0b8f/1238093624-nightatthemuseum.jpgLast night saw another installment of the OMSI After Dark program, where the museum stays open for extended hours for those 21 and up. Beer and wine were served, and free vodka samples were given away (one per person, although each sample confusingly required two tickets to redeem). It's a good opportunity for those who like science but don't like children. Judging by last night's packed attendance, there are a lot of people who fall into this category.

Now, unlike a certain movie would have you believe, the museum does NOT come alive at night. No Egyptian mummies brought to life, or kindly bespectacled Teddy Roosevelts as played by Robin Williams, or T-Rex skeletons comically maurading the premises. Instead, almost all of OMSI's regular exhibits were on display without much enhancement. The most fun part was the physics room, filled with toys, gadgets, whizmos, and whirligigs, like that shocky ball thing that stands your hair up on end, or the fan tunnel that you can stick a paper cup on top of and watch it shoot up in the air. But again, the place was utterly packed, and you're trading the presence of little kids running around for a mob of adults. I'd say it's a fair trade-off, in that you can play to your heart's content with all of the whatsits without feeling self-conscious or looking creepy.

The Leonardo da Vinci exhibit, including "Secrets of the Mona Lisa," however, I thought was a bust. It was pretty slow going, with the first part showing endless wooden replicas of possible inventions from da Vinci's sketchbooks. You could only touch a small fraction of them, and many of them weren't that interesting. The Mona Lisa part was even more tedious, with facsimiles of giant zoom-ins of various parts of the painting, shown through different lenses (infrared, etc).
e17f/1238095082-monalisa.jpgThere was one useful replica, that showed how the painting might have looked in da Vinci's day (brighter, bluer), and I got the sense that the painting's mystery and fame is largely due to its deterioration over the years: It began life as a beautiful but perhaps not all that exceptional work, and grew stranger and murkier as it got older. Even her mysterious, all-seeing eyes were at one time vibrant, aimed in a single direction. But in the end, it was frustrating to wade through all this hype and promotion about a painting that is actually located thousands of miles away.

Still, the science-y stuff was fun, and although I doubt you'll learn much, it's a good way to see OMSI when it's not flocked by kids.

OMSI After Dark continues on the fourth Wednesday of every month, from 6-10 pm; upcoming dates include April 22, May 27, June 24, and July 22; $10