California Science Center
Exposition Park
September 6, 2015
We took Margaret to the California Science Center, to see the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit, on its final weekend there. The Science Center is in Exposition Park, as is the Natural History Museum, near USC and the Coliseum. Exposition Park as at the outer range of as far as we like to drive when we go up to see her, but we had been looking forward to this exhibit for months, and did not begrudge the extra driving.
Admission to the permanent galleries at the Science Center is free, but the center charges for special exhibitions and the IMAX theater. The Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit was separately ticketed, as was the companion IMAX movie, Jerusalem 3-D. We had purchased tickets online, and we were glad we did; the Scrolls exhibit was sold out that day.
We arrived early enough to have lunch before the movie. The café has expanded from what it was last time we visited. There is now a grill run by Trimana, and several other food court options as well. Service was quick, and the food was good.
We then went on to the IMAX theater, where Meredith’s sister Kathleen and our youngest daughter and her boyfriend all joined us. The movie had some stunning aerial footage of Jerusalem today, and interesting narration and interior shots of the various holy sites, Jewish, Christian, and Muslim. Good production values all around, and the film was narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch.
After we saw the movie, we had a gap until our timed entry to the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit. None of us had seen the retired space shuttle Endeavour, so we went over to the pavilion that houses it. That area is separately ticketed, but it was included with our tickets for the Dead Sea Scrolls so we were able to walk right in. (For visitors who are not purchasing IMAX or special exhibit admission, the museum charges $2 for admission to the Endeavour pavilion and requires timed entry tickets on the weekend, but not on weekdays.) The website gives information about Endeavour reservations. The first area has material about the history of the space shuttle missions generally and Endeavour in particular. There is a simulated Mission Control center with a rotating series of videos. Margaret and Meredith watched the video of the final launch of the Endeavour, while the rest of our group circulated around looking at other parts of the exhibit. We were all intrigued and amused by the zero gravity toilet, displayed in a glass case. There is a very interesting video of the final journey of the newly retired Endeavour, through the streets of Los Angeles to its new home. Then we went on in to see the shuttle itself; it is a quite impressive sight! Bob spoke with a volunteer who had samples of the various materials that make up different areas of the outer surface of the shuttle and was able to touch them. (Visitors are forbidden to touch the shuttle itself.)
From the space shuttle we went on to the third-floor special exhibition space. We still had a little time to spend before we could get in to the Dead Sea Scrolls, so we looked through the transportation exhibits on that floor.
The first part of the Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit consisted of a timeline, with representative artifacts spanning a broad time period of the history of what is now Israel, from prehistory until the founding of the modern state of Israel in 1948. Next there was a room with a short video describing the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls and explaining what the scrolls consist of. We then went into the main room. Fragments of the scrolls were displayed in a circular area in the center of the room under glass, with dim lighting to protect the fragments. Translations and explanations of each fragment were displayed next to the cases. Around the edge of the room were displayed a number of ancient artifacts contemporary to the Scrolls, such as pottery, glass, and mosaics.
Even with the timed entry, the room was crowded. The patrons around the central display moved slowly and made room for newcomers only grudgingly, and then we found that Margaret could not see the scroll fragments from her wheelchair. She was too weak to stand and look down at them as other visitors were doing, so we took turns showing her around the outer area of the main room instead. After that room, we passed through a small room with a stone which had fallen from near the southwestern corner of the Temple when the Romans destroyed it in A.D. 70. We found the experience quite moving, to actually see and touch a stone from the Temple. Paper and pen were there for visitors to write notes and leave them, as visitors do at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Nearby there was a video screen displaying a live feed from the Western Wall. We passed fairly quickly through the final room, which had some hands-on activities.
We finished our visit as we began it, down in the café, this time enjoying some coffee and chatting with the rest of the group before we all headed our separate ways home.
As noted above, admission to most of the science center is free. The permanent galleries include many hands-on activities and are popular with children. Parking is $10 per car and can be in short supply when the Coliseum is being used for a USC football game. Visitors are encouraged to use public transport, and our daughter and her boyfriend used the Metro. The permanent collections of the museum are adequately accessible for wheelchair patrons. We did find some access challenges on this visit though. When we first arrived, the main visitor elevator was out of service, so we had to wait in a long line to use the service elevator in a back hall. Then we found the layout of the Dead Sea scrolls display did not allow for good viewing of the Scrolls themselves from a wheelchair, as noted above. There was limited disability seating in the IMAX theater, and Meredith was only able to get a seat next to Margaret by asking another patron to move.