The Museum of Life and Science—previously known as the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science and the NC Children's Museum—is an 84-acre (340,000 m2) science museum located in Durham, North Carolina, United States. The museum campus lies in the midst of the Northgate Park neighborhood, bisected by Murray Avenue. The main building is located on the north tract, along with the Butterfly House, Hideaway Woods, Farmyard, Sprout Cafe, Explore the Wild nature park, Catch the Wind, Dinosaur Trail, and the 2 ft (610 mm) narrow gauge Ellerbe Creek C.P. Huntington train ride. The museum features both indoor and outdoor learning environments. The southern tract is now largely devoted to parking and administrative buildings, including a parking deck completed in early 2018. Prior to the construction of the new main building in the early 1990s, the structures on the southern tract contained the bulk of the museum's exhibit space.
History
Richard (Dick) Wescott played a major role in the development and growth of the Museum of Life and Science during his tenure as director. He began there as a volunteer, soon became the curator, and by 1970 had become executive director, although he continued to fill the role of curator as well. Over the years, both he and the museum flourished. By the early 1970s, when the name was changed to the NC Museum of Life and Science, the little green hut on Murray Avenue had grown into a complex with several buildings housing a wide range of collections, artifacts, models, and murals, highlighted through a number of permanent exhibits. With the support of local friends and board members like Carolyn London and the late Dr. Kenneth Hall and the building of new relationships with others, such as the late Louis Purnell, at the National Air and Space Museum and the Michael Collins, an Apollo 11 crew member, the museum continued to grow, building one of the finest collections of space memorabilia in the country. This exhibit featured a representation of the Apollo 15 flight and included one of only four extant Apollo Lunar Modules (LEM), as well as a one-of-a-kind walk through the entire process of launching a rocket, designed specifically for blind visitors. The museum also grew a significant collection of live animals and Dick began to collaborate with Jim Fowler and others, as they planned for the creation of an exhibit in and around the abandoned rock quarry across the street from the original complex. The narrow-gauge railroad, which remains operative, was the first step in building a unique exhibit of native species living in a natural habitat. Dinosaur Trail - more than twenty life-size models have resided along the banks of Ellerbee Creek, for some thirty years now - designed and constructed by Dick, with the help of a handful of volunteers and his ever-present "right hand," the late Willie Holloway, after a visit to the museum by the late Dr. Louis Leakey. In the late 1970s, he and Margie relocated to Augusta, Georgia. where he was director of the Augusta-Richmond County Museum for the next fifteen years.
Exhibits
Main Museum Building The two-story main building of the museum houses exhibits about weather, sound, math, health, building and engineering, and native North Carolina wildlife. The building also includes a play area for 6 years and younger children and a hands-on lab that does frequently rotating topics and activities.
The Farmyard The farmyard is home to a variety of farm animals including a donkey, goats, chickens, bulls, and pigs. The more recent additions to the farmyard are several alpacas. The farmyard offers guests the chance to see how zoos provide enrichment for animals as well as weekly up-close experiences guided by animal keepers. There are several other hands-on activities within the farmyard.
Hideaway Woods In 2015, the museum opened Hideaway Woods, a two-acre, nature discovery environment featuring eight tree houses, a flowing stream bed, and fanciful nature sculptures. The space also includes hammocks and an enclosed area for younger explorers. The play zones throughout this exhibit emphasize the importance of nature play.
Aerospace
The MLS has historically been most notable for its Aerospace exhibit, which focuses on the early NASA space program. Most of the artifacts on display are on long-term loan from the National Air and Space Museum. Many of these are significant Project Apollo-related artifacts, such as a Moon rock, Neil Armstrong's dosimeter, an Apollo Command Module test vehicle, a portion of an Apollo Lunar Rover, and a full-sized mock-up of a Lunar Module. The MLS came into possession of these artifacts through the influence of James E. Webb, the second NASA administrator and a native of North Carolina. Instrumental in the acquisition of the NASA artifacts was Richard Wescott, the executive director of the museum at the time. Aerospace includes a hands-on aerodynamics space, Launch Lab, that features paper airplane launchers and wind tunnels.
BioQuest In the mid-1990s, the museum announced a four-phase expansion to their outdoor exhibits they called BioQuest. BioQuest included the construction of new exhibit spaces: Magic Wings Butterfly House, Explore the Wild, Catch the Wind, and the Dinosaur Trail and Dig.
Magic Wings Butterfly House A major attraction at MLS is the three-story glass Magic Wings Butterfly House, which opened April 17, 1999, a butterfly zoo and tropical conservatory featuring a community of several hundred tropical butterflies representing dozens of species, as well as an array of tropical plants. The Bayer CropScience Insectarium, located in the Magic Wings Butterfly House, features exotic insects from around the world. This exhibit was the first of the BioQuest expansion to be completed.
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