“Tornado Alley at the Museum of Science & Industry’s Giant Dome Theater” by S.M. O’Connor

Tornado Alley debuted at the Museum of Science and Industry’s Giant Dome Theater on Friday, May 25, 2018. The late Bill Paxton (1955-2017), who starred or had supporting roles in The Terminator (1984), Weird Science (1985), Aliens (1986), Tombstone (1993), True Lies (1994), Apollo 13 (1995), Twister (1996), Titanic (1997), U-571 (2000), Vertical Limit (2000), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Big Love (2006-2011), Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., and Training Day (2017), and director of Frailty (2001) and The Greatest Game Ever Played (2005), narrated the film.

The title of the film refers to a region with no precise definition, but which includes the Great Plains states. It roughly includes northern Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Colorado, South Dakota, Iowa, and southern Minnesota. Tornado Alley follows the Discovery Channel’s Storm Chasers (2007-2012) star Sean Casey and the scientists of VORTEX2 as they encounter one of the earth’s awe-inspiring events – the creation of a tornado. In a press release, the M.S.I. stated, “Whirling above the human drama as the storms themselves, magnificent forces of nature revealed in breathtaking detail through the giant screen.”

The team pursue tornadoes in ‘Tornado Alley,’ a region in the center of the United States that is home to Earth’s most violent and destructive tornadoes. As Casey’s team seeks to capture groundbreaking footage of a tornado from point-blank range, the VORTEX2 team strives to understand the origin and structure of tornadoes. The researchers hope to use their findings to improve the ability to predict when and where tornadoes will strike, ensuring greater safety to those in harm’s way.

As part of the celebration around the reopening of the Giant Dome Theater, the Museum of Science and Industry debuted Amazon Adventure (2017), a new film about the eleven-year-long journey of the English naturalist Henry Walter Bates (1825-1895) up the Amazon River in the 19^th Century. Amazon Adventure debuted on Memorial Day (May 29, 2017) inside the Museum of Science and Industry’s five-story wrap-around Giant Dome Theater (formerly the Omnimax® Theater). In 2016, over 300,000 people visited the Museum of Science and Industry’s Omnimax® Theater, which opened in the Henry Crown Space Center in 1986.[1] In May of 2017, the Museum of Science and Industry unveiled a state-of-the-art projection system in the Omnimax® Theater, which it renamed the Giant Dome Theater to emphasize the change in projection technology. The Museum of Science and Industry is the first institution in Chicago and the second in the world to install the new system from D3D/Christie Laser Dome, a company based in north suburban Evanston, Illinois. It uses three different laser projectors to create a composite image. The Dover Foundation supports the Giant Dome Theater.

Tornado Alley is screened daily at 11:00 a.m., 12:30 p.m., 2:00 p.m., 3:30 p.m., and 5:00 p.m. on dates with extended hours in the Giant Dome Theater through Labor Day (Monday, September 3, 2018). It is not included in Museum Entry (general admission) and requires an additional timed-entry ticket. Film tickets are available in Explorer ticket packages.

Before or after seeing the film, audience members should check out the artificial forty-foot-tall tornado in the two-story physics and chemistry exhibit Science Storms in the West Court of the M.S.I.’s Central Pavilion. The M.S.I. stated, “This vortex of swirling, illuminated vapor can be manipulated using a control panel, allowing guests to experiment with the vortex’s air flow.” The exhibit “uses natural phenomena, including tornadoes, avalanches, fire, and more to explore basic chemistry and physics principles in a dynamic, hands-on way.”

Vortex_2__17_

Figure 1 Credit: Museum of Science and Industry Caption: Herb Stein of the Center for Severe Weather Research (working with Vortex 2) observes a supercell from Doppler on Wheels (DOW) 6 in western Nebraska

Figure 2 Credit: Museum of Science and Industry Caption: The teams pursue tornadoes in “Tornado Alley,” a region in the center of the United States of America that is home to Earth’s most violent and destructive tornados.

Figure 3 Credit: Museum of Science and Industry Caption: Narrated by the late Bill Paxton (1955-2017), Tornado Alley follows the Discovery Channel’s Storm Chasers (2007-2012) star Sean Casey and the scientists of VORTEX2 as they encounter one of the earth’s awe-inspiring events – the creation of a tornado.

This year, the Museum of Science and Industry is celebrating the 75^th anniversary of its first opening ceremony, during Chicago’s second World’s Fair, A Century of Progress International Exposition (1933-34). It opened in three stages between 1933 and 1940. The building that houses the Museum of Science and Industry, is the Palace of Fine Arts. Designed by Charles B. Atwood (1849-1896), it was built to house a temporary art museum for Chicago’s first World’s Fair, the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893), and afterwards it housed the Columbian Field Museum, which evolved into The Field Museum of Natural History, until 1920, when it moved into its new quarters, where it opened in 1921. Consequently, this year the Museum of Science and Industry is celebrating the 125^th anniversary of the building and The Field Museum of Natural History is celebrating the 125^th anniversary of its foundation.

Through Labor Day (Monday, September 3, 2018), the M.S.I. is open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. every day except Saturday, August 11^th. On Tuesday, September 4, 2018, the M.S.I. will revert to regular hours (9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.). On Sunday, September 23, 2018, the M.S.I. will be open from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.; on Saturday, October 6, 2018, will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.; and on the weekend of Saturday, November 17, 2018 and Sunday, November 18, 2018, the M.S.I. will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The Museum of Science and Industry will be closed on Thanksgiving Day (Thursday, November 22, 2018) and the First Day of Christmas (Tuesday, December 25, 2018). Extended hours (9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.) will be in play again from Friday, November 23, 2018 to Sunday, November 25, 2018; Saturday, December 1, 2018 and Sunday, December 2, 2018; Saturday, December 8, 2018 and Sunday, December 9, 2018; Saturday, December 15, 2018 and Sunday, December 2016; Saturday, December 22, 2018 and Sunday, December 23, 2018; and Wednesday, December 26, 2018 through Sunday, December 30, 2018. Check this Webpage and the Museum of Science and Industry’s social media for updates.

Often stylized as the “Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago” or the “Museum of Science + Industry” the institution is located at the northern end of Jackson Park, on the south side of 57^th Street, between Lake Shore Drive to the east and Cornell Drive to the west, in the East Hyde Park neighborhood of the Hyde Park Community Area (Community Area #41) on the South Side of Chicago. The address is 5700 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60637. The M.S.I. is open every day of the year with two exceptions: Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day. On most days, it is open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., but during peak periods it is open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. The Website is https://www.msichicago.org/ and the phone number is (773) 684-1414.

ENDNOTE

[1] OMNIMAX and IMAX theater technologies were developed in the 1960s by the IMAX Systems Corporation of Toronto. Known today as the IMAX Corporation, it is both a manufacturing company and a service company. It manufactures IMAX cameras and projectors, produces films, develops IMAX film, and provides postproduction services. At the time the Museum of Science and Industry built the OMNIMAX Theater in the Henry Crown Space Center, films were produced for the OMNIMAX format by the IMAX Systems Corporation, a consortium of science museum theaters, and other organizations.

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.

I appreciate how The Catlow Movie Theater’s Tudor Revival style of architecture matches the small office building next door.

Woodridge Enshrouded by Fog

Fog veiled Green Valley Forest Preserve and surrounding neighborhoods on Thursday, February 15, 2018. Seemingly anything might have come out of this little valley.

This is how Green Valley Forest Preserve looked.

This is another view of Green Valley Forest Preserve from a strip mall across the street.

One wouldn’t be surprised by anything that walked out of the Green Valley Forest Preserve when it was blanketed in snow and shrouded by fog.

A few miles away, this is how the clock tower above Hollywood Blvd. Cinema in the Woodgrove Festival mall looked in the fog.

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