The Milwaukee Public Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is exploring what the future should be for the Humphrey IMAX Dome Theater that is part of the museum complex, according to an article published today in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

The future of the IMAX system and brand is coming under scrutiny by Milwaukee Public Museum, as attendance at the Humphrey IMAX Dome Theater dipped over the past year.

3-D or 4-D? IMAX or another brand?

Those and other issues will be explored by Bob Bonadurer, the museum's IMAX and Planetarium director, in a report to be completed before September. The study was ordered by Museum President Dan Finley, to help determine how to best outfit the theater as large-screen movie technology advances and the theater copes with a local IMAX competitor.

"There are major looming issues regarding the IMAX," Finley told museum board members, including the museum's lease on its IMAX system expiring in two years, the availability of high-quality IMAX films appropriate to the museum and potential upgrades to the theater.

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The museum's IMAX theater is a "Dome" configuration, which means that the image is projected onto the inside of a partial sphere, with the viewer in the inside of that sphere. This format was referred to at one time by the name "Omnimax." No mainstream IMAX movies are created in this format (they are intended to be shown on flat IMAX screens), which causes the image to be distorted when projected on the rounded IMAX Dome screen. This limits the theater's ability to show non-documentary IMAX movies effectively.

Compounding the challenges faced by the Humphrey IMAX Dome is the October 2009 opening of an IMAX screen at the AMC Mayfair Mall 18 in Wauwatosa, less than 10 miles west of the museum.