“When is the Museum of Science & Industry Free for Illinois Residents in January and February?”

The Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry has thirty-one Illinois Free Days in January and February of 2020: Mondays through Thursdays in January (from the 6^th to the 9^th, from the 13^th to the 16^th, from the 20^th to the 23^rd, and from the 27^th to the 30^th of January); and from the 3^rd to the 6^th, from the 10^th to the 13^th, from the 18^th to the 20^th, and from the 24^th to the 27^th of February. This is an excellent opportunity for families with preschool-aged children, homeschooling families, and adults with open schedules. Please note that Monday, January 20, A.D. 2020 is Martin Luther King, Junior Day, which all schoolchildren have off, so if either parent (or perhaps a grandparent or uncle or aunt) also has the day off, a trip to the Museum of Science and Industry (M.S.I.) may be a good way to spend the civic holiday.

On Illinois Free Days, Museum Entry (general admission) is free for all Illinois residents who show valid proof of residency. No further Chicago residency discounts apply on Illinois Free Days. There is a limit of six children (meaning minors under eighteen) admitted per one accompanying adult.[1]

ILLINOIS RESIDENT DISCOUNT DAYS IN 2020

Month	Date
January	Monday, January 6, 2020 Tuesday, January 7, 2020 Wednesday, January 8, 2020 Thursday, January 9, 2020 Monday, January 13, 2020 Tuesday, January 14, 2020 Wednesday, January 15, 2020 Thursday, January 16, 2020 Monday, January 20, 2020 Tuesday, January 21, 2020 Wednesday, January 22, 2020 Thursday, January 23, 2020 Monday, January, 27, 2020 Tuesday, January 28, 2020 Wednesday, January 29, 2020 Thursday, January 30, 2020
February	Monday, February 3, 2020 Tuesday, February 4, 2020 Wednesday, February 5, 2020 Thursday, February 6, 2020 Monday, February 10, 2020 Tuesday, February 11, 2020 Wednesday, February 12, 2020 Thursday, February 13, 2020 Tuesday, February 18, 2020 Wednesday, February 19, 2020 Thursday, February 20, 2020 Monday, February 24, 2020 Tuesday, February 25, 2020 Wednesday, February 26, 2020 Thursday, February 27, 2020

The Coal Mine, optional U-505 onboard tours, and certain other exhibits and workshops are not included by Museum Entry, and require separate admission tickets. Wired to Wear, Coal Mine tour tickets, Fab Lab workshop tickets, and Future Energy Chicago tickets are $12 each for adults and $9 each for children (ages three-to-eleven). U-505 Onboard Tour tickets are $18 each for adults and $14 each for children (ages three-to-eleven). As I reported last week, the Giant Dome Theater in the M.S.I.’s Henry Crown Space Center closed on Monday, January 6, 2020 and re-open in March.

Often formerly 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.

The Kenneth C. Griffin Museum of Science and Industry is housed in the Palace of Fine Arts, also known as the Fine Arts Building, which is the last palace from the White City fairgrounds of Chicago’s first World’s Fair, the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893), still standing in Jackson Park. Julius Rosenwald (1862-1932), President of Sears, Roebuck & Company, founded the Museum of Science and Industry in 1926 through The Commercial Club of Chicago, of which he was a member. The M.S.I. opened in three stages between 1933 and 1940, with the first opening ceremony on July 1, 1933. These events coincided with Chicago’s second World’s Fair, A Century of Progress International Exposition (1933-34), which opened on June 1, 1933.

OnThursday, October 3, A.D. 2019, the Museum of Science and Industry announced 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 Museum of Science and Industry’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.

This time of year, the M.S.I. is open from 9:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. 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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[1] See chaperone ratios and policies for School-led Field Trips and Groups of 15+.

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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.