Space Race

Mike Day was taking his four-year-old nephew to a Twins game when he heard a familiar tune being hummed from the back seat.

“Was it ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm’? No,” the Science museum of Minnesota’s senior vice president says with a chuckle. “It was the theme from Star Wars—totally unprovoked.”

The little episode only confirmed what Day already knew—that when Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination docks at the museum for its last U.S. stop, fans will descend from all corners of the galaxy to glimpse Princess Leia’s white dress, Darth Vader’s ominous suit, Luke’s Landspeeder, and other intergalactic gems.

“Star Wars is so deep in our culture—the movies, the music, the mythology,” Day says. “It really is one of the best stories in our pop culture.”

The exhibit was developed by Boston’s Museum of Science, with the help of the seven-member Science Museum Exhibition Collaborative (of which SMM is a part) and Lucasfilm, which, according to Day, “jumped at the chance” to help create the exhibit. The collaborative was looking for something to help encourage “technological literacy” among the masses and explore how ideas turn into real technology. What better way to reach the masses, they figured, than through a franchise that boasts six of the top thirty grossing movies of all time

“There has to be a common ground, a hand-hold on the familiar to explore the technology of the future,” Day says. “These movies span three generations, so it’s perfect.”

There is much more to the exhibit than a few priceless Hollywood props and C–3PO replicas, however. It features twenty interactive components and explores two key areas of technological advancement—robotics and transportation.

Take the Landspeeder portion of the exhibit: After ogling the actual machine used to zoom Mark Hamill through the opening shots of the original movie, guests get the chance to ride a personal levitation device (like a hovercraft) before being led to a robot lab where they build magnetic levitation devices and explore a “city of the future.”

“It really is for all ages and for all people,” Day says. “Even if they don’t know a Wookie from a droid.”

The exhibit should be a welcome change for the US Bank Great Hall, the museum’s multifunctional and flexible 20,000-square-foot exhibition space. It has been a busy couple of years for the room, which has seen the groundbreaking and controversial exhibit Body Worlds, premiered the dialogue-inducing Race, held priceless artifacts from A Day in Pompeii, and housed an exhibit from the National Holocaust Museum that explored how the study of eugenics in Germany led to the Holocaust. With Star Wars, the tone inside the hall will be palpably lighter—but the exhibit is no less important for the museum.

“It is a major coup for us to have this exhibit—just as it was to have Pompeii. They don’t let those priceless artifacts go just anywhere,” Day says, adding that some future projects at the museum may be even larger.

Whatever comes next, the staff will have to deal with the excitement surrounding Star Wars first. More than 12,000 fans have signed up online to be part of the exhibit’s “virtual waiting line”—a first for the SMM—that allows people to buy tickets before they are available to the general public in mid-May. And during the shorter-than-normal ten-week run, the exhibit will be open fifteen hours a day to give the expected 300,000 people the chance to see the “best collection of light sabers you’ll ever see.”

The long hours should be perfect practice for the SMM staff, which will be on hand to help transform the museum daily during the Republican National Convention—a galaxy far, far away in its own right—when the museum closes to cater to convention events. Full speed ahead seems to be the museum’s motto. Says Day: “It’s an exciting time.” Open June 13. Science Museum of Minnesota, 120 Kellogg Blvd. W., St. Paul, 651-221-9444