“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.
The museum is relatively modest in size but encompasses quite a bit of the world and chunks of the universe. It has its glitzy representations of chromosomes, its satellite views of the Earth and lots of interactive, “things-to-do” aspects.
You won’t find any stuffed mastodons here, but you will find a fiberglass cow that illustrates the role of methane in global warming. You’ll get to make climate decisions — to raise the water level in the Chesapeake Bay, for instance — or “feel” how hot the weather is getting.
You’ll get to “see” DNA and explore its uses, as well as exhibits on the relative DNA complexities of human beings, chimpanzees and fruit flies.
Visitors to the exhibit on “The Wonders of Science” are greeted by a photographic image of Albert Einstein and a quotation from his 1936 essay “Physics and Reality,” in which he marvels at the world: “The fact that it is comprehensible is a miracle.”
As they walk in a bit farther, they’ll experience complicated and controversial subjects that museum organizers trust will be made comprehensible, perhaps miraculously so.
“We looked at many science museums and institutions around the country before deciding what we wanted in terms of what we could do, what we wanted the museum to be,” Museum Director Patrice Legro says.
“We have committees of expert advisers on each exhibition. We had the input and the resources of the academy. Part of it comes from the academies’ continued and great interest in the importance of science education,” she says.
“I think when you come to this museum, it’s not just an outing, a form of entertainment, nor is it meant to be a mall experience. It is about education, but it’s also about doing. It’s about the application of science in our daily lives.”
The $30 million museum features three exhibitions. One of them, “The Wonders of Science,” is permanent. The other two — “Global Warming Facts and Our Future” and “Putting DNA to Work” — are here for two years before traveling to other museums across the country.
All are meant to show how science infuses every aspect of our day-to-day lives. That’s why there is an exhibition about climate, which deals with the hot-button issue of global warming, and one about DNA and its ramifications — from criminal cases to disease identification to crop enhancement and modification, not to mention its role in FBI investigations.
The permanent exhibit, “The Wonders of Science,” begins with an introductory film that asks a basic question: “What is the universe made of?”
The film explores notions of how scientists study natural phenomena with the naked eye, the telescope and the microscope, suggesting that the rules that govern life at its most minuscule are similar to the rules that shape how stars and galaxies behave.
More detailed and interactive kiosks allow visitors to manipulate images, such as, for example, satellite images of the Earth at night.
While it’s obviously a lot of fun to literally tilt the world with a really big mouse, the images are photographic overlays of the Earth at night 10 years ago and today, allowing views of industrial growth and population growth, and the differences between industrial and commercial activity among states, regions and countries.
Here you can plot how, in 10 years, the population in a city like Atlanta increasingly has moved outward. Here too, you can extrapolate global, foreign-policy, and social implications from two sets of images: the brightly lighted reds and yellows of South Korea and the dark void of North Korea, indicating just how large the gap between North and South Korea is in terms of industrial and commercial activity.
“Global Warming Facts & Our Future” explores the issues of Earth’s climatic changes and the implications for the planet’s future based on factual material and scientific reports.
“Putting DNA to Work” is a true exploration of DNA sequencing and allows a look at a real-time representation of DNA replication.
Both of the temporary exhibits allow for interaction and are chock-full of videos and monitors, graphics and projections. They come alive before the eyes and require a longer than five-second attention span.
Here you can trace the retreats of glaciers, the rise and fall of temperatures — especially the warming during the past century, where the temperature rise can be traced with a sliding plasma screen. On another plasma screen, one can follow models for what the climate might be in the next century. The models were created by the National Center for Atmospheric Research and the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory.
If that sounds daunting, it doesn’t have to be. There’s also Bessy the Cow, a fiberglass bovine used to show that cows are among the top emitters of methane gas, one of the major causes of greenhouse warming.
The gradual warming of the planet also will lead to a projected rise in the sea levels of the world, and here, if you’re in a destructive mood, you can flood the entire Chesapeake Bay in an interactive display.
The exhibition isn’t just about the dire warnings of possible global catastrophe, nor does it give all the answers. It asks questions, and lets you decide. What, in short, are Americans willing to give up in terms of comfort and cars and other aspects of our lives? Surprise: There are no easy answers.
“Putting DNA to Work” isn’t easy, either, but is endlessly fascinating, from its modish, precise and cool representations of DNA strands to the way the whole exhibition is a kind of exploration.
If the mapping of the DNA code is seen as a monumental achievement, it’s nonetheless probably Greek to most people. In the Koshland Museum, you run into the wonder of comprehension. Not that you might necessarily figure out the whole lettered and matching system that drives DNA, but you’ll get a glimpse of its uses and, just in passing, the humbling notion that humans are not so different from monkeys, squirrels or fruit flies, for that matter.
Here, if you can find the matching DNA codes, you can pair suspects with DNA found at imaginary crime scenes. You can see how corn is altered naturally or engineered. You can learn that DNA helped scientists discover and identify SARS and therefore contain it quickly.
“You can see, on a single glass slide, 11,000 DNA virus sequences,” says Erika Shugart, 31, a molecular biologist who is the museum’s online media and education director. “Using that, virologists were able to identify the family of viruses to which the SARS virus belonged.
“To me, this allows me to work in the education aspects of science a lot more,” Ms. Shugart says. “I love showing people around here. This makes something as complicated as DNA real to people.”
The exhibitions and the displays resemble a kind of arcade in which very little is wasted and everything is explained. While they are artfully laid out, they are, in retrospect, bits and pieces of a familiar world. You won’t find the bones of Galileo here, the parchment of Archimedes or a rudimentary telescope.
What you’ll find, when you touch a warming copper globe, pick out the right strand of matching DNA or see the lights of our cities change over 10 years’ time, is yesterday’s, today’s and tomorrow’s headlines.
All of the content in the Koshland Museum comes from the stream of reports originating with the National Academies of Science, which includes the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the Institute of Medicine and the National Research Council.
The academies, formed at the instigation of President Lincoln in 1863, produce more than 200 studies every year. Academy studies have led to such groundbreaking initiatives as the Human Genome Project — hence the DNA expertise — the National Standards for Science Education and the FDA Nutritional Guidelines.
“The input of the museum’s scientific advisers was crucial to explaining complex topics in clear and concise ways while maintaining the accuracy of the science presented,” says Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences.
“The museum is breaking new ground for the national academies by taking written reports that are produced for specialists and transforming them into visual and interactive exhibits meant for a much broader public audience.”
The idea for a museum came about in the wake of Mr. Koshland’s loss of his wife, Marian Elliott Koshland, a noted expert in immunology and molecular biology.
“When I lost my dear wife of 52 years in 1997, I was devastated,” Mr. Koshland, a renowned biochemist and professor at the University of California at Berkeley, says.
“’Bunny,’ that’s what I called her, and I were both members of the academies, and I thought of something that she would do. I laid out the idea for a museum based in first-rate science that would involve education, that would be about science and its place and functioning in society, in our world. That was the challenge.”
Mr. Koshland gave an endowment of $25 million to the museum.
“I wanted this to be for people who were curious,” he says. “You know, a good scientist is driven by curiosity. They want to know what makes things tick, what drives the engine, how did the moon get there, how does gravity work.”
Mr. Koshland speaks with great affection of his wife.
“Bunny would have loved this; I know that. It’s a gift — for her, as far as I’m concerned. She was a great scientist and teacher. You know, she was the person at any meeting who wouldn’t be afraid to say, ’Well, the emperor has no clothes.’ She was absolutely fearless.”
WHAT: The Marian Koshland Science Museum of the National Academy of Sciences
WHERE: Sixth and E streets NW
WHEN: Grand opening public ceremony 10 a.m. April 23. Regular hours 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily except Tuesdays. Also closed Thanksgiving Day, Christmas Day, New Year’s Day.
TICKETS: Adults $5, seniors and military with ID $3, students with ID $3, children 5 to 18 $3. (The museum is best enjoyed by visitors ages 13 and older)
METRO: Gallery Place/Chinatown (Red, Yellow, Green lines); Judiciary Square (Red Line)
INFORMATION: 202/334-1201 or www.koshland-science-museum.org
Koshland surrounded by places of art, knowledge, entertainment
When the new Marian Koshland Science Museum opens to the general public April 23, it will be a cultural addition to a fast-growing downtown area that is rich — and getting richer — in museums and arts and performance centers. Here’s a sampling of current and future downtown museums and performance venues.
Museums
• 801 K St. NW (between Seventh and Ninth streets NW, at Mount Vernon Square). Opened last year, this museum, with its gateways to the District, offers revealing local history and permanent and rotating exhibitions and includes the headquarters of the Washington Historical Society. 202/383-1800.
• Flashpoint: 916 G St. NW. A multipurpose cultural and fine-arts space for emerging artists and cultural organizations, it includes a major gallery, the Mead Theater Lab, a dance studio and offices. 202/661-7582.
• The International Spy Museum: 800 F St. NW. The new kid and hit on the block. A whiz-bang history of espionage, it’s interactive and full of videos and hands-on exhibits, with lines almost every day. 202/393-7798.
• The National Building Museum: 401 F St. NW, at Judiciary Square. A premier celebration of design, architecture and history in an epic setting, a building designed by Montgomery Meigs and completed in 1887 to house the Pension Bureau. 202/272-2448.
• The National Law Enforcement Memorial: 605 E St. NW. A dignified, powerful memorial to law enforcement officers who died in the line of duty. It will be joined by a museum scheduled to open in 2008. 202/737-3213.
• The National Museum of Women in the Arts: 1250 New York Ave. NW. A celebration of women in the arts and art by women. 202/783-5000.
• The Newseum: Pennsylvania Avenue and Sixth Street NW. Scheduled to open late in 2006, this 531,000-square-foot interactive museum of news will have three times the exhibition space of the original facility in Arlington.
• The Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery: Eighth Street between F and G streets NW at Gallery Place. Both are housed in the 1867 Patent Office Building, which is still undergoing renovation and is scheduled to reopen July 4, 2006. 202/275-1500.
• The U.S. Navy Memorial and Heritage Center: 701 Pennsylvania Ave. NW. An outdoor memorial plus a small but fascinating museum for the military buff. 202/737-2300.
Theaters and performance arts
The E Street Cinema: 555 11th St. NW. New since January, this eight-screen luxury movie theater has specialized in first-run independent and foreign-language films, documentary features and classic revivals. 202/452-7672.
• Ford’s Theatre: 511 10th St. NW. An American theatrical institution with yearly performances of new productions as well as “A Christmas Carol,” it also includes a museum about the Lincoln assassination, which took place at the theater. 202/638-2941.
• The National Theatre: 1321 Pennsylvania Ave NW. A historical theater that features road shows of hit musicals, currently dark. 202/628-6161
• The Shakespeare Theatre: 450 Seventh St. NW, on the site of the old Lansburgh department store. The 451-seat theater, led by Artistic Director Michael Kahn, houses one of the nation’s top Shakespearean companies. To be joined in 2007 by an ambitious new second theater, the Sidney J. Harman Theatre, a flexible $77-million, 800-seat theater on F Street between Sixth and Seventh streets NW. With the Shakespeare Theatre, the new space will become the Harman Center for the Arts, a venue for local, regional, national and international performing-arts companies in music, dance and other disciplines. 202/547-1122.
• The Warehouse Theater: 1021 Seventh St. NW, next to the new Convention Center at Mount Vernon Square. A multipurpose space, it includes the Warehouse Theater, the Warehouse Next Door, the Warehouse 2nd Stage, and the Warehouse Gallery. Small spaces for new theater and performance, as well as new artists. 202/783-3933.
• The Warner Theatre: 13th and E streets NW. Once a showcase movie theater, it features short-run touring productions and pop performing stars in concert. 202/626-8270.
• The Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company: Currently staging at the Kennedy Center Film Theater and the DC Jewish Community Center, Washington’s 25-year-old cutting-edge theater company will open a new theater at Seventh and D streets NW during its 2004-2005 season. 202/289-2443.
Grand spaces
• MCI Center: 601 F St. NW. A state-of-the-art entertainment center that stages more than 200 sports, entertainment and cultural events each year. 202/628-3200.
• Washington Convention Center: 801 Mount Vernon Place NW. The largest building in the city, covering six city blocks, the new convention center is at the heart of the downtown makeover. 202/249-3000.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.