Jerry Eisterhold

For five decades, Gerard Eisterhold has been one of the country’s most respected interpretive designers in the museum field. His work as president and creative director of Eisterhold Associates, in Kansas City, Missouri, has helped shape how millions of visitors encounter some of the most consequential events, topics, and people in America. His more than 60 major projects encompass a remarkable breadth and scope of topical, geographical, intellectual, artistic, and cultural domains. These projects include many firsts, such as the National Park Service’s first acknowledgment of slavery in its holdings (President’s House, Philadelphia PA), the first permanent exhibit on the American civil rights movement (National Civil Rights Museum, Lorraine Motel, Memphis TN), the first exhibit on the history of jazz in Kansas City , the first museum of tort law (for Ralph Nader) American Museum of Tort Law, Winsted, CT, and the first biographical exhibit on Harry Truman (Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum, Independence MO). From military museums for the US Army and US Marines, to the definitive historical exposition of NASA Apollo missions, the John F. Kennedy assassination, and the Civil War, Emancipation, and Reconstruction to cultural icons like August Wilson, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Walt Disney, his work demonstrates an original approach to experiential instruction that creates museum and public spaces that are transformational as well as educational.