Science for ‘here and now’ interpreted for layman

“I feel as if we’ve embarked on a great adventure.” That’s the way scientist, teacher and museum founder Daniel Koshland Jr. describes the journey that has culminated in the creation of a museum named for his wife.

The Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences, a showcase for reports by the National Academies of Science and Engineering and the Institute of Medicine, opens to the public April 23 — even as technicians and museum professionals add finishing touches.

At Sixth and E streets NW, it is yet another addition to the ongoing revitalization of Washington’s downtown, a burst of development that has seen new museums and cultural institutions open, and more are in the works.

The Koshland occupies its own niche among the area’s museums. It consists of about 6,000 square feet carved out of the national academies’ Keck Center, a huge space for administrative offices, staff and clerical workers that covers roughly half a block from Fifth to Sixth streets.

In terms of physical size, capabilities and scope, the Koshland is somewhere between the City Museum and the glossy Spy Museum. And it’s unique.

“We’re not a museum of artifacts,” says Peter Schultz, the museum’s exhibits and public programs director. “We’re about the here and now and the scientific issues which affect our daily lives, which are being talked about in the media and which find their way into the popular culture.

“It’s definitely for folks who are interested in how things work, how science affects them. It’s not just bells and whistles. It’s geared toward adults and kids 13 and over, so it’s not a big theme-park, entertainment-oriented kind of museum.”

To anyone who thinks of science as impossibly difficult, dreadfully dry or daunting and best left to the professional scientists or the geeks among us, the Marian Koshland Science Museum will come as something of a surprise. The museum isn’t about history, it’s about now, and it’s about you and me.

A rounded, gleaming building that juts out softly on the street corner, the museum is surrounded by the past and present, as well as the future, of the new downtown area.

A block away on Sixth Street is the MCI Center, with its bold advertising. On Seventh and F streets NW you’ll find the condos of Terrell Place, on the former site of the Hecht’s department store. Also at Seventh and F NW is the Hotel Monaco, open for two years in the 1839 Tariff Building.

At 800 F St. NW is the new International Spy Museum. On another corner, at Seventh and D streets NW, is the development that will include, among residential and office units, the new site of the Woolly Mammoth Theatre.

At 450 Seventh St. NW is the Shakespeare Theatre at the Lansburgh, to be complemented by a second venue for the Shakespeare Theatre, the Sidney Harman Theatre at 650 F St. NW, which will be completed by 2007.

Still awaiting completion of renovations are the National Portrait Gallery at Eighth and F streets NW and the Smithsonian American Art Museum at Eighth and G streets NW, both housed in the historic 1867 Patent Office Building. Both will reopen in July 2006.

All that activity places the Koshland Science Museum into the hub of the new downtown, which is primed to become a tourist destination and a magnet for new residents.

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