The heart of the splatter

Usually when Saturn figures in an exhibit at the Museum of Science, it's the one with the rings, up on the ceiling of the Charles Hayden Planetarium. But the workers setting up "CSI: The Experience" in the museum's Nichols Gallery on Monday were wrestling a Saturn sedan into place for "A House Collided," one of three crime scenes in the exhibit inspired by the CBS drama "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation."

Actually it was half a sedan, covered with shards of faux glass and chunks of cement, with a mannequin slumped behind the wheel. In this scene the driver is deceased, having just crashed his car into the living room of a home. The exhibit, which opens today, turns museum visitors into crime-scene investigators: Does the beer bottle on the dashboard indicate a high blood-alcohol level? Did the blow to the head come from the windshield? What really happened here?

"It's just a simple but powerful imaginative thing, where visitors want to be in the role of detective, they want to be in the role of solving crime," says Charlie Walter, chief operating officer of the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History, which built the traveling exhibit. "We do market research on an ongoing basis . . . and the idea of forensic science has always been at the top of the list."

Of course there's real investigating to be done about the seriousness of this $3 million exhibit. Science and art museums alike have come under increasing criticism for staging exhibits that focus on crowd-pleasing, revenue-enhancing glitz at the expense of their core educational missions.

"We thought it would be excellent to host an exhibit that is current and part of today's media culture and allow [visitors] to practice science thinking skills, inquiry-based activities, using something that's so much a part of what they watch on TV and hear about in the news, and that is so much a part of science and technology today," says Paul Fontaine, vice president of programs for the Museum of Science. The museum expects 100,000 to 120,000 people to attend the exhibit, which runs through Jan. 1.

The Forth Worth museum has previous experience with this kind of show: It created an exhibit called "Whodunit? The Science of Solving Crime" in the early 1990s, and it was a big success, says Walter, who notes that there have since been many advances in the field worth exploring, especially in computer databases and DNA. An exhibit designer with Hollywood connections helped put Fort Worth officials in touch with "CSI" creator Anthony Zuiker, who quickly became a big supporter of the new exhibit.

"They were really excited about doing something educational . . . and then also loved the idea of extending the brand of 'CSI' to the museum community," Walter says.

Visitors at the Museum of Science will take observations from each crime scene to a series of lab computer stations, where they'll analyze the evidence to try to come to the correct conclusion about each scene. They'll also see relevant computer animations directly from the TV program, showing a bullet or a blood clot zooming through the body. Visitors will also be helped along by videos featuring William Petersen, who stars as crime lab supervisor Gil Grissom, and the rest of the cast, shot just for the exhibit.

"Gil Grissom is the first person you report to, and he says 'Hey, you're the new recruits, there's three crime scenes. We need you to take on one of them. You need to be thorough, analyze the facts, and once you're through with your lab work, I'll be waiting for you at the end of the exhibit.' It's really a fun connection to the show," Walter says. "The other actors have parts throughout the labs and talk to you about DNA technology, information technology, evidence gathering, and things like that." After filing their conclusions, visitors find out how they did and get a final evaluation from Grissom.

Museum officials say they will even be able to display crime-scene dioramas constructed by the Miniature Killer, the TV show's latest serial murderer show-off. There's no direct link to the exhibit's crime scenes; it's just cool for fans. And all this just in time for the new fall season. The chance to piggyback on a top-rated TV show seems hard for museum officials to resist these days. But officials in Boston and Fort Worth say that "CSI" easily fits their mission.

"I would note that the other partner in this is the American Academy of Forensic Sciences," Walter says. The academy shared its expertise. "We walked into [its] board and said we want to partner with the 'CSI' television show because we feel like it could double the attendance to the exhibit, it's such a popular show. And they were very supportive, just, you know, 'Make sure you're real clear on what's Hollywood and what's the real science.' And we assured the board that the exhibit is funded by the National Science Foundation and the science is solid."

There is also controversy about what's called "The 'CSI' effect," Walter acknowledges. Investigators with real-world budgets and real-world caseloads are often frustrated by public expectations that they can work the kind of investigative wonders that are seen on the show. "It's been documented in court cases," he says, "where the jury goes, 'Why didn't you analyze the DNA?' And [police] go, 'We don't have that here in this little community.' The 'CSI' effect is making the world aware of sophisticated technologies that are out there, and that's just a reality."

The overall effect is positive, he says. "Even the National Science Foundation . . . recognized that the power of linking to this pop-culture phenomenon will bring people into museums who might not normally come, and it really will expose them to real science and real scientific thinking, and that will far outweigh any kind of negative effect of the Hollywood license they have to take to solve a crime in 40 minutes," Walter says.

The exhibit was developed as part of the Science Museum Exhibit Collaborative, in which seven of the largest institutions in the country each build shows and share them with the others.

"Our visitors' expectations are really high. They expect good quality exhibits that are accurate and enjoyable and durable, so they stand up to the hands-on nature of them, and they're very expensive to create," Fontaine says. "So it's a benefit for the institutions and it's a benefit for the visitors to have the economic advantage of having the collaborative create so many exhibits. Really for the price of one, we get seven."