‘The best exhibit I’ve seen in a long time’: Exploration Place opens health exhibit

In the few days before it officially opened April 20, Exploration Place’s new permanent exhibition that promotes health education and jobs was already reaching fever pitch.

“This is the best exhibit I’ve seen in a long time,” said Michelle Skidmore, a Wichita grandmother who seemed just as excited as her granddaughters, ages 4 and 6, to try out the arcade-style games that convey facts and messages about health.

Just moments earlier, Skidmore and the two girls had taken a ride on the emotional rollercoaster game, shimmying and shaking in their seats as emojis depicting different emotions floated across the screen that also projected the twists and turns of a roller coaster ride.

“Oh my gosh,” exclaimed 6-year-old Charlotte on one of the turns.

Elsewhere, a dad and daughter laughed as they tried out the whoopie-type cushions in the fart chair display, while 8-year-old Lincoln Rose, visiting from Tulsa with his family, proclaimed, “I mostly killed the flu” after playing the whack-a-virus game.

Even Exploration Place president Adam Smith was impressed with the reactions from the crowds of kids and families who visited the exhibition on the Monday, when school was out, before the official opening.

“I got to thinking, ‘Wow, this is popular and it’s going to get some hammer,’” Smith said.

Health Inside Out is Exploration Place’s first permanent display to open at the science and discovery center since its award-winning Design Build Fly exhibit, which is heavily based on Wichita’s distinction as the Air Capital of the World, opened in 2017.

More than three years in the making, the $1.5 million exhibition consists of 16 arcade-style games located in the attraction’s 3,500-square-foot Great Hall. That’s the first exhibition space visitors encounter when crossing the bridge-like walkway from the lobby entrance.

Wooden, tabletop brainteaser puzzles and a giant mouth display had previously occupied the space. While the giant mouth/oral health display is staying since it fits in with the new exhibition’s theme, the brainteaser tables will find homes elsewhere in Exploration Place, said Laura Roddy, chief advancement officer.

The new displays are big, bright, highly interactive and noisy, providing a familiar game-like concept with an educational purpose. (It gets loud enough that those noises coming from the four fart cushions can remain a little more private.)

At the entrance, the animated fortune-telling Dr. Doktar dispenses medical facts like “Today you will breathe 17,000 times” and “Today you will touch your face 360 times.”

Wooden skee balls roll and crash as players accumulate points based on a nutrition theme, while the buzzing of an extraction gone wrong rings out from an oversized Operation game.

An air ambulance helicopter emits chopper noises while visitors sit in the cockpit or take a back seat to attend to the child-sized mannequin patient being airlifted.

And if visitors really want to get loud, they can step into a booth to measure their screams and shouts in decibels.

‘All killer, no filler’

Smith, the science center’s top executive, thinks Exploration Place has created a stellar exhibition — the best he’s seen in his 34 years of working in museums, said the 50-year-old.

He likened the process of creating the exhibit to a band making an album.

“In this exhibit, we have 16 displays. If I have an album, I’m looking for maybe five or six hits on the album, but when I look at this exhibit it’s all killer, no filler.”

Following the success and local tie-in of the Design Build Fly exhibition, Exploration Place soon started considering its next permanent exhibit.

“Exploration Place established health was a good topic. it’s pretty standard since there’s science underlying and there’s always a need for community health,” said Smith, who joined the staff in late 2019.

An advisory group comprising officials from the Sedgwick County Health Department, Wichita State’s College of Health Professions, Wesley and Ascension Via Christi health systems, the Medical Society of Sedgwick County, Kansas Health Foundation, the Greater Wichita YMCA and the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita helped Exploration Place develop the exhibition’s concept and content, Roddy said.

On the recommendation of KUSM-Wichita, which is the exhibition’s presenting sponsor, Exploration Place added what it’s calling a workforce development component.

That took shape as a wheel of fortune game. Make the wheel spin and when the pointer lands on a career description a short video of a local health care professional is played. Along with the familiar jobs of doctors and nurses, the wheel also includes careers like a biomedical engineer, an administrator, an epidemiologist, pharmacist and audiologist. In all, 20 jobs are featured.

The air ambulance display was a change in the exhibition, as well. Initially, the exhibition was to include an ambulance but when Exploration Place hosted a meeting for local Bell Textron officials, “almost cheekily I asked, ‘you don’t happen to have an old EMS helicopter lying around,’” Smith said.

A few days later he got a positive response.

To create the displays, Exploration Place worked with the design-build studio Moey, founded by Molly Lenore and Joey Stein in 2003. Lenore and Stein met while working at the American Museum of Natural History, helping create immersive, technology-driven educational experiences for the museum’s visitors.

Moey not only tests, designs, fabricates and installs exhibits for museums and attractions, but it also does research and development work with major technology companies, including Google, AT&T and Bell Labs.

Taking a short break from installing the exhibition before it opened, Lenore talked about what makes an exhibition successful.

“You need to create interest in the space so they’ll go talk about it with their families, their friends, their teachers and look up things on the internet,” she said.

In creating some of the Exploration Place displays, they had to take certain conditions into account.

For example, the body fluids display is positioned in a windowed alcove. To create the suspended-from-the-ceiling beakers representing body fluids like blood, ear wax and eye jelly, the designers needed to ensure the colored contents wouldn’t deteriorate or fade because of sun exposure.

Since Moey can remotely monitor the displays, it can track visitor usage and interaction.

While kids were having plenty of fun in its opening days, reactions like those of Skidmore indicate adults will likely enjoy the exhibition as well.

“I absolutely love it. These kinds of carnival games are fun,” said Skidmore as she stepped up to the mat in front of the skeleton mirror that mimicked her poses.

Exploration Place exhibition: Health Inside Out

What: a new permanent exhibition at Exploration Place, the first since 2017, that focuses on health

Where: Exploration Place, 300 N. McLean Blvd.

Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays-Wednesdays, Fridays-Saturdays; 10 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursdays

Admission: $11.50 ages 12-64, $10 for ages 65 and older, $8 ages 3-11, free for ages 2 and younger and members

More info: 316-660-0600, exploration.org