The Clay Center will be holding a grand opening to unveil three brand new exhibits – Healthy Me, WaterWorks & the Maier Foundation Music Studio – to the public on Saturday, November 18 at 10 a.m.
A special preview for tourism and media members will take place on Wednesday, November 15 at 10 a.m. Clay Center donors will be welcomed to view the exhibits on the evening of Wednesday, November 15 with a special preview for Clay Center Medical Society members happening on the evening of Thursday, November 16. Clay Center members will be among the first guests to truly play and explore in the new exhibits beginning on Friday, November 17 at 2 p.m.
The Healthy Me exhibit, focusing on the human body in motion, will provide a safe environment for guests to test their physical skills, and help them learn why regular physical activity is essential to their health. Within the exhibit, guests will investigate body systems (skeletal, muscular, circulatory, nervous, as well as organs) to learn about their function and how they work together. They will also measure themselves as they stretch, raise their heart rates, test their balance and reaction time, and try to increase their skills at various sporting events. Healthy Me will help guests understand that engaging in healthy lifestyle choices now will reduce risk of disease later in life and will allow guests to challenge themselves physically and receive positive feedback in exchange for effort.
In WaterWorks visitors play and work with water along sweeping flow routes, dramatic water falls, controlling the water to animate and energize everything in its path in an expression of water’s power. Along the way, they will experience the potential, kinetic and mechanical energy of water. Activities include turning a large water wheel to generate “electricity”, opening and closing a dam’s water into the river, guiding boats through a lock system blocking, releasing and re-routing water, and many other engaging activities, including water play (funnels, scooping and pouring) for toddlers.
Generously underwritten by the Maier Foundation, the Maier Foundation Music Studio is a place where visitors make and explore music together. Visitors see, listen to, move to, and create their own music; examine the scientific foundations of music they hear; and explore the mathematical concepts of rhythm, pattern, and harmony. Some instruments will, at first glance, be a puzzle – how can this thing make music? Other instruments will appear to play themselves. Group “events” can be seen throughout the space: a multi-station futuristic music machine, a circular thumb piano that multiple people can play simultaneously; a giant slinky suspended overhead that teaches children the basics of longitudinal waves. At the Recording Studio, visitors play sound engineer mixing “tracks” of a song to perfection. The exhibit is comprised of four basic areas: Experience Music, the Instrument Studio, Composing and Good Vibrations.
All three brand-new exhibits will be included in regular Clay Center admission. For more information, please call the Clay Center box office at 304-561-3570 or visit the website at www.theclaycenter.org.
