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At some museums, you're now Exhibit A

To draw fresh crowds, installations offer hands-on interactivity that turns visitors into spies or CSI investigators.

from the October 19, 2007 edition

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Attractions such as Tomb or the International Spy Museum are often explicit about their mission to entertain, to place a visitor inside a popular movie or television show. But marrying pop culture and education can be more complicated for a science museum.

At CSI: The Experience, that means capitalizing on the way TV has made forensic science sexy, but without losing the instructive component. Museumgoers first gather in a room where they are briefed over video by Gil Grissom (William Petersen), the fictional head investigator on the CSI television show, along with Ron Singer, an actual forensic scientist. They then split off to solve one of three crime-scene scenarios.

"The challenge is to make sure you dont cross that line from education and artifacts to entertainment, says Geoffrey Curley, manager of temporary exhibits at Chicagos Museum of Science and Industry, which hosted the CSI exhibit before it traveled to Boston. Thats the fine line that museums are going to be walking down: Whats meant for a museum, and what's meant for an amusement park.

In Boston, the Museum of Science has added volunteers who give further explanations and answer questions about fingerprinting, forensic anthropology, and DNA evidence.

"Operation Spy is more unabashed in placing the visitor inside the narrative – in this case a scenario based loosely on the story of A.Q. Khan. Considered the father of Pakistans nuclear weapons program, Khan was caught selling nuclear secrets to other countries.

After our hour is up, a U.S. intelligence director informs our group by video that weve scored a 3 out of 5. Were not sure what we should have done differently for a better outcome. But Cowboy, aka. Austin Campbell, visiting from Memphis with his parents, is satisfied. It was better than I was expecting, he says. It looked real. It felt like you were a spy."

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