“The Field Museum’s Moon Rock Holiday Special,” by S.M. O’Connor

Members of The Field Museum of Natural History will have an opportunity to snap photographs of a Moon rock and learn about the science behind science fiction films such as Star Wars (1977) and Alien (1979) with the “Moon Rock Holiday Special” on Friday, December 20, 2019 from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. They will also get to connect with scientists and see Martian samples, as well as the famous Tataouine Meteorite recovered in Tunisia in 1932. The “Moon Rock Holiday Special” will take place in the Founders Room on the Main Level, near the gift shop. Check in at the Membership Desk before proceeding there. The name of this event is clearly a play on the many Christmas specials that play on television (and now streaming video services like Netflix). This event is free for Members and their guests. Space is limited and offered on a first-come, first-served basis. Click here to become a Member.

Open 364 days a year (every day but Christmas Day) from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., the last admission time to The Field Museum is 4:00 p.m. SUE’s “private suite” (formerly the movie theater in Evolving Planet) opened on Friday, December 21, 2018. SUE is the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton yet recovered. Her mounted bones went on display at The Field Museum on May 17, 2000.[1] More than 10,000 people visited The Field Museum that day.

In one of the largest private gifts ever to a Chicago museum, the Tyrannosaurus rex SUE was remounted in a more scientifically accurate way and moved upstairs from Stanley Field Hall to the exhibit The Griffin Halls of Evolving Planet, as I wrote about in 2017. Meanwhile, a touchable cast of the biggest dinosaur yet discovered, Patagotitan mayorum, was installed in Stanley Field Hall, as part of The Field Museum’s 125^th anniversary celebrations in 2018, thanks to a $16,500,000 gift from the Kenneth C. Griffin Charitable Trust. This titanosaur cast, which strecthes across 122 feet of Stanley Field Hall, has been dubbed Máximo. Moving SUE upstairs and remounting her inside The Griffin Halls of Evolving Planet, the installation of the titanosaur and pterosaurs (flying reptile) casts in Stanley Field Hall, and the traveling exhibit Antarctic Dinosaursfall under the umbrella of the Griffin Dinosaur Experience. Last year, The Field Museum announced the $250,000,000 fundraising campaign “Because Earth. The Campaign for the Field Museum.”

The Field Museum has over 30,000,000 artifacts and specimens. Over 150 scientists, conservators, and collections staff members work there.

The Field Museum is located on the Museum Campus at the northern end of the Chicago Park District’s Burnham Park, due east of Grant Park in downtown Chicago. These days, it is open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. The address is 1400 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60605. The phone number is (312) 922-9410. The Website U.R.L. is https://www.fieldmuseum.org/.

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[1] William Mullen and Alex Bordens, “Learning from Sue,” Chicago Tribune, 16 May, 2010, Section 1, p. 4

See also William Mullen, “T. Rex Proving to be $8.3 Million Bargain for Field Museum,” Chicago Tribune, 16 May, 2010, Section 1, p. 4

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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.