Sunday, January 03, 1999
Creationists snap up exhibits for planned museum
BY JULIE IRWIN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
A Baltimore museum's loss is a gain for Answers in Genesis (AIG), the Florence group that wants to build a creationism museum in Boone County.
AIG recently bought about 70 percent of the exhibits at Columbus Center's Hall of Exploration, a public exhibit hall that closed last year after only seven months of operation. Among the items purchased: a 54-foot walk-through model of a sea bass, a 14-by-26-foot model of a human cell, and a 30-foot fabricated rock wall with a 600-gallon waterfall.
The items were sold at auction in an attempt to pay off creditors of the insolvent Columbus Center, a marine biotechnology institute that the University of Maryland has agreed to buy. The auction at the $13 million exhibit hall raised about $140,000.
“It was a steal. We were really pleased,” said Mike Zovath, AIG's general manager, who said his group paid $2,200 for the $580,000 cell model. “Most of (the exhibits) deal with known science and not with evolution. We can use most of them without much modification.”
AIG hopes to open a national headquarters and museum in western Boone County to refute the theory of evolution and explain science according to the Bible. The ministry and its supporters believe that humans and dinosaurs coexisted thousands of years ago.
But the group is having a difficult time finding a home for its new exhibits. Boone County Fiscal Court members and Boone County planning commissioners have turned down AIG's proposal for a 25-acre site south of Interstate 275 and east of Deck Lane.
AIG, in turn, has sued county officials, saying that opposition to the museum denies the ministry its constitutional rights, including First Amendment rights of free speech and religion. An earlier request by the group to build near Union was denied in 1996.
The exhibits are on their way to the Tristate via four tractor-trailers, Mr. Zovath said. They will be stored in warehouses until AIG builds its permanent site. The museum and national headquarters are expected to cost $5 million to $8 million to build.
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