While the Mona Lisa is set to get her own room at the Louvre, Leonardo da Vinci himself will be celebrated with a brand-new museum in the city of Pueblo, Colorado — the first and only institution in North America devoted to the artist and inventor.Scheduled to open this fall, the museum will be primarily focused on Leonardo’s engineering endeavors, bringing his drawings, text, and experiments to life through interactive models facilitated by the Artisans of Florence, a touring exhibitions company that has a close partnership with the Museo Leonardo da Vinci in Florence. A rendering of the forthcoming museum’s gift shopThe Colorado Economic Development Commission gave its final approval for the Leonardo da Vinci Museum of North America in downtown Pueblo on Thursday, February 20, following a 10-year exclusivity memorandum of understanding ensuring that it “will be the only permanent home in the United States for Leonardo da Vinci’s model-based exhibits.”After the Artisans of Florence’s traveling exhibition Da Vinci: Machines and Robotics made a stop at the Sangre de Cristo Arts and Conference Center in Pueblo during summer 2022, the company has since stored many of the exhibition’s contraptions in the city to be loaned all over, prompting the Southern Colorado Science Center (SCSC) to spearhead the proposal for their permanent home onsite.“The Artisans of Florence have been creating machines by hand from the original drawings and sketches of Leonardo da Vinci,” said Craig Eliot Cisney, vice president of the SCSC, in an interview with 11 News in southern Colorado last December, noting that over 70 of the machines have been stored in Pueblo for the last couple of years for distribution to other exhibitions throughout the United States. Those contraptions are set to occupy the forthcoming Leonardo da Vinci Museum now that it has been granted a lease in the defunct Pro Bull Riders Sports Performance Center. The interactive machines geared toward children’s education will also be installed along sections of the Historic Arkansas Riverwalk. In addition to rotating exhibits, the museum is set to have a gift shop as well as an outdoor cafe.In a statement, SCSC Board Chair Joe Arrigo emphasized the new institution’s significance to the Pueblo community in the areas of STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Mathematics) education. “This approval allows us to move forward with our plans to create an interactive and educational experience that celebrates the genius of Leonardo da Vinci,” Arrigo said.