The Nature of Color exhibit explores color on the Natural History Museum of Utah. The museum is the exhibit’s first cease on a nationwide tour. (Natural History Museum of Utah)
Estimated learn time: 4-5 minutes
SALT LAKE CITY — For a second, you may expertise a world with out color.
When you enter the Natural History Museum of Utah’s latest exhibit — The Nature of Color — all colours are changed with grey. Your clothes, pores and skin and hair will fade into grey earlier than slowly returning to their pure hue. An overhead sodium vapor gentle emits a single frequency, stopping the complete spectrum of color.
“It’s an attention-grabbing technique to begin an exhibit as a result of right here we’re going to do a deep dive into color and the way it impacts actually each facet of our lives. You cease for a minute and take into consideration what if we did not have it,” stated Claire Davis, the museum’s exhibit designer and preparator.
The Nature of Color is an immersive exhibit featured on the Natural History Museum of Utah, its first cease on a nationwide observe.
“One problem of being the primary venue on the touring tour is that there is a lot of issues to determine. We’re kind of a prototype, truly; and to be engaged in that course of — partnering up with the American Museum of Natural History and determining what we are able to do to make this higher with them — is admittedly cool,” stated Tim Lee, director of reveals. “It simply reveals how we respect them they usually actually respect our enter, as effectively.”
The interactive and immersive exhibit offers alternatives to actually play, along with your whole physique, Lee stated. The nature of the exhibit, whereas enjoyable, is also backed by analysis.
“People be taught higher and retain data extra once they’re extra engaged. Whole-body experiences actually have a large influence on how folks retain data, and so offering these alternatives for folks to be taught in that method is unquestionably a precedence for us as a museum,” Davis stated. “But that is positively been type of a hallmark of our museum, is at all times ensuring that there are alternatives to really interact and probably be hands-on.”
The exhibit explores how color is made, the emotion of color, the symbolism of colours all through cultures and historical past, the use of color in nature, and the science behind the spectrum of colours.
The interactive station exploring the emotion of color is one of Lee’s favourite options of the exhibit.
“I feel this one I actually appreciated as a result of over the past two years has been actually tough for us. So this exhibit does deliver a playfulness and pleasure, a celebration of color and of life and likewise being in contact along with your feelings,” he stated. “You get to kind of share and have a good time and acknowledge that we’ve these variations on this specific interactive.”
As immersive and interactive experiences have gained recognition lately, the idea is not new.
“Something I like about this specific exhibit — the place immersive experiences are very talked-about proper now — this exhibit is bringing within the objects, the science, the textual content, all of these conventional issues that we’ve in museums and incorporating it into that immersive expertise,” Davis stated. “So you each get the enjoyable of being in numerous environments, but additionally you continue to get all of these basic museum experiences on the identical time.”
Part of experiencing totally different environments contains bringing the skin world in. To exhibit nature’s varied makes use of of colours, the museum options dwell animals — together with a gecko that Davis stated can “play an Academy Award-winning function as a stick.”
Also built-in into the exhibit have been nods to Utah. One nod included changing an Auburn University soccer uniform with a University of Utah uniform. Another contains a show case that includes the whole spectrum of color and the range of the Natural History Museum of Utah’s collections. Integrating the museum’s assortment in a localized piece was vital to workers, Davis stated.
“In addition to being a venue for leisure and training, this actually is an establishment that safeguards a priceless assortment of objects. Their entire function is to protect them for the remaining of time,” Davis stated.
“It’s the way in which we dwell, and it is immersed in each half of our day-to-day lives. I feel we’re impressed by nature — we’re surrounded by it — and impressed by our tradition. We’re a hub. We are a vacation spot for a global crowd that finds magnificence in our ecosystems and environments,” Lee added.
The exhibit will probably be open till Aug. 14. To buy tickets, go to nhmu.utah.edu.
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