“When is the Adult Halloween Event at the Adler Planetarium?” by S.M. O’Connor

The Deep: Adler After Dark will be on Thursday, October 18, 2018. This is part of the Adler Planetarium’s Adler After Dark series of events for adults (ages twenty-one-and-over) on every third Thursday of the month from 6:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.[1] These theme changes every month. The events include open access, unlimited shows, and entertainment. To set the mood, the Adler Planetarium stated, “The Void. The Big Empty. The Great Unknown. These terms could rightly be applied to both deep space and the deep ocean, but is one scarier than the other? Learn more and cast your vote this fall at Adler After Dark!”

The John G. Shedd Aquarium will present “some of the ocean’s weirdest creature adaptations.” Visitors will be able to explore nightmarish visions from classic science fiction novels and nab some giveaways from the Chicago Public Library’s program One Book, One Chicago;[2] view Expedition Reef, an immersive full-dome show about coral reefs; learn about how tardigrades can survive in superheated water and the vacuum of outer space; and participate in a panel discussion where an astronomer and a fish biologist will attempt to identity the scariest deep-sea creatures and how they help us imagine life on other worlds.

The event will include an update of the hands-on program from The Aquarius Project. This is a collaboration between the Adler Planetarium, the Shedd Aquarium, The Field Museum of Natural History, and N.A.S.A. to find meteorites at the bottom of Lake Michigan.

Costumes are encouraged for this event. If you are looking for inspiration for a costume, check out the Adler Planetarium’s photo albums of past Adler After Dark events on Facebook. If you do plan to attend in a costume, make sure your costume conforms with the Cosplay & Costuming Weapons Policy.

Tickets are $20 ($15 for Adler Members) if purchased in advance online and $25 at the door ($20 at the door for Adler Members). Please note that for the Adler After Dark event in October, tour tickets for Doane Observatory will not be available. Event capacity is limited and may sell out, so tickets may not be available at the door. For group of fifteen or more people or corporate booking, e-mail groups@adlerplanetarium.org. Be prepared to show photo identification card at the door.

Normally, the Adler Planetarium is open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. However, it will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Monday, October 8, 2018; Friday, November 23, 2018; Saturday, November 24, 2018; Sunday, November 25, 2018; and from Wednesday, December 26, 2018 through Tuesday, January 1, 2019. It will be closed on Thanksgiving Day (Thursday, November 22, 2018) and Christmas Day (Tuesday, December 25, 2018).

The Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum is located at the northeastern corner of Northerly Island, which is really a peninsula. It is the only island from a chain of artificial islands Daniel Hudson Burnham, Senior (1846-1912) and Edward H. Bennett (1874-1954) called for in the Plan of Chicago. Northerly Island is part of the Chicago Park District’s Burnham Park. The Field Museum, the Shedd Aquarium, and Adler Planetarium comprise the Museum Campus at the northern end of Burnham Park, east of Grant Park in downtown Chicago. Soldier Field and the Lakeside Center of McCormick Place are immediately south of the Museum Campus in Burnham Park. The Arie Crown Theater is inside the Lakeside Center.

Figure 1 Credit: Photo courtesy of Adler Planetarium Caption: This is a picture from an Adler After Dark event.

Figure 2 Credit: Photo courtesy of Adler Planetarium Caption: The Trustees of the B.F. Ferguson Monument Fund commissioned Sir Henry Moore (1898-1986) to produce the bronze sundial sculpture Man Enters the Cosmos that stands northwest of the Adler Planetarium.

The address is 1300 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60605. The phone number is (312) 922-7827. The Website U.R.L. is https://www.adlerplanetarium.org.

ENDNOTES

[1] During the peak period of summertime, the Adler After Dark night events take place from 6:30 p.m. to 10:30 p.m.

[2] On Monday, September 10, 2018, the Chicago Public Library announced Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Chicago-born science fiction novelist Philip K. Dick (1928-1982). This is the book that inspired Sir Ridley Scott’s classic science fiction movie Blade Runner (1982), which recently had a sequel, Blade Runner 2049 (2017).

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.