At Thursday evening’s black-tie reception for the opening of the Sant Ocean Hall, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History rotundas got a large-scale 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea-style makeover. The Smithsonian invited more than 1,200 major donors to the gala, making it the largest event ever held at the museum. Five years in the making, the $49 million Sant Ocean Hall, which opened to the public on Saturday, seeks to educate visitors about the diversity of sealife and acts as a call to action to protect the planet’s oceans. “It’s a big celebration with a big, serious message, but we like to have fun, too,” explained the museum's director of special events, Ted Anderson.
In an unprecedented move, the museum closed at 4 p.m. in order to accommodate the evening's production elements, which included hanging three 11-foot-wide, white fabric jellyfish and mobiles of tropical fish from the hall's ceiling and projecting fish on the walls and fabric seaweed curtains. The giant jellyfish moved on wires across the hall while ocean sounds played over the sound system before a curtain dropped, unveiling the exhibition. The evening’s soundtrack had a sense of playfulness as well, with songs like “Octopus Garden,” “Beyond the Sea,” and “Sitting by the Dock of the Bay” playing in the rotunda throughout the night.
“You’ve got the theme already, you just have to build on it. It’s the little things, like we have a little jar of goldfish-shaped crackers by every bar for people to snack on,” Anderson said. And there was more than just goldfish: Occasions Caterers created different buffet stations throughout the museum, each serving eco-friendly, sustainable seafood and organic wine from Shark Trust Wine (which donates 10 percent of its proceeds to ocean conservation). In the Hall of Mammals, guests could try varieties of sustainable fish, such as pan-seared macadamia nut-crusted barramundi, as well as beef and shrimp kebabs and Caesar salad cones with anchovies, all of which were displayed on purple underlit buffets custom-decorated with a coral pattern.
In the rotunda, A Vista Events created a bar serving fried oysters and hush puppies that was designed to evoke a boardwalk, with pier-style planks, rope and life preservers. In the Sant Ocean Hall itself, guests checking out the exhibition’s giant squid and hanging replica of a 45-foot-long North Atlantic right whale could try ocean-inspired deserts like a faux caviar made of peach puree and crème anglaise.
As a keepsake, each guest received the book Smithsonian Ocean: Our Water, Our World by Deborah Cramer and an Ocean Odyssey DVD, donated by Sony.
