Dallas is about to take science outside. On October 20, the Perot Museum of Nature and Science unveiled Curiosity Unbound, an ambitious four-acre campus transformation anchored by a pioneering outdoor museum that will double the museum’s exhibition space in the heart of the city.
Designed as a living laboratory, the new outdoor experience will cover 60,000 square feet with about 25 large-scale exhibits and 40 learning touchpoints. Visitors will feel powerful wind gusts, build water pressure to send a geyser skyward, watch how moving water shapes a landscape, and witness a fire tornado spiraling more than a story high. A cloud maze, a lightning and thunder pavilion and a giant water vortex complete a day of hands-on discovery that could never fit indoors.
The landscape itself becomes part of the science. Shade trees, native plantings, a pollinator habitat, a forest and treetop walkway, a shaded river, and paleontology and pollinator gardens will replace surface parking with new green space, linking the museum more closely to Victory Park, Klyde Warren Park and the Dallas Arts District.
The project, funded through the museum’s $185 million Curiosity Unbound campaign — already at $135 million — also brings a reimagined entrance and lobby, enhanced learning, dining and event spaces, and on-site parking. It is expected to welcome 400,000 additional guests each year. Groundbreaking is planned for early 2027, with opening in late 2028.
Photo: Perot Museum of Nature and Science
