Visionary artist built Noah’s Ark and world of Genesis with experience gained at the Olympics and Universal Orlando.
Patrick Marsh worked on the design of the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles and then turned around to help with the renovation of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor, which reopened to great fanfare in 1986.
He played a key role in designing two popular rides at Universal Orlando when it opened in 1990—Jaws and Kongfrontation—and then moved to Japan to design cutting-edge theme parks in Tokyo and the foothills of Mount Fuji.
But he didn’t think he had reached the height of his career until he got to Kentucky. He didn’t like the mud, he told a local newspaper reporter, but he loved the work—designing the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter.
“That’s probably the most incredible thing I’ve had a chance to do,” Marsh said. “I just feel like all the things that the Lord has been working on my life has led up to actually coming here to Answers in Genesis” (AiG).
Marsh, the creative force behind the creationist attractions in Petersburg and Williamstown, Kentucky, died on December 2. He was 77.
“Calling him a ‘genius’ is not an overstatement,” Ken Ham, AIG founder and CEO, said in the organization’s official announcement. “Patrick’s fingerprints are all over the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter. I have never worked with a more creative person.”
Anthropologist James Bielo, who wrote a book about the process of designing the full-scale recreation of Noah’s ark and the opening of the park in 2016, said there was always a creative give-and-take between Marsh and his team, and Ham had to sign off on every decision, but Marsh was the undisputed “maestro.”
“Patrick would bring Ken Ham fully fleshed-out …
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