“New Exhibits and Movies at the Museum of Science and Industry” by S.M. O’Connor

Brick By Brick Exhibit @ the Museum of Science and Industry Chicago

Turn Back the Clock Exhibit @ The Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago

Robot Revolution exhibit @ the Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago

The waning days of summer are a good time to visit the Museum of Science and Industry (M.S.I.), as well as Chicago’s other great science and art museums. Adam Reed Tucker, the LEGO® Certified Professional featured in the temporary exhibit Brick by Brick, will sign special edition copies of Bricks Culture magazine on Saturday, August 26, 2017 from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. This event is free with Museum Entry (General Admission) tickets. Brick by Brick opened on Thursday, March 10, 2016 and was supposed to be open through February of 2017 but was extended until Monday, September 4, 2017.

In addition to the previously-profiled Imagining the Museum exhibit, there are two other new temporary exhibits at the M.S.I., Turn Back the Clock and Extreme Ice. Further, the M.S.I. also brought back its national touring exhibit Robot Revolution. Extreme Ice opened on Thursday, March 23, 2017 and runs through early 2019. Turn Back the Clock opened on Friday, May 26, 2017 and runs through early 2018. Robot Revolution re-opened on Thursday, May 11, 2017. It will run through Sunday, February 4, 2018.

Amazon Adventure debuted on Memorial Day (May 29, 2017) inside the M.S.I.’s five-story Giant Dome Theater (formerly Omnimax® Theater). It will be screened through the spring of 2018. Titans of the Ice Age, narrated by Christopher Plummer, will be screened through Sunday, September 10, 2017. Tiny Giants, narrated by Stephen Fry, will be screened through Sunday, September 10, 2017. Dream Big will debut in the Giant Dome Theater on Monday, September 11, 2017.

Figure 1 Credit: J.B. Spector, Museum of Science and Industry Caption: Adam Reed Tucker poses with his LEGO® model of the Burj Khalifa in the exhibit Brick by Brick.

Figure 2 Credit: J.B. Spector, Museum of Science and Industry Caption: As visitors explore Turn Back the Clock, they will learn about the significance of the Doomsday Clock maintained by the Journal of Atomic Scientists and how it has evolved over the last seventy years.

Figure 3 Credit: Kasumi Chow, Museum of Science and Industry Caption: The Museum of Science and Industry exhibit Extreme Ice features dozens of amazing photos of global glacier melt, shot by American photographer James Balog.

Figure 4 Credit: J.B. Spector, Museum of Science and Industry Caption: RoboThespian, which greets visitors as they enter the exhibit Robot Revolution, can speak and move in customizable ways.

One can buy tickets online in advance at https://www.msichicago.org/visit/tickets. This time of year, the Museum of Science and Industry is open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

The Museum of Science and Industry is located in the northeast corner of Jackson Park in the neighborhood of Hyde Park on the South Side of Chicago. It stands on 57^th Street at the intersection with Lake Shore Drive. The address is 5700 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60637.

The Field Museum of Natural History in March, 2018

The Field Museum of Natural History’s entrance pavilions are at opposite ends of Stanley Field Hall, which has a north-south axis. The two porticos (porches) are each reached by two successive flights of stairs.

Both porticos of The Field Museum of Natural History are flanked by two small porches, which each have two caryatids (columns in the shape of maidens). On the facade, the wings are adorned with a colonnade of attached fluted Ionic columns. The building’s fluted Ionic columns have volutes (spiral-scroll-shaped crowns).

Each portico of The Field Museum is tetrastyle in antis with double-ranked fluted Ionic columns capped by volutes. An entablature crowned by a pediment rests atop the columns. The continuous frieze in each case is relatively plain. The wave-themed acroteria that crown the pediments are borrowed from the Palace of a Fine Arts, which housed The Field Museum until 1920 and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Field Museum of Natural History isn’t “just” a museum. Visitors can watch scientists at work through windows at the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice DNA Discovery Center’s Pritzker Laboratory.

Mrs. Charles (Laura) Schweppe, a daughter and co-heiress of John Graves Shedd, the former partner of Marshall Field I who succeeded him as president of Marshall Field & Company, and who, under the guidance of Stanley Field founded the Shedd Aquarium, donated an exhibit of 100 bronze sculptures by Malvina Hoffman to The Field Museum. They represent every race, nation, and tribe in the human family (more or less). On January 9, 1933, the first group, Unity of Man, went on display.

In addition to the four figures Henry Hering (1874-1949) made for the corners of Stanley Field Hall, he also made the twelve plaster round lion head shield escutcheons that line it. These are replicas of the marble round lion head shield escutcheon he made for the pediment of the facade of The Field Museum of Natural History.

Christmas at Chicago’s Union Station

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a POLAR EXPRESS display in the Great Hall of Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a closeup of the THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is the headlamp of THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Union Station Company rail car loaded with super-size gifts is part of THE POLAR EXPRESS mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Union Station in downtown Chicago has emblems of Amtrak, Metra, and historic railroad companies whose routes they now operate like Burlington.

Cinemas sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) Helped Design

This is the Pickwick Theatre Building, an Art Deco movie palace and office building erected in downtown Park Ridge, Illinois in 1928.

The architects were Roscoe Harold Zook and William F. McCaughey. Sculptor Alfonso Iannelli, who also worked on the Adler Planetarium, contributed to this building.

In recent years, the Vlahakis family, who’ve owned the building for 50 years, have been able to turn the building into a multiplex by adding smaller theaters around the original auditorium. The latest one, with a screen four times the size of the one in the auditorium, will open in time to screen INFINITY WARS in May, if all goes well.

The Catlow Movie Theater is a cinema that opened in downtown Barrington, Illinois in 1927. The Tudor Revival style of architecture is not confined to the facade of the cinema. As with the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Illinois, sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) played a role in the design and decoration of The Catlow Movie Theater.