The Leonardo celebrates first year; brings namesake's works to Utah

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SALT LAKE CITY — In the year since its grand opening, a new, innovative museum,The Leonardo, has seen 75,000 visitors come through the doors.

It's not a huge number, but it's not a disappointment either, according to executive director Alexandra Hesse. "No," she said, "Not in the long run."

Since Oct. 8 of last year, The Leonardo has attempted to define its identity with a startlingly wide range of exhibits. It also had to compete for visitors with long-standing, popular institutions.

Clark Planetarium regularly counts about 300,000 visitors a year. The Natural History Museum of Utah had 330,057 visitors in less than eleven months following the grand opening of its new Rio Tinto Center last November 17.

"It's like comparing apples and oranges," Hesse said, noting that competing attractions have had many years to build up their audience. She said 75,000 visitors is in-line with advance expectations for The Leonardo. "This is really what we were basing our assumptions on, and we've been meeting those."

Hesse predicts The Leonardo will grow substantially in coming years as more and more Utahns learn what it has to offer.

Many of The Leonardo's visitors have come back for second-helpings and even more.

Mindy and Colby Tyler of Salt Lake City have brought their two children to The Leonardo at least five times because of the hands-on exhibits.

"They're learning but they don't really know it," Mindy Tyler said as her kids created stop-motion cartoons in The Leonardo's animation lab. "We'd much rather come here than someplace that's just silly video games. This is actually helping their brains do more."

Unlike most museums, The Leonardo's identity has always been hard to sum up in a word or two. It takes at least three: science, art and technology.

"We're a science center with a twist," Hesse said, "in the sense that we're adding art and technology and creativity to our scientific topics."

The animation lab known as "Render" is the most popular continuing exhibit. Kids and adults create short movies, guided by animator-in-residence Natalie Knauer.

"I love this department," Knauer said, "because it's always full of giggles and discovery. Everyone's like, 'Look what I did!' and 'I didn't know I could make this!' and 'Check it out! It's just like in the movies!' "

One of The Leonardo's strategies is to attract visitors by changing exhibits often, rather than keeping a permanent collection on display.

"We have brought in eight new exhibits," Hesse said. "Some of them have already come and gone. So you would have already missed them if you only showed up at opening day and today."

What we are trying to do is to inspire minds to be as curious as Leonardo Da Vinci's.

–Alexandra Hesse, The Leonardo

Other exhibits include a genetics lab and a "tinkering" lab where kids learn to create mechanical toys. A section on made-in-Utah inventions includes the Jarvik7 artificial heart and the ever-popular Frisbee invented by the late Walter Morrison of Sevier County.

For the next three months, visitors can pay extra for a visiting exhibit called "Da Vinci: The Genius." It celebrates the man who inspired the museum, Leonardo Da Vinci. It features numerous machines and weapons built full-size in modern times from designs drawn by Da Vinci in his famous notebooks. The exhibit also includes a section that examines in microscopic detail Da Vinci's most famous painting, the Mona Lisa.

"What we are trying to do," Hesse said, "is to inspire minds to be as curious as Leonardo Da Vinci's mind and to be as innovative and as creative."

To attract more visitors, partway through its first year The Leonardo lowered the basic admission cost from $14 to $9. It was felt the high admission cost was keeping people away.

The opening of the Da Vinci exhibit also boosted attendance significantly, even though a combined ticket for the museum and the Da Vinci exhibit costs $19.50.

Hesse acknowledges that a stronger marketing effort in the museum's first year might have brought in more visitors. But she said feedback from visitors has been extremely positive.

"Two-thousand and five hundred people have joined to become members because they have liked our experience," Hesse said. "So it has been a terrific first year."