Updated at 11:15 a.m. March 13
Body Worlds, a traveling scientific exhibit that displays human bodies, arrived in Cedar Park early March 12 to debut at the Texas Museum of Science and Technology’s March 20 opening.
TXMOST Executive Director Torvald Hessel said the exhibit will stay at the new interim museum in Cedar Park for six months. The anatomy-focused exhibit founded by Gunther von Hagens, a German scientist, has been touring museums since 1995.
Body Worlds displays donors’ human bodies that have been preserved with a process called plastination in which muscular tissues are replaced with plastic and rubber substances.
“It’s the most successful traveling exhibit in the world, with more than 40 million visitors,” Hessel said. “And they have never been to Austin.”
On March 12, Body Worlds trucks brought 12,000 square feet of exhibits for the forthcoming facility to the former SoccerPlex building at 1220 Toro Grande Drive. Hessel said Body Worlds and TXMOST both expect the exhibits will bring 100,000–150,000 visitors over six months.
The museum will at first feature traveling exhibits, a food-and-beverage service and a gift shop. That will give planners time to assemble a planetarium and its own exhibits, Hessel said.
TXMOST is talking with Da Vinci Alive, another traveling exhibit with multimedia-based attractions that could come to the museum, Hessel told Cedar Park City Council on March 12.
City Council also approved an agreement that appropriates up to $260,000 for museum marketing and improvements to the building. The agreement is based on the museum’s ability to meet thresholds for expected visitors, said Phil Brewer, director of economic development.
“[The museum] has been a long time coming,” Brewer said.
Place 1 Councilman Stephen Thomas praised the museum’s anticipated number of visitors.
“I’m excited to see that volume coming into the city,” Thomas said.
Original story posted at 4 p.m. Feb. 17
Nonprofit Texas Museum of Science & Technology, or TXMOST, will open its doors as Central Texas’s first science and technology museum March 20 on Toro Grande Drive in Cedar Park.
The museum will be located at a temporary location at 1220 Toro Grande Drive in Cedar Park. TXMOST, formally known as Austin Planetarium, was recently rebranded. TXMOST Executive Director Torvald Hessel said the new name and the interim Cedar Park location fit with the group’s mission to introduce more Texas residents to science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM.
“We will show exhibits from various sciences and host traveling science and technology exhibits from all over the world as well as feature a planetarium,” Hessel said.
Museum admission for children age 6 and younger is free, he said. Tickets for children ages 6–17 are $16; for seniors or college students, $18; and for adults, ticket costs start at $21. Tickets are sold in time slot and the museum will be open daily from 9 a.m.–9 p.m.
The museum will first feature traveling exhibits, which Hessel said will be announced soon.
TXMOST will add a planetarium to the facility by the end of 2015, Hessel said.
“It will be the only [planetarium] in the greater Austin region … the largest in Texas,” he said. “And that is less crazy than it sounds, because the largest planetarium right now is in Killeen.”
The news comes about five years after Cedar Park leaders reached out to Austin Planetarium about a potential location, said Phil Brewer, Cedar Park economic development director.
“They just couldn’t get the right pieces of the puzzle to fit,” Brewer said. “[Then] I got a call from Torvald Hessel last fall. … We had a very nice meeting and we talked about some potential sites here in Cedar Park for a permanent facility.”
TXMOST still plans to build a permanent museum facility somewhere in Central Texas and Cedar Park and Austin are among the locations being considered, Hessel said.
Two other possible locations for interim museums fell through before TXMOST considered the Toro Grande Drive location. Museum staffers already had a relationship with city leaders, and the building’s size of 30,000 square feet, as well as its 35-foot ceilings, proved large enough for the museum’s needs, Hessel said.
In a news release, Cedar Park Mayor Matt Powell said the museum will benefit the city.
“Science museums play a major role not only in providing an educational entertainment option for families, but also in delivering STEM-based resources to get kids excited about science, engineering, and the world around them,” Powell said.
