Meeting Her Majesty
A Butler County native shook hands with Britain's Queen Elizabeth II during a museum event earlier this month.,
Kristin Hibbs was on hand at London's Science Museum when the queen published her first post on Instagram during the opening of the museum's Smith Centre March 7.
According to CNN, as her inaugural post, the queen shared a letter sent by 19th-century mathematician and computer pioneer Charles Babbage to Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert.
“Today, as I visit the Science Museum I was interested to discover a letter from the Royal Archives, written in 1843 to my great-great-grandfather Prince Albert,” she wrote in the post on the official @TheRoyalFamily account, using a touch screen iPad at the museum to send the message.
Hibbs, an architect, was on hand for the royal visit because she said, “I am the head of design at the Science Museum responsible for designing the print marketing, exhibits and interior architecture, the spaces inside the building.
“I have been directing a project which is called the Smith Centre, the room the event took place in,” Hibbs said.
“This was a four-year-long process, and at the party celebrating the opening, she (the queen) was the guest of honor.”
Hibbs said, “I got to shake hands with her in the receiving line. I thought she looked radiant.
“She was very warm and friendly. There were seven of my museum colleagues who met her. And she asked what we did at the museum and one follow-up question that was very specific,” Hibbs said.
“Her Majesty The Queen asked me what I did at the museum,” Hibbs said. “And once I responded she repeated, 'Design. You must be very happy to see the finished space.'”
Hibbs said, “Yes, the encounter was brief, but it was meaningful; she looked right into my eyes and she smiled the whole time.”
Hibbs added, “She was warm and friendly. She was wearing this gorgeous tangerine dress, coat and hat. She looked beautiful.”
“She travels with a small group: a lady in waiting and some guards, a group of about seven people,” Hibbs said.
“I found out about the visit in November and have been planning with the palace and the queen's private secretary since then,” she said. “There is a lot of planning and a lot of serious security measures put in place.”
The queen's first Instagram post got a lot of news coverage in the United Kingdom, Hibbs said.
“I would say usually, for example, for a national museum to have a royal opening is important news,” she said.
“There has been a long relationship between the royal family and the science museum,” Hibbs noted.
“That's why it was chosen as the site for the queen's Instagram posting,” she said.
Hibbs, who has been with the Science Museum the last six and a half years, said the Smith Centre will be used for variety of meetings and receptions.The road that led to Queen Elizabeth II's receiving line began in the Butler High School German classroom of George Kenderes.“He had been a Fulbright Scholar,” Hibbs said. “He and a fellow Fulbright Scholar arranged for their students to switch places for three weeks. They got to come to the United States, and we got to spend three weeks in Germany. It was really a nice program, my first taste of Europe.”After graduating from Butler High in 1997, Hibbs studied architecture at the University of Cincinnati.She said, “I looked at universities that had study-abroad opportunities, particularly in Germany.“But I took a six-month internship in London in 1999 with the DEGW architecture firm that was involved in the Victoria and Albert Museum project in London.“It was an eye-opening experience for me that, as an architect, you could be in a museum context,” said Hibbs.She said, “I stayed in touch with my boss from the internship after I graduated and spent two years working in Copenhagen.“I came to London in 2005 where I first worked at Metaphor, an architectural firm,” she said.The daughter of Mollie and Larry Hibbs of Renfrew said she comes back to Butler County for Christmas every year and for her nephew's birthday.“She comes home for the holidays and now that she has a little nephew she's back more often,” said Mollie Hibbs.Mollie Hibbs said they've visited Kristin's workplace when they are in London.“Yes we go every time we are in London,” she said. “We've seen quite a bit of it.”Kristin Hibbs said, “Working within a museum is just incredible. With every new exhibition project, I learn new subject matter, from the Large Hadron Collider where I met Nobel Prize winner Peter Higgs to the history of the cosmonauts where I met Alexey Leonov, the first man to do a space walk, and Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space. However, I do believe meeting Her Majesty The Queen takes first place in my books,” said Hibbs.
