Science Museum of Minnesota

A group of businessmen led by Charles W. Ames established the museum in 1906 with the aim to promote intellectual and scientific growth in St. Paul. It was initially housed at the St. Paul Auditorium on Fourth Street and was then called the St. Paul Institute of Science and Letters. In 1909, it briefly merged with the St. Paul School of Fine Arts (now the Minnesota Museum of American Art).

In 1927, the museum relocated to Merriam Mansion on Capitol Hill, the former home of Colonel John L. Merriam. This location had increased exhibit storage space. The museum outgrew the facilities and moved to the St. Paul-Ramsey Arts and Sciences Center at 30 East Tenth Street in 1964. In 1978, the museum expanded into a new space on Wabasha Street between 10th and Exchange Streets via a skyway connection, which allowed for exhibit space and the addition of an IMAX Dome (OMNIMAX) cinema.

In the early 1990s, plans for a new facility, adjacent to the Mississippi River, were formed with architecture firm Ellerbe Becket. With aid from public funding initiatives, the new museum broke ground on May 1, 1997, and opened on December 11, 1999. During the move, 1.75 million artifacts were transported.

In the early 2000s, the museum hosted several exhibits, including BODY WORLDS; Tutankhamun: The Golden King and the Great Pharaohs; Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination; Real Pirates: The Untold Story of the Whydah from Slave Ship to Pirate Ship; and The Science Behind Pixar. It also added several films to its production roster, including Jane Goodall’s Wild Chimpanzees; Tornado Alley; National Parks Adventure; and Ancient Caves, and it built its exhibit production portfolio with exhibits like Robots + Us; A Day in Pompeii; RACE: Are We So Different?; Maya: Hidden Worlds Revealed; SPACE: An Out of Gravity Experience; and Sportsology. The museum continues to provide exhibit development, design, and production services for other museums.

Omnitheater

The Mississippi riverfront facility has a convertible dome IMAX theater. With both a wall screen for IMAX films and other flat-screen presentations and a rotating dome for viewing IMAX dome presentations, it was the first convertible theater in the northern hemisphere. The counterweights for the system were so massive that they had to be put in place before the rest of the building. When it opened in 1999, the theater boasted "the largest permanently installed electronic cinema projector in the world", an advanced computer system to coordinate the theater's facilities, and a complex sound system to accommodate both viewing formats.

In summer 2019, the Omnitheater briefly closed to convert to digital laser technology. In October 2019, it reopened as the world's third-largest digital laser IMAX dome theater.

The museum is a leading producer of giant screen films, including:

Genesis (1978)