![]() Ark Encounter opened in 2016 to an annual attendance of 1 million visitors, who tour the interior of the Ark’s three decks to see how thousands of animals could have been housed and fed by Noah and his small family. The $100 million cost of construction poured in through private funding and municipal bonds, separation of church and state notwithstanding. Still less does it seem necessary for preaching to the choir unlike the doubting apostle Thomas, the truly faithful shouldn’t need to poke into miracles with impertinent fingers.īut conservative donors jumped. It’s hard to imagine a gigantic curiosity persuading many nonbelievers. ![]() Ham, a self-appointed latter-day Noah, wants to prove to the world that the other Ark really could have existed-which is supposed to convince us that it did exist. But the goal was always to build the Ark-to justify faith by this most extravagant of works. In 2007, AiG opened its Creation Museum, which presents the past and future of the universe in terms of “7 C’s”: Creation, Corruption, Catastrophe, Confusion, Christ, Cross, and Consummation. The result is undeniably impressive: an exciting, if somewhat unwieldy, Young Earth creationist account of world history. Alternative claims based on the literal truth of the Bible must be put forward and augmented by elaborate constructions-like the Ark. The claims of mainstream science must be refuted point by point, ingeniously reinterpreted, or undermined by radical skepticism. The Bible, he insists, is not a book of stories, but an accurate historical record. In the view of its president, Ken Ham, AiG’s stated mission of “helping Christians defend their faith” entails meeting the evidence-based claims of the “secular worldview” head-on. Also, did you know that there were dinosaurs on the Ark? That the Ice Age and present-day global warming are long-term results of the Flood?Īrk Encounter-an evangelical theme park which aspires to be taken seriously as a science museum-is operated by Answers in Genesis, a private fundamentalist Christian apologetics group. This, the builders insist, is a definitive fact. A life-sized imitation of the historical Ark, which the patriarch Noah built at Divine command to shelter his family and the fauna of the earth from an all-consuming Flood sent by God to punish sinful mankind 4,370 years ago. The Ark’s creators proudly cite such figures-but they hasten to add that this is only a replica. Two and a half Ark-lengths would exceed the height of the Empire State Building and easily get stuck in the Suez Canal. Which is to say, it’s half the length of the Titanic, 200 feet longer than the Statue of Liberty laid on its side. The length of the Ark is 510 feet, the breadth of it 85 feet, and the height of it 51 feet. Amish craftsmen pounded together 3.3 million board feet of fir, spruce, and pine (no one is quite sure what kind of wood is meant by the Hebrew word “ gopher ”). The Ark is the largest free-standing timber-frame structure in the world. From your seat inside the shuttle bus which ferries you in from the parking lot you are supposed to marvel at God’s word made visible at a theme park in northern Kentucky. Yes, you are supposed to think, that’s just how the most extraordinary ship must really have looked as it settled onto a cleansed earth under a spreading rainbow. There it stands, a colossal hull of wooden planks hulking over trees and fields. Nothing can prepare you for your first glimpse of the Ark. You can live in a world inundated with images. Drawing from Norman Klein's model of the 'scripted space' and Joseph Pine and James Gilmore's 'experience econ-omy', which has its roots in Disney theme parks, our analysis shows how Jurassic World plays with the boundaries of fact and fiction in a way that self-reflexively interrogates the contemporary relationship between popular entertainment and museums.You can read the Bible. In this article, we carry out a close analysis of Jurassic World's combination of theme park and museum exhibition practices, situating the exhibition as a particularly significant example of the developing trend towards the creation of immersive 'narrative environments' in twenty-first century museums, as museums increasingly draw upon the devices of popular entertainment to engage and attract guests. Yet Jurassic World also met with controversy for its theme park-esque design and pervasive branding, prioritization of spectacle and attraction over cultural heritage and education, and seamless integration of fact and fiction. ![]() The exhibition had the most successful opening month of any exhibition at the Museum to date, selling over 100,000 tickets. In 2016, The Melbourne Museum staged the world premiere of Jurassic World: The Exhibition, a globally touring exhibition inspired by Universal Pictures' blockbuster film, Jurassic World (2015), featuring animatronic dinosaurs created by Melbourne's Creature Technology.
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