Fernbank Museum Sets Official Opening Date for All-New Children’s Exhibition, Fernbank NatureQuest

Fernbank Museum of Natural History has officially announced the grand opening date for its expansive new children’s exhibition, marking March 19, 2011, for the unveiling of Fernbank NatureQuest. The nearly 7,000-square-foot exhibition is one of the most significant and exciting additions to the Museum since the world’s largest dinosaurs moved into Fernbank’s Great Hall in 2001.

This all-new $8 million exhibition will offer Fernbank’s youngest visitors a different kind of museum experience, where children will be engaged through over 100 interactive encounters on a journey to explore an immersive, nature-inspired environment filled with live animals, hands-on learning, the inspiration to discover, and the thrill of following curiosity’s path.

“When we set out to design a new children’s exhibition over four years ago, our goal was to create an experience where visitors would be challenged, engaged and able to explore in ways that cultivate curiosity—just like real scientists,” said Fernbank’s President and CEO, Susan Neugent. “This was our opportunity to create a museum experience like no other, where children are part of the exhibition, not just observers. The sophisticated experiences in NatureQuest will inspire further investigation year after year.”

Fernbank NatureQuest provides an open-ended experience for visitors, where an unexplored world exists all around them. Inside the clubhouse, visitors can find exploration cards that offer tips on how to explore, where to look, and what to search for next, including suggestions for parents on how to investigate each habitat, special scavenger hunts for deeper explorations, and “ologist cards” that provide a directed investigation of the exhibition through the eyes of different scientists, such as an archaeologist, geologist, a zoologist, a marine biologist, and others.

For more information, visit Fernbank Museum of Natural History.