Special Exhibitions

Fresh, relevant, and exciting programming drives attendance and repeat visits to the museum and is essential to our financial health. One of the most effective ways to attract and serve a large and diverse audience is to provide special exhibitions that present a variety of new topics, introduce new objects, and explore new issues important to our visitors. These exhibits also afford the museum opportunities to forge strong links with its neighboring communities. Special exhibits developed and produced by this museum are highly valued by other institutions and can have a long life traveling to other cities. In producing traveling exhibits, we profit not only financially, but also intellectually from the knowledge and experience we gain.

Dead Sea Scrolls

The Dead Sea Scrolls consist of roughly 1,000 documents, including texts from the Hebrew Bible, discovered between 1947 and 1979 in eleven caves in and around the Wadi Qumran (near the ruins of the ancient settlement of Khirbet Qumran, on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea) in the West Bank. The texts are of great religious and historical significance, as they include practically the only known surviving copies of Biblical documents made before 100 CE.  The ancient Hebrew writing fragments are now archived and conserved by the Israel Antiquities Authority and on rare occasion are put on public display at world-class museums.

Fire!

Visitors will explore the theme of Fire from the perspectives of science, literature, art, history, culture, and society. This topic connects us to the earthly, corporeal concerns of everyday life and the far reaches of the human imagination. Fire is embedded in our human history. It has been essential to the basic survival needs of people as well as their spiritual sustenance.

Journey to Space

Climb into a rocket and blast off into space.  Experience a virtual trip to the International Space Station.  Before you go, check to make sure you have the right stuff by investigating how low gravity will impact your muscles and reaction time and how you will react psychologically to being in space.  After reaching orbit, experience weightlessness, dock with the Space Station, and conduct experiments there to explore chemistry, fluid physics, materials science, and medicine in a micro-gravity environment.  At the end of your tour, climb into the new Orion Crew Vehicle, which will use a combination of rockets, parachutes, and airbags to return you safely to Earth.

Questionable Medical Devices

If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. Throughout history, products that stretch the principles of science have been sold to wishful patients hoping for miracle cures. Check out this collection of "believe it or not" medical devices - including a prostate gland warmer and a nose straightener.  Learn how to spot a quack--can you tell the bogus from the real?

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