World famous museum designer Ralph Appelbaum is shepherding the exhibits for the Clinton Presidential Center. His firm, Ralph Appelbaum Associates is the largest interpretive museum design firm in the world, employing a staff of 75 specialists, including designers, architects, historians, writers, editors, technology and media specialists.

At the heart of the firm's philosophy is that museums should be more than black box exhibition spaces or a random collection of documents, photographs and other artifacts. Appelbaum and his team believe museums should tell a story and be able to sweep visitors through often complex environments, filled with objects and ideas and graphics and media.

Ralph Appelbaum Associates has earned critical acclaim for more than 100 projects. But the two designs, which attracted President Clinton's attention and appreciation, are the Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

Visitors look at some of the various exhibits chronicling President Clinton's life and Presidency. Photo by Timothy Hursley for the William J. Clinton Foundation

In Little Rock, Appelbaum tells the story of a President who had large ideas and a vision that shaped a generation, but he says it's also a story of who we are as Americans. "It's amazing to think about the Library as not just a story of a Presidency, but a story of America in those extraordinary years before the 21st century."