This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on December 16, 2025. You can find out more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to smart local news and information and sign up for our newsletter for free here. Ledger subscribers can add the Toppman on the Arts newsletter on their “My Account” page.
Review: Discovery Place’s ‘Snow Days’ is a mostly joy-over-science exhibit that lets kids (and nostalgic adults) play their way through a winter the city rarely gets
by Lawrence Toppman
When I attended the 1981 opening of Discovery Place, we were promised exhibits that would offer science and fun in different ratios, depending on the subject. “Snow Days,” which runs through Feb. 1, is close to 100% fun.
You can find a little science here, if you feel you must: Constructing an igloo, basically a chance to play with adult-sized foam blocks, might teach you something about weight-bearing loads. It’ll definitely teach you to play well with others, as a lone person hasn’t a hope of keeping the arched chunks in the upper layers in balance.
But mostly, you’ll come to pretend for an hour or two that you’re in a winter world Charlotte hasn’t seen for years and may never see again — at least, not in the crystalline way projected on a screen as you step in, where you “drive” through a frigid landscape and float over an icy river.
Once you get to the second level of the uptown science museum, you can locate “Snow Days” by the screaming. It comes from kids slipping, stumbling and struggling laughingly to their feet at the Sock Skating rink, described by a staffer as “like a kitchen floor that’s a little slippery.”
She was there to circulate youngsters and occasional adults in and out of the rink without letting anyone monopolize the space, and to help locate their footwear in the shoe cubby. Kids told me the rink floor, made of ultra-high-molecular-weight polyethylene, doesn’t hurt when you land on your butt. I took their word and slid gently around the edges, not wanting to test any activity that might give employment to a physical therapist.
The exhibit requires less hands-on involvement than most at Discovery Place. Feet-on, yes: You can walk across a patch of “snow” on the floor that records footprints. But mostly, you’re there to observe. If you’ve never seen the aurora borealis, back away from that “snow” patch and look above it to the hanging screen. You’ll see green northern lights that churn as if Dorothy’s twister has descended upon the city of Oz, writhing and pulsing in the air.
Exhibits have been kept simple for youngsters with shorter attention spans. Kids may appreciate beautiful close-up photos of ice crystals by Michael Peres from his home town of Rochester, N.Y., clips from famous movies with scenes of ice and snow — remember the rapid-fire snowball fight in “Elf” or the ice-carving in “Edward Scissorhands”? — and especially the central exhibit of taxidermized land and water creatures.
That’s as close as most kids will ever get to a gray wolf or snowy owl, a Humboldt penguin or a harbor seal. (Or “foca común.” The entire exhibit uses English and Spanish on wall cards.) Projected films above the bodies show these animals in natural motion.
It would be easy to overlook the cases containing tools, dolls and models by indigenous people around the world who live in low temperatures. Ornately beaded Athabascan mittens, fur-lined child-sized mukluks, slitted snow goggles with frames of wood or bone and a “fire drill” used to start a blaze in the woods leave you admiring the anonymous makers’ skills.
I suspect only adults will end up where I did, in a section devoted to the concept of hygge. (The Danes say “Hoo-gah.”) It’s a celebration of small things, in this case a living room where the visitor sinks into a chair surrounded by books, dried plants in vases, a faux fireplace, nature prints and a “window” projecting an image of wintry trees and gently blowing snow.
I looked dreamily at the gray wolf standing sentinel, the heads of children vanishing as they tumbled at the sock rink, the foam igloo blocks scattered by a gleeful little girl who shouted “I exploded it!” And I thought, “I would give a hundred bucks to have one fully snowed-in day again in Charlotte, the kind I experienced in the winter after Discovery Place opened.”
Until then, this illusion will have to do.
If You’re Going
“Snow Days” runs at Discovery Place, 301 N. Tryon St., through Feb. 1. (The entrance is around the corner on Sixth Street.) The museum is open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday.
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Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for the Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews several times each month in the Charlotte Ledger.
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