“When is the 6th Annual Science Works S.T.E.M. Career Celebration at the M.S.I.?” by S.M. O’Connor

The sixth annual Science Works S.T.E.M. (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) career celebration at Chicago’s Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, which I will continue to abbreviate as M.S.I., will be on Saturday, October 19, 2019. Engineers, neuroscientists, a veterinarian, and app designers will be on hand. Science Works, sponsored by BP, is included with Museum Entry tickets.

Children and their adults can engage in hands-on activities. With the help of BP engineers, one can make a tool that measures wind speed. A veterinarian will guide guests through taking a dog’s heartbeat. Neuroscientists will help guests explore how our brains work. Guests can also bring ideas into the world with a 3D printer.

Representatives of nearly forty companies and other organizations will be on site, including BP, Nicor Gas, Metro by T-Mobile, the National Society of Black Engineers, and Latinas in Tech., according to the Facebook Webpage for the event. S.T.E.M. professionals will answer questions, make engaging demonstrations, and offer advice to youngsters curious about starting careers in S.T.E.M. fields. The twenty-seven companies and other organizations that will be represented at the sixth annual Science Works are Animal Quest Entertainment; The Anti-Cruelty Society; the Argonne National Laboratory; Argonne National Laboratory, High Energy Physics Division; BP Products North America, Inc.; Building Bridges, Inc.®; Cubz 2 Kingz; Exelon Corporation; The Genius Lab; HBK Engineering, L.L.C.; Latinas in Tech; MAGMA Foundry Technologies; Metro by T-Mobile; the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Great Chicago; the Museum of Science and Industry’s own Fab Lab; Nalco Water, an Ecolab Company; Nicor Gas; Northrop Grumman; Northwestern University Brain Awareness Outreach; Northwestern University Prosthetics and Orthotics Center; PepsiCo R&D; the Northwestern University Chapter of the Society of Asian Scientists and Engineers (S.A.S.E.); the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers at the I.I.T.; Shure, Inc.; TransUnion; UChicago Medicine Comprehensive Cancer Center; and The University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. [I previously profiled the Wanger Family Fab Lab.] The event is Museum-wide on the Main Level from 9:30 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Click here to learn about Jr. Science Cafés and click here for Science Works Online Career Connections.

Credit: Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago Caption: This is a promotional video for Science Works from 2014.

Credit: Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago Caption: this video from 2015 is more generally about the M.S.I.’s efforts to promote S.T.E.M. education.

As I wrote about yesterday, the M.S.I. announced on Thursday, October 3, 2019 that the Board of Trustees had voted to accept a $125,000,000 gift from the Kenneth C. Griffin Charitable Fund. M.S.I. executives and board members felt it would consequently be appropriate to change the M.S.I.’s name to the Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry. A multi-billionaire, Mr. Griffin is the founder and Chief Executive Officer (C.E.O.) of Citadel, Inc., a Chicago-based hedge fund. His gift is the largest in the history of the science and technology museum, and one of the largest gifts to any cultural institution in Chicago.

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). Throughout the whole of October, it will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., except today, Saturday, October 5, 2019, when it will be open from 9:30 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. because of the annual Columbian Ball being held tonight.

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.

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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.