Imagination Station reveals slate of new exhibitions

Imagination Station Executive Director Lori Hauser address reporters and staff during a news conference announcing their upcoming exhibitions.

With a pledge to continue investing revenue from its countywide levy into new traveling exhibits, the Imagination Station today unveiled a slate of new exhibitions planned through 2016.

They range from gross to classy, joked chief scientist Carl Nelson.

The first, “Grossology” coming in May, is geared toward young people fascinated by “slimy, mushy,oozy, scaly, and stinky gross things” that occur in the human body but really are science, he said. Think snot and farts and vomit.

Other coming exhibits include “Titanic - The Artifact Exhibition” in February, 2014; “Guitar: The Instrument That Rocked the World” in January, 2015; “Mythbusters: The Explosive Exhibition” in October, 2015, and “Design Zone” in May, 2016.

Imagination Station Chief Executive Officer Lori Hauser said the science museum gets some 40 percent of its operating budget from public funds derived from Imagination Station’s five-year, 0.17-mill levy. Of those funds, 25 percent to 30 percent is dedicated to traveling exhibits.

The levy, which was first approved in 2008 and expires at the end of 2013, is on the Nov. 6 ballot for renewal.