“When is the Mummies-Themed Family Costume Party at The Oriental Institute?” by S.M. O’Connor

To help celebrate the Centennial Year (100^th anniversary of the foundation of) The Oriental Institute “Mummies Night: 100 Years of Mummies!” will be on Saturday, October 26, 2019 from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. This will be the 20^th annual family Halloween party. Costumes are encouraged.

Children are free. The suggested donation for adults is $5 per adult. Click here to reserve tickets online via Eventbrite.

This event is recommended for children ages four-and-up. Children must be accompanied by an adult.

Activities will including mummifying a simulated mummy, taking a Mummy Tour, hear a mummy tale, making mummy crafts, competing in a Mummy Wrap Race, and getting a family photo. This is an opportunity to learn how to play the ancient Egyptian game of Senet.

Mummy Simulations will occur every half-hour throughout “Mummies Night: 100 Years of Mummies!” Tickets cost $3 per child, but the simulation is free for the accompanying adult. Tickets can be purchased on-site during the event on a first-come, first-served basis.

Mummy Tours will also take place every half-hour. Tickets are free, but space is limited. Reserve tickets ahead of time via Eventbrite by clicking here. A small number of tickets will be available on-site.

Scouts (and other interested youths) can get their Oriental Institute mummy fun patch for attending “Mummies Night: 100 Years of Mummies!” The patches will be available on-site.

Artifacts that always attract visitors include a seventeen-foot-tall statue of Pharaoh Tutankhamun (better known as King Tut) and a forty-tone lamassu (a creature with the headed of a bearded man and body of a bull with the addition of wings) made by ancient Assyrians. The Oriental Institute invites attends of “Mummies Night: 100 Years of Mummies” to take pictures of themselves in their Halloween costumes in front of the King Tut statue and the winged bull.

The Oriental Institute of part of The University of Chicago. The Office of the Provost of The University of Chicago is backing this event.

Founded in 1919 by James Henry Breasted (1865-1935) with the financial support of John D. Rockefeller, Jr. (1874-1960), whose father provided the bulk of the financial support for the foundation of The University of Chicago, The Oriental Institute is one of the world’s leading archaeology museums and research centers devoted to the study of the history and art of ancient Near East and Middle East civilizations of Egypt, Nubia, Anatolia, the Levant, Mesopotamia, and Persia. The Oriental Institute, which sent out field expeditions in the 1920s, ‘30s, and ‘40s, opened in 1931. In the 1990s and early 2000s, The Oriental Institute Museum underwent major renovations and a new wing was built with climate-controlled storage for artifacts and the archives.

The Oriental Institute is located on The University of Chicago campus in Hyde Park on the South Side of Chicago. It is north of the Rockefeller Memorial Chapel on a block bounded by 58^th Street to the north, Woodlawn Avenue to the east, 59^th Street to the south, and University Avenue to the west.

The address is 1155 East 58^th Street, Chicago, Illinois 60637. Click here for driving and parking directions.

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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.