‘Edu-Tainment’ Finds Creative Outlet in New Pacific Northwest Museum : Natural history: Curators shun ‘old bones and dinosaurs,’ envision putting fun into exhibits, creating sights and sounds and smells like a Disney attraction.

When people walk into the new Pacific Northwest Museum of Natural History this summer, they’ll enter through a lava tube complete with flowing magma, hear the cries of wild animals and tap into computer databases.

“This isn’t your old bones and dinosaurs museum,” said development director Jerry Price. “This is absolutely the museum of the future.”

Ron Lamb, executive director of the museum, calls it edu-tainment, an entertaining approach to education. It’s the same notion that prompted him to bring pizzas for students when he taught the ins and outs of the digestive tract in biology courses at Southern Oregon State College, which owns the land where the museum is built.

“They’ve got to be made more hands-on and user-friendly or people won’t come to them,” Lamb said.

The new generation of museums form a perimeter around Oregon, catching tourists from all directions.

To the north is the new Oregon Museum of Science and Industry in Portland. To the east, there’s the Oregon Trail Interpretive Center in Baker City. The $10-million Pacific Northwest Natural History Museum opens July 1 to grab people driving up from California. And the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport has staked out the West.

Since it opened May 23, 1992, the aquarium has shattered attendance expectations, drawing 1.5 million visitors, and has been credited with boosting bookings at local motels, reflected in an 18% jump in room-tax receipts.

“They’re sick of the gift shops and just spending money,” said Craig Thomas, economic development director for the Greater Newport Chamber of Commerce. “If they’re going to come to the coast, they want to learn about the fishing and different creatures.”

Museums are starting to have something in common with Nevada casinos.

Academy Studio of Novato, Calif., which is building the exhibits at the Pacific Northwest Museum of Natural History, also is doing research and development on a project for the Reno Hilton.

“They actually want to reconstruct a Northwest forest--right down the center of the casino, a Northwest forest--with a huge waterfall, a big special-effects sky with projected images, lightning bolts that split trees, and about 50 robotic pieces that go into that,” said Dean Weldon, president of Academy Studio.

“Museums are being affected by entertainment and attractions, and, inversely, attractions are being influenced by museums.”

Gone are the stuffed animals and the painted backdrop behind a big picture window that once were the standard of natural history museums, most of which were built in big cities before the 1920s.

“The Ashland exhibit is kind of like an educational attraction,” Weldon said. “One thing that has happened is that society has de-emphasized schools. So cultural centers are much more important to the ongoing education of society.”

Driven by Lamb’s vision of environmental education, the $10-million museum is being built through a combination of public and private grants, including $2.7 million from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which operates a wildlife forensics laboratory next door.

The main attraction will be the ecosystems of the Northwest. These will feature the smell of seaweed at the coast, the moss on the floor of an old-growth forest and castings from real volcanic formations to convey the texture of the high desert’s rimrock.

Throughout, the displays will illuminate six principles of ecology: ecosystems change through time, energy flows through ecosystems, nutrients are recycled, species are interdependent, organisms are uniquely adapted and biodiversity creates strength.

As government support for museums has fallen, they find themselves having to survive in a competitive world, which means making themselves more attractive and fulfilling a number of roles.

Besides teaching about the environment, this museum acts as a launching pad for tourists by giving them a “passport” to real-life places around Oregon that correspond to the exhibits they find interesting in the museum.

“The survival of museums depends on trying to find ways of bringing visitors back,” said Craig Kerger, president of Formations Inc., a museum design firm in Portland.

That’s why the computer stations where visitors ask and answer questions adjust to different levels of knowledge and avenues of interest, making each visit different. Camps, educational programs and visiting exhibits are planned.

The permanent exhibits were designed to get away from the traditional linear approach to learning and to adopt something more spatial, Kerger said.

“We’re working on creating exhibits that almost act like opera sets,” he said. “You really have a few moments within a large space where you need to create a mood, a feeling, an environment that sets the stage for the information you are going to portray.”

Drawing on techniques developed for special effects in the movies, exhibit builders can create some stunning displays, Weldon said.

In the lava tube entrance, there will be a fissure where people feel a blast of hot air and see either a video display or some kind of actual glowing sludge to represent the flowing magma that created the lava tube.

Weldon also hopes to install robotic bats and butterflies at the lava tube entrance.

“When you go into the lava cave, I think there should be some things twitching and moving,” he said.