At the Franklin, spectacle science

Take an orbit around the Franklin Institute these days, and you might learn something about pirates.

In the newly renovated space previously known as Stearns Auditorium, where restored Thornton Oakley murals have been joined by new high-tech light and sound equipment, there's a 3-D movie about U2, shot during one of the band's stadium concerts.

And beware the roving crew of storm troopers that appears periodically to drum up attention for a visiting Star Wars exhibition.

What does any of this have to do with science? Very little. But everyone seems to be having a very good time.

It would be hard to ignore the fact that the Franklin Institute still is all about science, though in theory anyone lured by special shows on Star Wars, King Tut, pirates or the Titanic could completely miss nearby displays about polarization of light or the route blood takes through the heart and lungs.

But Philadelphia's Franklin Institute Science Museum - whose roots go back to the 1824 formation of the first U.S. organization for mechanical engineers and professional draftsmen - is morphing in ways so profound that it has even changed its name.

No more Museum, Institute, or even Science. Now it's just The Franklin (at least while they try on the name for the next year).

The target audience is changing, too. "Body Worlds," a traveling show that brought visitors face-to-face with preserved cadavers, was one in a series of exhibitions aimed at expanding the museum's traditional draw.

"People see us as a place where parents bring children, and that's fine, but that's not enough," says Dennis M. Wint, president and chief executive officer since 1995. "What the major exhibitions did is they brought in a new audience. In the case of 'Body Worlds,' it was date night on Friday nights. It's not an or conversation; it's really an and conversation.

"We're going to continue our work with children and school groups, but we're also going to add much more programming for adults, and for communities that have not felt comfortable coming here."

Wint says the Franklin will be a "fundamentally different" institution by 2012, when various projects are realized.

"The walls are the same, but practically everything inside and outside will be different - everything from the exhibits and programs to the Web site to the awards program," he says.

The changes, big as they may be, are not unprecedented. The Franklin has constantly adapted its mission and the ways it engages the public. In 1990, it opened the $72.5 million Futures Center, which included a wraparound Imax theater meant to attract adults in the evening with a Rolling Stones film. And since 1999 it has rolled out eight new exhibits as part of a $62 million capital campaign.

But the institute ended the Futures Center funding campaign more than $17 million in the red, a debt that costs about $1.3 million in payments each year. And the attendance "bounce" didn't last long.

To help pay the bills, the Franklin has a new programming formula: Underwrite general operating costs by bringing in big audiences for high-admission blockbusters.

The strategy is working. Last year's "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" brought in 1.3 million visitors, ranking it in Art Newspaper as the most-attended 2007 show worldwide. (Its daily average of 5,375 visitors came in ninth worldwide.)

Officials won't say how much "Tut" netted, but it was profitable enough to whet the Franklin's appetite for more.

Such shows are a national trend at larger museums, says Bonnie VanDorn, executive director of the Association of Science-Technology Centers.

"The art world has always had blockbuster shows, but there have not been nearly as many in science museums until recently," she says.

Some of these shows, typically organized by outside corporations, are the perfect marriage of science and mass marketing. For example, "Body Worlds" - real bodies with circulatory and digestive systems preserved to reveal structure and function - drew more than 600,000 visitors in seven months in 2005-06. Sensational? Yes. But science, too.

Others have a more tangential connection to the traditional mission. An upcoming show from Disney (among other partners), The Chronicles of Narnia, may or may not make a convincing connection with science. But it will help offset costs for "Galileo, Medici and the Age of Astronomy," a prestigious exhibition the Franklin will export from Italy next March.

A science museum dabbling in the dark art of mass appeal has raised eyebrows in some quarters of the Franklin. Its leaders, however, have confidence in the strategy.

Derrick H. Pitts, veteran chief astronomer, falls squarely in the pure-science camp, but he points out that that mission is possible only if you have the money.

"Blockbuster shows make it possible for us to turn around and create permanent exhibits that relate to our mission," he says.

Karen Corbin, who oversees marketing, programs and business development, says the new programming model can sustain a million annual visitors, substantially more than many recent years.

"We think that what's different today is we can program to a number of different audiences of all ages and interests," she says.

Indeed, the visitor often ages with the day: school groups and parents pushing strollers in the morning, high school students in the afternoon, and adults attending a movie or special exhibition in the evening.

To Pitts' point about mission and money, the Franklin is about to embark on its first ambitious expansion since the Future Center, doubling its space for blockbusters.

And it is about to grow a big brain. A new wing south of the statue in Franklin Hall will be built in an area now housing air-conditioning equipment. The space will be home to a major display illustrating the functioning of the brain in the way the giant heart does for that organ.

Construction is to start in spring 2010, with opening in fall 2012. The projected $32.5 million cost is part of a $60 million capital campaign.

The brain, like programs and lectures on race, fit a new emphasis on tying programs and events to larger discussions going on outside the museum.

"There's so much rapid-paced research on the human brain that is emerging - everything from how you keep it healthy, to how it's wired, to disease - we felt this was a fertile area for research," Wint says.

"In the same way that an art museum that sees itself as encyclopedic has to show contemporary art," Franklin board chair Marsha R. Perelman says, "it's important for us to show what's important about the past as well as things more contemporary with the lives of our visitors."

In pure science, the museum has maintained and even strengthened programs. The Joel N. Bloom Observatory has a new glass roof and upgraded telescopes to bring thousands more heavenly bodies into view despite urban glare. The planetarium has been rebuilt. A reconfigured aviation exhibit allows a much more participatory experience. Improvements to the Imax theater are planned. Senior curator of collections John Alviti continues to put on display some of the Franklin's tens of thousands of historic artifacts in halls and landings.

The Franklin also is a partner of a new public magnet school, the Science Leadership Academy. On Wednesdays, high schoolers doff their lab coats and walk a few blocks to the Franklin for workshops with staff. When scholars visit the museum, they spend the morning with the SLA ninth graders.

The Franklin does not offer support for operating costs - the Philadelphia School District provides most of the funding - but contact between school and museum is much greater than the typical partnership, principal Chris Lehmann says.

"The museum is very much a hands-on, learn-by-doing experience," he says, "and we bring that ethos to the school."

Close contact with students gives the Franklin a valuable test group for gauging the interest of teenagers, Wint says.

And because each student is automatically a member of the Franklin, membership numbers get a boost - now, and maybe years down the road when graduates introduce their own children to the secret life of the heart and the brain.