“Museum of Science and Industry to Host Breakfast with Jordan Reeves,” by S.M. O’Connor

At the Morning, Makers event, the Museum of Science and Industry (M.S.I.) will host breakfast with Jordan Reeves on Saturday, March 23, 2019. This is an opportunity to bring the family to eat breakfast at the M.S.I., spend the morning learning about technology is increasingly being integrated into our clothing (and even into our bodies), and listen to one of the creators featured in the new exhibit Wired to Wear™, young Jordan Reeves. The precocious thirteen-year-old will explain how she used S.T.E.M. (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) education and her own creativity to design a prosthetic arm for herself (fabricated by a 3D printer) that looks like a unicorn horn and sprays glitter.

Wired to Wear™, presented by BMO, is a temporary exhibit that will open on Thursday, March 21, 2019 and run through spring of next year. Featuring over 100 artifacts from around the world, it is the first-ever exhibit dedicated exclusively to wearable technology.

Born without a complete left arm, Jordan Reeves designed, at the age of ten years old, a prosthetic arm like nothing an adult would design for her. With her mother, Jen, she founded the non-profit organization Born Just Right, which empowers other children in a similar position to hers to design their own prosthetic limbs. She has shown off her glitter canon arm on The Rachael Ray Show, MakerFaire, and a TEDx talk. Her family resides in Columbia, Missouri.

Tickets are $45 for adults and $30 for children (ages three-to-eleven). A ticket covers parking, breakfast, early-morning access to the Wired to Wear™ exhibit, the Makers United workshop, and Museum Entry for the day. The event is from 8:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. Check-in begins at 7:30 a.m.

The Makers United workshop is for ages six and up. ArcelorMittol presents the new Makers United workshop.

Register online here. Then select timed-entry tickets for the Wired to Wear™ exhibit and the Makers United workshop, both of which are located on the Main Level. If one has a question, one should call (773) 684-1414 and select Option 3.

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 4:00 p.m., but during peak periods it is open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.Until March 22, 2019, the M.S.I. will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. However, from Saturday, March 23, 2019 through Sunday, March 31, 2019, the M.S.I. will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., after which it will revert to regular hours. In April, the M.S.I. will be open regular hours with some exceptions. It will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. the weekend of Saturday, April 6, 2019 and Sunday, April 7, 2019 and from Saturday, April 13, 2019 through Saturday, April 20, 2019. [Note that Sunday, April 14, 2019 is Palm Sunday; Friday, April 19, 2019 is Good Friday; and Sunday, April 21, 2019 is Easter Sunday.] In May, regular hours will be in effect except on Saturday, May 25, 2019, when the M.S.I. will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Sunday, May 26, 2019, when the M.S.I. will be open from 11:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; and Monday, May 27, 2019 (Memorial Day), when the M.S.I. will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.

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 the Chicago Park District’s 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. Founded by Sears, Roebuck & Company President Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932) in 1926, through The Commercial Club of Chicago, the Museum of Science and Industry opened in three stages between 1933 and 1940. It occupies the Palace of Fine Arts from Chicago’s first World’s Fair, the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893). The address is 5700 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60637. The Website is https://www.msichicago.org/ and the phone number is (773) 684-1414.

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.