Highlands Museum and Discovery Center
The Highlands Museum and Discovery Center lives in a five-story downtown building that once housed Ashland’s most fashionable department store, a fitting location for a museum with a sizable collection of vintage clothing. It pulls those pieces out of the closet regularly and fashions them into exhibits like the recent “Keeping Warm: Coats, Quilts and Coverlets,” a display of the collection’s furs. Like much displayed at the museum, the furs were donated by locals.
“We have a cool collection of vintage clothing,” said Emily Roush, education and marketing director. “One family donated all of its Victorian clothing to us.”
Such donations make for exhibits that are eclectic and representative of the region.
The Highway 23 exhibit is a good example. More than a main artery through Eastern Kentucky, Highway 23 is a roadway along which many country music legends grew up. Among them are Ashland natives and mother-daughter duo The Judds, Billy Ray Cyrus, Patty Loveless and Keith Whitley. The exhibit displays memorabilia tied to their careers, such as the outfit Loveless wore for the cover shot of her first album. The exhibit, like all at the museum, is also interactive. Visitors can compose their tunes on a Music Quilt. Exhibits like “Satellites, Aerospace and the Bluegrass State,” which spotlights the space research and development done at nearby Morehead State University, delve into interesting aspects of the region. Temporary exhibits explore Ashland’s history and often include oral histories by residents.
Like most community museums, Highlands has a few odd pieces. Most surprising is a basic black rotary desk telephone used in Adolph Hitler’s bunker. The phone is part of the Military Exhibit Hall and was donated by an Ashland Oil executive who received the phone as a gift.
Newport Aquarium
An aquarium is basically a box filled with water, but at the Newport Aquarium, experiences go outside that box as often as possible.
“We allow families to see, touch and explore everything in the aquarium,” said Jen Tan, public relations manager.
In the Shore Gallery, visitors can examine horseshoe crabs and anemones far from the seashore. In a special behind-the-scenes experience, small groups can sit with African penguins at their feet, touching the birds as a wildlife educator tells them all about the endangered species. They can also feel good knowing that part of the fee they pay for the experience is used to help protect the animals.
In Shark Central, eager hands gently touch some of the two dozen small sharks that swim through shallows. “The biggest one is about two feet long,” said Tan. “The skin kind of feels like sandpaper when you touch it.”
A 75-foot-long rope bridge gives a bird’s-eye view of a tank that’s home to larger sharks, a sea turtle named Denver and other sea creatures. The bridge opened in 2015, and kids love it: One loved it so much that he crossed it 100 times in his visit there with his grandfather, said Tan.
The aquarium’s newest exhibit celebrates Kentucky’s equine ties in a seaworthy way. Sea Horses: Unbridled Fun includes 10 species of sea horses, sea dragons, trumpetfish, shrimpfish and pipefish.
As petting delicate sea horses is not an option, the aquarium installed three colorful plastic sea horses, about three feet tall, so youngsters can see how their fins work — like a hummingbird’s wings — and better understand how a sea horse’s eyes work independent of each other.
Visitors can also design their own sea horse. A computer program lets them add appendages, colors and even a few unorthodox extras like a magic wand. Visitors can email their finished starfish art to themselves.
Animals also get out of their exhibits and into the arms of animal ambassadors who stroll around, encouraging visitors to stop and meet animals like Oreo, an Argentine black-and-white tegu — a lizard — or Nietzsche, a red-tailed boa constrictor. “We look for opportunities to teach our guests about the animals,” said Tan.
KENTUCKY SCIENCE CENTER
Experimentation comes naturally at the Kentucky Science Center in Louisville, which is rethinking some of its long-standing exhibits.
Last year, its first-floor exhibits reopened with a less scripted approach to learning. For example, children learn, through trial and error, how to build a roller coaster. This summer, the center unveiled a new water table, a children’s play and learning area that was, in this case, partly designed by the center’s Creative Kids Board, a group of about a dozen youngsters who chimed in with ideas.
“Throughout the science and play areas, we ask questions that parents and children can explore together,” said Lisa Resnik, director of external affairs.
For example, as a nod to the Ohio River bridge projects underway in Louisville, a new exhibit explores how bridges are built. In keeping with education’s new focus on enlightening children about the many kinds of jobs available, the center, working with various trade unions, did video interviews with the varied professionals who are helping to build bridges.
Adults learn, too, as they accompany children or visit on their own. For groups that want to spend an afternoon at the movies, the center’s four-story, 3-D, precision white-screen theater is the ticket. In addition to the theater’s regular schedule of films, groups can request a movie from the center’s vast film library. A new team-building option allows groups to pretend to have a space experience as they man a “command center” and a “space vehicle.”
