1960s, Gordon Smith was inspired by the thought of helping
impoverished people in a developing country. He didn’t consider that
he might gain just as much or more from the experience than the Indian
farmers he helped with a seed hybridization program in 1967-68. But
that’s what happened as Smith unwittingly heeded one of the Corps’
missions — to bring the world back to the United States. When he
returned home, the vision of a museum-like institution that would
teach North Carolinians tolerance and respect for other cultures was
deeply imprinted in his soul.
On a warm October day in 1999, nearly 30 years after Smith first
nurtured the idea for such an ambitious project, the Exploris museum
in downtown Raleigh opened its doors with a jubilant multicultural
outdoor festival and a parade of dignitaries and state officials. Like
the dozens of other people who had helped plan Exploris since Smith
created its nonprofit corporation in 1985, he felt relief and elation.
In his case, however, the euphoria was tempered with “the
recognition that I planned to really celebrate in year five. I’ve
just assumed that like with any start-up organization, it would take
five years before we could really mature into an organization that can
serve people of all ages,” he recalls today.
Two years into the experiment, it looks like Smith will be able to
crack open that bottle of champagne. The 80,000-square-foot “global
learning center,” filled with colorful and creative interactive
exhibits designed to expose 8- to-14-year-olds to a slice of the
world, is a hit with school groups and families. But it’s only just
the anchor of what Smith and his colleagues call the International
Campus at Exploris, a seven-block, 20-acre area encircling Moore
Square that they hope will promote international understanding and
goodwill as well as help revitalize an inner-city neighborhood.
Another starring component is Exploris Middle School, a charter school
that opened in 1997 and already has been named a School of Excellence
and a School of Distinction by the State Board of Education, based on
year-end test scores.
An IMAX theater is scheduled to open next month adjacent to the
museum, a public-private collaboration that will spread Exploris’
education mission by showing 3D films (complete with glasses for the
audience) on a seven-story screen. It will be the first large-format
theater within 200 miles of the Triangle. And other components of
Smith’s master plan are under way, including an international
center, a teacher education center and residence affiliated with the
N.C Center for the Advancement of Teaching, an amphitheater and the
Moore Square Museum Magnet School.
The campus will not only make the museum and the schools more enticing
to visitors and prospective students, but it also will teach North
Carolinians through features such as the 21st Century World Walk and
the Geography Plaza. Its collaborators include Peace College, which is
leasing some of the newly renovated single-family homes surrounding
the museum to use as student housing. Downtown landmarks such as the
Raleigh Rescue Mission and the Salvation Army will remain as part of
the mix, lending a dose of gritty urban realism to the idealistic
project. To date, businesses, foundations, individuals and Wake County
and the city of Raleigh have invested $94 million in the project. That
includes $12 million that Smith himself anted up: $2 million to start
the nonprofit that began planning for Exploris in the mid-1980s and,
more recently, $10 million to buy houses for redevelopment.
Smith, whose title is chairman of Exploris, comes by his
museum-creator status naturally. His grandfather, Clarence Poe, was
one of the four founders of the N.C. Museum of Art, the first
state-funded art museum in the country. “I thought if my grandfather
could start a museum about art, I could start a museum about the
world,” says Smith with a smile. Poe was also influential in other
ways. He named his 800-acre farm Long View after his life’s
philosophy, a name that Smith has borrowed for the teacher village and
international center components of the Exploris complex.
Smith’s late grandfather also was instrumental in more practical
ways, having helped build a successful magazine chain that included
Southern Living and Progressive Farmer. The sale of that company to
Time-Warner in the mid-1980s provided Smith with an inheritance that
he has used to grow Exploris.
“The thing that most impressed me about Gordon is that he didn’t
take his wealth and go away,” says Vernon Malone, a Wake County
commissioner who has known Smith for 15 years and worked with him as
Exploris’ founders sought public funding. “He has a vision of
giving of himself and his resources to the community. He would haul
those cardboard schematics (of the proposed museum) around with him to
meetings, and he was illuminating at every single meeting I went to.
I’m willing to go out on a limb and say we would probably not be
building the Moore Square Magnet School (estimated at $18 million) if
not for Gordon and his willingness to be a supporting member, a
linchpin.”
As devoted as Smith is, he doesn’t spend every day promoting
Exploris and its mission. In keeping with his eclectic mix of
education and work experience, Smith has a “day job” that at first
glance seems incongruous with a museum founder. He’s vice president
and financial consultant for Smith Barney in Raleigh, specializing in
global investments for individual and institutional investors and
advising the firm’s money managers on behalf of multimillion-dollar
clients. The work he does at Smith Barney and the contacts he’s made
with his foreign counterparts informs his decisions concerning
Exploris and its components. There’s a definite cross-pollination,
Smith says, that occurs between his two roles, and more and more of
his ideas for programs, exhibits and collaborations involve global
economics.
“The mission behind Exploris has never been to start a museum —
the mission has been and is to help North Carolina make connections
with the people of the world,” says Smith. “That includes our
economies. All the business leaders we spoke with (during fund-raising
for Exploris) are very aware of the challenges of the global economy
on their businesses and on North Carolina. They feel we still have
much to do to be successful in a 21st Century global economy. The
global economy is developing so rapidly since the downfall of the
Berlin Wall, the implications for North Carolina are far-reaching.”
Indeed, the opportunities and challenges surrounding world trade and
investment loom so large in Smith’s mind that these days he’s
hauling around another schematic featuring a lesson on global economic
history and predictions for 2010 to 2025. As Smith (and many others)
sees it, the United States will no longer be the dominant economic
power. It will face competition from five other countries or regions:
the European Common Market, China, India, the Pacific Rim nations and
Latin American countries led by Brazil. Within the U.S., states will
continue to compete with each other for importing and exporting
opportunities, and Smith wants North Carolina citizens and businesses
to be ready to expand their minds and their markets to the world. It
would do well to think of itself as a nation like Switzerland or the
Netherlands, both of which have populations similar to North Carolina
(roughly 11 million) and have enjoyed relatively robust economies
partly because “for the last 500 years they have thought
globally,” notes Smith.
Exploris can play a role in encouraging international economic
development. As Smith’s report concludes: “Exploris can be a
leading educational institution for North Carolina to respond to the
many challenges of the new global economy if this powerful learning
environment is leveraged to make connections with people of the world
and to increase awareness and enhance preparation for the global
economy.”
Already, one of the museum’s most popular exhibits is TradeWorks,
where young people can see and touch materials used in everyday
products around the word, and learn about the people and services that
make daily life possible. They can peek into actual closets typical of
residents of countries such as Lebanon and Japan, and even use
computers to link to foreign stock exchanges. Smith says that through
exhibits like this one, other programs and services Exploris will
develop and the two middle schools, tomorrow’s leaders will learn
the attitude and technical skills necessary to make commerce with
other countries as commonplace as domestic trade.
Smith, who turns 58 this month, has the North Carolina native’s
regard and concern for the state. Born in Raleigh, he has lived in
North Carolina, particularly the Triangle, all his life except during
his high school years — he attended the Episcopal School in
Lynchburg, Va.— and the time he served in the Peace Corps. Before
joining the Peace Corps, he attended UNC-Chapel Hill, where he
graduated in 1966 with a degree in political science. In 1970, after
returning to North Carolina, Smith took a job with the Governor’s
Crime Commission, where he would stay for 15 years, eight of them as
director. During his early years with the commission, Smith would put
in a full week, then devote the rest of his time to pursuing a
master’s degree in sociology, which he received from N.C. State
University in 1974. Not surprisingly, his thesis was on the
feasibility of a museum like Exploris.
At the commission, Smith found a kindred spirit in Anne Bryan, who
worked in the juvenile justice division and had a passion for helping
young people develop their minds and increase their opportunities. The
two would often talk of a center targeted at children that would teach
global understanding, realizing from Smith’s feasibility study that
their dream was within their grasp.
“In 1985, we reached the point where we said, ‘We’re not getting
any younger,’” recalls Bryan, who is president of Exploris. It was
around that time that Smith received the windfall from the sale of
Southern Living, and the two friends were able to establish a
nonprofit foundation that had $2 million worth of credibility to it.
They were joined in those early days by the professor who had served
as Smith’s thesis advisor and was impressed by the vision.
Bryan says Exploris owes its existence to Smith’s single-minded
pursuit of his goal. “He is tenacious, and so committed to sticking
with something and not taking no for an answer,” she says. “You
really do have to give people a rationale for believing in something,
and Gordon has the ability to make a strong case and bring people’s
thinking around an idea. He has brought a sense of can-do to the
project, and he won’t accept anything less.”
Not that he had to convince her of Exploris’ merit, says Bryan.
“We’ve been partners in this venture for decades, and although we
share a vision and goals, we have complementary strengths. And our
thinking and the possibilities for Exploris have grown so much. It’s
been a wonderful adventure.”
Another friend from the crime commission years praises what he calls
Smith’s “unbelievable courage.” Jack McCall, a clinical
psychologist and retired director of social services for the N.C.
Department of Corrections, worked with Smith on several joint projects
with the crime commission. “Other people have good ideas, too, but
if Gordon wants something, he gets it done. But he’s very altruistic
— nothing he does is for himself or will make him wealthy.”
McCall, who likens their relationship to a father-son one, is
obviously proud of Smith’s achievements, but as an adopted North
Carolinian, he’s also aware of the impact Exploris could have on the
state’s residents. “Living in a dirt hut and eating rice during
the Peace Corps, Gordon’s eyes were opened to the size of the
universe. He’s a visionary who saw the future like nobody else —
he saw the globalization of the planet and that it is getting smaller.
He wanted to get his North Carolina people ready for the 21st Century
because you can’t be a chauvinist anymore.”
North Carolina already is struggling with the challenges of embracing
the world. There are a staggering 173 languages spoken by children in
North Carolina schools today. The need for Spanish speakers to assist
newly arrived immigrants is great and growing daily. Exploris and its
related organizations have arrived at an auspicious time.
Not that Smith is content to rest on his laurels. He doesn’t see
himself slowing down anytime soon, but when he does cut back on work,
he plans to volunteer his time and skills at Exploris Middle School.
Also look for him and his wife, the formerly Beverly Blount, a
marketing executive with IBM, to expand one of their favorite hobbies
— traveling abroad. Although his investment work calls for some
travel, it’s not enough to satisfy his palate.
And just like Exploris, Smith knows that other wonderful adventures
await.
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