"Eeeeoooooo," squeals a young girl in pigtails as silhouettes of deer mice scuffle at her feet. "Totally cool," breathes a baseball-capped boy, face lit by a swirl of colorful computer-rendered creatures.

Be it tinged with fear or awe--or perhaps a healthy mixture of both--there’s no doubt the latest exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City is inspiring interest and enthusiasm on all fronts. Epidemic! The World of Infectious Disease uses life-sized dioramas, interactive touch-screen displays, thought-provoking videos and text--all of it supplemented by a dazzling Web site (www.amnh.org/exhibitions/epidemic)--to examine how infectious diseases evolve. Visitors to the exhibit can see elaborate models of viruses and bacteria hanging like oversized Jujubes in the dimly lit "Hall of Microbes" or watch museum volunteers perform experiments on yeast and other organisms in the sterile glare of the "Laboratory." The idea is to learn about the biology of these infinitesimal creatures and the multifarious ways they invade their hosts--namely us.

Epidemic! is a fitting way for the American Museum of Natural History to usher in the millennium; its most successful exhibition ever was on tuberculosis, drawing more than 750,000 people in its six-week run in the early 1900s when the disease was an emerging public health problem in the U.S. "I guess that’s an attempt at irony on our part," says Dr. Rob DeSalle, the curator of the exhibition. "We close the century with an exhibition on infectious disease to reestablish the fact that we are going to have to deal with this problem for a long time to come--as a species probably forever."

The exhibit was more than three years in the making, and DeSalle credits an extremely active advisory committee with helping shape its form and content. Dr. Mary Wilson, assistant professor in the Departments of Epidemiology, and Population and International Health; Andrew Spielman, professor of tropical public health; and Dean Barry Bloom all lent their time and talents to the committee’s efforts. According to DeSalle, the School’s faculty and other experts steered him and the museum away from being too molecular or too medical and convinced them to stick with what they do best: natural history. "In essence the exhibition is a tiny natural history museum with a very focused subject matter," he remarks. "So we try to get across to people the natural history of microbial-human interactions and that, we hope, will allow them to understand their health and global public health in general." DeSalle also notes what he found to be a surprising bonus of Epidemic!: every time he goes through the hall, he sees kids asking questions and, more importantly, parents actually talking to them--about disease, about health.

"It’s certainly timely for public health to get kids indoctrinated," says Bloom. "When someone asks, ‘What do you do?’ and I say, ‘I’m the dean of the School of Public Health,’ and they say, ‘What’s that?’--it’s time for things to change. This kind of exhibit can only help."

Epidemic! will be shown through September 6. Formore information, visit the Web site or call the museum at 212-769-5100.

-- Alexandra Benis