‘Origins’ exhibit closes in Wasilla; show will tour nationally

WASILLA — The curator of Origins: The Museum said attendance numbers over the past month have blown his expectations out of the water.

“Beyond our expectations by about five times, literally,” is how curator Joel Lampe describes those numbers. “This is a working town, so our Mondays through Fridays 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. would be slow just because people work, but after 4 p.m. we’d be very busy.”

The museum is in a former sporting goods store in the strip mall that once housed Shop Rite on the Parks Highway just west of Swanson Drive. It features things rarely seen in Alaska; full dinosaur skeletons, 1,000-year-old scrolls containing religious texts and the first English translation of the Bible.

Lampe said the museum is attempting something novel — housing religious artifacts side-by-side with scientific materials. The idea, he said, is to give visitors a chance to view the evidence on both sides and draw their own conclusions.

“This has never been attempted. This has never been tried,” he said.

If you’re reading this and haven’t been there yet, you have until the end of the day. After Sunday, the museum will close. Lampe said he and the owner of all of the relics on display — Big Lake oncologist Dr. Larry Lawson — have set up a schedule for the museum to tour the country.

In April it will be set up in Colorado Springs, in fall 2011 it will be in Columbus, Ga., in the winter of 2012 it will be in Kansas City, in fall 2012 it will be in San Jose, Calif., and in spring 2013 it will be in Olympia, Wash.

Asked if there’s a reason none of those cities are major metropolises, if maybe the museum is aiming at mid-range or small markets, Lampe said that’s part of the reason.

“It’s not that we’re shooting for (that), it’s that we’re keeping it to where we can find space that’s available for a long period of time,” Lampe said. In a place like Seattle, for instance, “there’s no way that we could get a space that would last that long.”

Lampe said that the experience in Wasilla was something of a test run to gauge if there is interest in this sort of a museum. He said insurance purchased for the show stipulated he was to stay very close to the exhibits at all times, thus there wasn’t a day the museum was open he wasn’t there.

That the museum drew in so many groups from schools and churches was a pleasant surprise. The kids, obviously, were most interested in the dinosaurs. Lampe shared a picture taken while he spoke with one school group of 8-year-old kids about dinosaurs. Every child is rapt. Nearly every one of them is raising a hand to ask questions.

He said the giant megalodon jaw was the most popular of the bones. The Wycliffe manuscript was the most popular religious text and the Isaac Newton display was the most popular part of the science exhibits.

The feedback he got was positive, with one exception.

“People were overwhelmed I have had one complaint about this entire exhibit,” he said. “I had one person actually approach me and say, ‘I can’t believe you would have Charles Darwin in here.’”

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.