It's been a long time coming and was delayed by hurricane recovery, but, the New Orleans Audubon Insectarium is finally opening on June 13.
http://www.auduboninstitute.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Facility_Insectarium
Insectarium slated to open on June 13
by Bruce Eggler, The Times-Picayune Tuesday April 15, 2008, 9:05 PM
The Audubon Insectarium, the largest freestanding museum in North America devoted to the planet's most numerous inhabitants, will open to the public June 13, officials will announce today.
That's a Friday the 13th, but Audubon Nature Institute officials profess not to be worried that the date will mean bad luck for a museum that has been 17 years in the planning and construction.
The $25 million interactive museum will occupy half the ground floor of the U.S. Custom House, a monumental 19th century building in the 400 block of Canal Street.
From butterflies, bumblebees, grasshoppers and beetles to scorpions, cockroaches, mosquitoes and termites, the 23,000-square-foot insectarium will explain the history, life stories, economic importance and occasional threats to humans of creatures that represent nearly 90 percent of all the animals on Earth and outnumber humans more than a million to one.
A re-creation of a clump of garden soil, 100 times its natural size, will feature an animated centipede plus a trapdoor spider that bursts from a hidden compartment as visitors approach.
A theater will show a short film of an insect version of the Academy Awards, featuring the voices of Jay Leno and Joan Rivers.
Other highlights will include a Formosan termite exhibit, featuring a jar containing more than 400,000 of the ravenous creatures, and "Butterflies in Flight," a simulation of a Japanese garden where live butterflies flit about.
Cooking demonstrations will explain how to prepare delicacies such as chocolate-covered crickets and mealworm minestrone soup.
Golden silk spiders, love bugs, sunburst diving beetles, black widow spiders, white-spotted assassin bugs, robust camel crickets -- hundreds of species, live and mounted, will have a place in the city's newest tourist attraction.
"Having a shrine to insects showcases their incredible beauty, strength and numbers," as well as their roles "in global cuisine and culture, and in our environment," said Ron Forman, president of the Audubon Nature Institute.
Audubon officials began planning an insectarium in 1991. The original idea was to build it on the wharves at the foot of Esplanade and Elysian Fields avenues. In the face of stiff opposition from French Quarter residents and the Dock Board's unwillingness to turn over the wharves, Forman and his colleagues gave up that idea.
By late 1995, they had settled on the Custom House as the new site, but winning city and federal approval took several years. Once again, French Quarter residents and preservationists fought the proposal. Even after Audubon won final federal approval to use the space, delays continued, in part because of restrictions on what changes could be made to the historic building and in part to changes in plans for a facility that essentially is without precedent. Finally, Hurricane Katrina set everything back another two years.
Before the public opening, Audubon will hold a gala at the insectarium June 3 for major donors and supporters, such as the pest control company Terminix, which pledged $2 million. There also will be three preview days for Audubon members.
Tickets for the general public will go on sale May 22. They must be purchased in advance and will be available at
www.welovebugs.org,
www.auduboninstitute.org or any of Audubon's other facilities, such as the Audubon Zoo and Audubon Aquarium of the Americas. Ticket prices have not been announced.
Bruce Eggler can be reached at
[email protected] or (504) 826-3320.
http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/04/insectarium_slated_to_open_on.html
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