Science Museum Director Making Strides Toward Change

Lots of bodies are paying top dollar to see the Body Worlds exhibit at the Buffalo Science Museum, apparently thinking nothing of plunking down up to $22 for admission.

"We're averaging now about 2,250 (visitors) per day which is breaking records for the museum. We've never had that average daily record before," said Museum Director Mark Mortenson.

The show featuring plasticized cadavers is the star attraction, but some are crediting Mortenson's efforts to bring it here as another important step in the ongoing effort to have people re-discover the museum.

Mortenson took this job two years ago without ever having worked in a museum. Rather than having held some prior curator's post, he previously worked for the Walt Disney Corporation in its entertainment division.

"Among the members of the committee who interviewed me, that was a topic of conversation," Mortenson recalled. "They wanted somebody of a different background to take over the helm of the Museum of Science."

Once getting the job Mortenson set about making it more than a place where you go to look at old rocks.

"Bringing people into the museum and making sure its a destination is the vision I have for the museum. Think of it as
an entertainment experience through knowledge."

Along those lines of thought Body Worlds is precisely the sort of exhibit he's talking about to spike attendance.

However Mortenson also admits they've had some help from an unlikely source, ... the weather. Because while this summer's sogginess has been a bust for many other activities, it's been a boom for the museum.

"Bad weather is absolutely a boom for us here. In fact, on Thursday, with the thunderstorms, we had we actually had people lined up around the building for tickets."

Mortenson, it seems, is just getting started.

"What we're doing is dramatically changing the experience here," he told WGRZ-TV.

Mortenson told 2 On Your Side those plans include negotiations to bring in the popular Our Body from Sesame Street exhibit in January 2010, as well as the return of a popular display of robotic dinosaurs next summer.

"We really have a very ambitious plan ahead of us," he said.