How MOSI plans to stage a comeback
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MOSI's Digital Dome Theatre. Photo: Courtesy of Catalyst Communications
John Graydon Smith fixes broken museums for a living. For three years, he has worked to do that in Tampa.
Why it matters: Smith became CEO of the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI) in 2022 with a charge to transform it into a full-day, multi-visit destination.
Flashback: MOSI had come on hard times. Two of its five buildings sat unused. COVID-19 forced a two-month shutdown in 2020.
- The museum ended that fiscal year almost $1 million in the red and needed a bailout from Hillsborough County, one that commissioners said would be the last if things didn't start to turn around.
👋 Yacob here. MOSI has changed quite a bit since a school bus dropped me off there some 20 years ago, when I crawled through giant organs and braved a twister simulator.
- When I visited one afternoon, children in matching summer camp shirts ran across the playground. Families lined up at the door of what is now the second-largest planetarium in the U.S.
- Last month, that planetarium sold out a Taylor Swift-themed laser music show.
The big picture: That programming is part of a bigger pivot. MOSI once tried to be the largest science center in the Southeast as a means to lure tourists, an audience it didn't understand and couldn't keep.
- Smith wants to re-center MOSI as an anchor institution, a place for locals, school children and, more and more, adults. So, he added a restaurant. And a bar.
- "I've said from the outset, it doesn't matter how many times you tell people the place is for adults too. Nothing says that like selling beer," he tells Axios.
Zoom in: Smith's strategy has meant scaling back in some ways but expanding in others.
- It means out with sprawling, aging exhibits and in with smaller, immersive experiences. It means shows in a dome theater that rotates through deep space and deep sea, so no two visits feel the same.
- But more than that, it means rebuilding old relationships and forming new ones. For instance, Hillsborough County Public Schools made MOSI the fourth-grade field trip starting next year.
- And in September, MOSI will debut its AI exhibit to coincide with the opening of the University of South Florida's new AI college.
"It used to be a lot easier for a science museum to wow you," Smith says. "Now, a kid can put on a headset and walk on the moon without leaving home."
- But that won't stop MOSI from trying. It has new VR experiences, a mini-golf course, a butterfly garden and a drone zone.
What's next: Visitors can expect more laser music shows, more "science-after-dark" events, and possibly an escape room inside MOSI's Mission Moonbase.
- Smith also plans to screen the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" in the planetarium on Halloween.