The new hall is quadruple the size of the old hall and features many new exhibits. One of those exhibits is the Eagle Ford Shale Experience, or “EFX 3000,” which simulates a ride to the south Texas field and down into the borehole of an oil well.

Visitors to David Friend Hall, the Yale Peabody Museum’s new gem and mineral gallery, will encounter massive, colorful, and otherworldly specimens displayed to capture their imaginations and spark their curiosity.

About the only thing that remains the same at the Garden of the Gods Visitor and Nature Center is the magnificent view from the observation deck. The center has been completely transformed, a project spanning two years, and visitors are in for a fun, educational and breathtaking experience when it opens later this month.

When you approach the new $185 million Perot Museum of Nature and Science, which opens here on Saturday, it is clear that you are not being led into a serene temple, where a harmonious cosmic order is going to be revealed. The building is alluring but unsettling. Is the museum’s 10-story concrete cube splitting apart or being pieced together? Is it being held intact by an enormous brace — a transparent protrusion on the cube’s side containing a 54-foot-long escalator — or is that a destabilizing gash that pierces the building’s body?

A committee of citizens concerned about the fate of the fisherman statue in downtown Eastport has begun a fundraising campaign. Erected three years ago, the statue quickly became a favorite of tourists, but the colors of the gray-garbed and red-bearded fellow wearing galoshes and carrying a large fish in his arms have dimmed. Its base is deteriorating, and vandals destroyed the lamps that once illuminated him at night.