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The San Diego Natural History Museum's $10 million investment in the Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit sounds like a lot of money to spend on a temporary attraction.
But the Balboa Park museum's officials who know their antiquities chapter and verse obviously aren't lacking in business savvy either.
According to the museum's vice president of institutional advancement, Janet Redding, the exhibit scheduled to run between June 29 and Dec. 31 is expected to draw attendance of 400,000.
Calculating the off-peak admission of $24 per person, the peak price of $28 a head, and discount rates offered for groups, planners derive what they call a "blended" rate of $21 for everyone who comes through the door. Take that times the anticipated attendance and you get $8.4 million, she said.
Considering that throngs of religious believers and the merely curious have flocked to see the 2,000-year-old scrolls anywhere they've exhibited outside Israel and Jordan, sources say it's a good bet they'll be just as popular or more...