When is the Family Science Fiction Event at the Adler Planetarium?”

Bring the kids and delve into science fiction and fantasy genres at the Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum at Family After Dark: Sci-Fi & Fantasy Adventure on Friday, September 28, 2018 from 5:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. General Admission Tickets are $15 for adults, $10 for children twelve and under, $8 for Adler members, and free for children free and under. Tickets cover full access and admission to all exhibits and galleries; unlimited sky shows in the two dome theaters; special hands-on activities and presentations on what your unique fingerprints say about you, imagine what aliens from another planet might look like and make masks with “Thark aliens,” and experiment with different materials to experience near-space conditions; live entertainment; and the best view of the Chicago skyline in Chicago. Purchase tickets online here.

Tickets do not include food and drinks, but you can bring your own food and drinks for a picnic outside. A limited menu will be available at Galileo Café, along with a child-friendly bar with select adult beverages, water, juice, milk, and soda.

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 of Natural History, the John G. Shedd Aquarium, and Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum 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: 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.

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.