Michigan Museum’s New Exhibit Turns a Room Into a Maple Forest for Kids

Soon, visitors walking into the lobby of the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum will quickly think they

are outside again.

Or that’s what it will look like, anyway, when the museum opens its new exhibit, Michigan Nature, at the end of the month. The exhibit is meant to introduce museum visitors to outdoor exploration.

“We have no outside space, so we’re doing it indoors,” says Mel Drumm, the museum’s executive director. “These kids live in a world every day that they are less and less connected to, and as a science and children’s and discovery museum, we wanted to help them make some connections.”

The small room, about 20 feet by 22 feet, will have the look, feel, and sound of a northern Michigan maple forest.

Custom photo murals with special backlighting on the walls will feature pictures of trees in autumn, with animals, such as white-tailed deer, chipmunks, and mourning doves scattered throughout. The ceiling will be painted to look like the sky through a canopy of trees, and recordings of actual animal sounds will play. The four corners of the room will have real tree trunks of different woodland species that visitors can touch, and there will be an aquarium with native fish and frogs.

$20,000 in Grants

To create the exhibit, Ann Arbor Hands-On received a total of $20,000 from a local foundation and from Hooked on Nature, a two-year-old California group dedicated to giving families outdoor experiences together. The museum is now looking for additional money to add new features to the room, such as an interactive sound station, where visitors could learn about different kinds of bird calls.

Mostly, though, the exhibit, which Mr. Drumm calls an “immersive discovery room,” is meant to encourage visitors to stop and think — there will be a sitting area that will probably include a park bench — and, even more important, to go outdoors when they have the chance.

“This should be thought of as the first stop,” Mr. Drumm says.

In conjunction with the exhibit, the museum plans to promote local parks, preserves, and forests and will offer information to visitors on how to visit them.