February 1, 2009 Library of Congress Appoints Interpretive Programs Officer
Press Contact: Audrey Fischer (202) 707-0022
William “Jake”Jacobs has been appointed chief of the Interpretive Programs Office (Interpretive Programs Officer).
“I am so pleased that Jake Jacobs has joined the Library as Interpretive Programs Officer,” said Associate Librarian for Library Services Deanna Marcum. “His broad range of experience at various Smithsonian Institution museums over 28 years is a great boon for us, especially with the opening of the Capitol Visitor Center and the renewed emphasis on exhibitions here at the Library.”
Jacobs earned advanced degrees in art history and in architecture and industrial design from the University of Minnesota and the Rhode Island School of Design, respectively.
As an exhibition designer for the Smithsonian Institution for nearly three decades, he has designed exhibitions ranging in size from small traveling displays to major permanent galleries. As the chair of the Exhibits Design Division at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum (NASM), he was responsible for planning and designing all exhibitions. This included the 250,000-square-foot Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center, which is the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum’s annex at Washington Dulles International Airport in Chantilly, Va.
Founded in 1800, the Library of Congress is the nation’s oldest federal cultural institution. The Library seeks to spark imagination and creativity and to further human understanding and wisdom by providing access to knowledge through its magnificent collections, programs and exhibitions. Many of the Library’s rich resources can be accessed through its Web site at www.loc.gov and via interactive exhibitions on a new, personalized Web site at myLOC.gov.
The Interpretive Programs Office presents the Library of Congress’s incomparable collections to the general public in an intellectually and visually compelling manner. More than 1,500 exhibitions on almost as many subjects have been mounted since the early 1940s. Many of these have been viewed locally, nationally and internationally either on-site, through the Library’s traveling exhibition program, or on its Web sites at www.loc.gov/exhibits/ and myLOC.gov.
###
PR 09-022
2009-02-02
ISSN 0731-3527