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Denise King
Exhibit Developer
Denise has been an exhibit developer at the Exploratorium since 2001. A keen observer of the natural world, she has studied subjects ranging from botany and ecology to marine biology, microbiology, and evolution. She has developed many biology exhibits at the Exploratorium including Glass Settling Plate, Mosquito Magnet, Leaves That Never Get Wet, and Algae Chandelier, and has redesigned some old favorites such as Chick Embryo and Mimosa House. She has also produced exhibits such as All Eyes on Me and Mood Lighting, which highlight her ability to design exhibits that don't have wet and squishy things in them. Before setting anchor at the Exploratorium, Denise worked as a field biologist and a lecturer at SF State, and she once got to shoot on location with English broadcaster and naturalist David Attenborough in the Mohave Desert.
Related Exhibits
All Eyes on Me
Situate yourself at just the right place in space in front of this parabolic mirror array and you’ll see dozens of your own eyeballs peering back at you.
Bacteriopolis
Thousands of distinct species live and breathe (or not) in this colorful bacterial terrarium. Look for green cyanobacteria, orange iron oxidizers, and gray cellulose eaters. What you see today will be gone tomorrow in this living artwork in a perpetual state of change.
Where: Gallery 4: Living Systems
Glass Settling Plate
Almost any hard object submerged in San Francisco Bay—from pier pilings to the sides of sailboats—quickly becomes a habitat for an ever-changing community of living things. Here you can use a joystick-driven microscope to take a tour of the wonderland of living creatures that have settled on a glass plate that has spent some time submerged in the Bay.
Where: Gallery 4: Living Systems
Live Chicken Embryos
It takes just 21 days for an egg to go from just laid to newly hatched chick, and a lot goes on in just the first week. Look closely and you’ll find blood vessels, a backbone, wing buds, eyes, a brain, and—throbbing prominently by day 5 or so—a beating heart.
Where: Gallery 4: Living Systems
Mood Lighting
Sit down in a cozy chair and bathe your brain in a bubble of color of your choosing, dialing up anything from amber to violet. As you spend a few moments with each color, you may feel a shift in your own emotional hue.
Where: This exhibit is not currently on view.
Native Oyster Colony
Get a closer look at live, Olympia oysters, native to San Francisco.
Where: Fisher Bay Observatory Gallery 6: Observing Landscapes
Sensitive Plants
Gently touch these plants and see how they respond.
Where: Gallery 4: Living Systems
