NatureQuest exhibit at Fernbank

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NatureQuest exhibit at Fernbank

Photos: Fernbank Museum of Natural History will open an all-new 8-million dollar children's exhibition, NatureQuest in late March 2011. Workers construct the exhibit in these Jan. 26, 2011 photos.

Lucas Macauley, 9, plays with an exhibit during a sneak peek of NatureQuest, the Fernbank Museum of Natural History's new children's exhibit. It opens to the public March 19.

A rope bridge attaches a two-level clubhouse to a hollow tree that has been strung inside with netting ideal for climbing. The exhibit, designed in collaboration with the Thinkwell Group, a Burbank, Calif.-based development firm, is targeted toward ages 2-10.

The archaeology section lets children to piece together a broken pot as if they were on a dig. The exhibit has 100 interactive ways to observe the natural world. Its ecosystems include those found behind a waterfall, inside a forest and alongside a rock quarry.

Children can remove and examine sea life from the pier pylons.

The 7,000-square-foot, $8 million children's exhibit took nearly a year to construct. Here, painter Andrew Thomaston is dwarfed by cypress tree roots as construction of the exhibit continues on Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2011.

The exhibit, funded by private donors, had been planned for four years as a replacement for the upper-level children's area of the museum.

Mike Cunningham (left) and Richard Morris put up tree panels on the longleaf pine.

Brian Sullivan (left) and Stephen Hutton use a stucco mix to make the trunk and branches of a beech tree on an elevated deck.

lan Johnson works on the inside of a club house.

Design team members Vikram Kirby, Chris Hawkes and Gene Rogers work with the Gesture Tek Ground FX system that will project an animated river filled with swimming fish.

Art director Gwen Ballantyne puts up artificial sea life along the pier pylons of the Gray's Reef sectino of the exhibit.

1/11

Lucas Macauley, 9, plays with an exhibit during a sneak peek of NatureQuest, the Fernbank Museum of Natural History's new children's exhibit. It opens to the public March 19.

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