Following our first Telfair Children's Art Museum collaboration, this second theme turned to the world of William O. Golding. Developed in reference to Telfair Museums' exhibition The Art of William O. Golding: Hard Knocks, Hardships, and Lots of Experience, the project translates Golding's maritime drawings into a playful digital environment for CAM's younger audience.

Golding was an African American sailor from coastal Georgia who spent more than forty years at sea before returning to Savannah. While receiving treatment at the U.S. Marine Hospital in the 1930s, he produced vivid pencil-and-crayon drawings from memory, combining ships, ports, sailor lore, and autobiography. That blend of fact, imagination, and lived experience became the conceptual anchor for the installation.

The experience was organized as a sequence of spatial chapters: a large welcome mural, a voyage map, a projection-based seascape, submarine-inspired interiors, and graphic teaching moments throughout the gallery. Rather than smoothing out Golding's idiosyncrasies, we enlarged them. His hand-drawn borders, labeled ports, compass-rose suns, and compressed geographies were scaled up into walls, portals, kiosks, and animated surfaces.

Interactivity centered on navigation and discovery. Children could move through Golding's routes from Savannah to the Arctic, China, Cape Horn, and beyond while learning about the overlap of sail and steam, the diversity of vessels he drew, and the scope of a life spent at sea. The result is a digital installation that keeps the intimacy of Golding's drawings intact while turning research-heavy exhibition content into an accessible, immersive story.

More than an exhibition wrap, the project demonstrates how curatorial research, environmental graphics, and digital media can work together without losing the character of the original artwork. It extends CAM's mission through a setting that feels educational, atmospheric, and unmistakably Golding.