“Jingmai O’Connor Joins Field Museum’s Curatorium”

The Field Museum of Natural History announced on Wednesday, October 7, A.D. 2020 that Dr. Jingmai O’Connor has joined the staff as the new Associate Curator of Fossil Reptiles. The Field Museum described her as “a world expert on flying dinosaurs and the transition of dinosaurs into birds.” Her area of expertise is birds from the Mesozoic. The Field Museum stated, “She’s eager to bring that expertise to our collection, particularly the 50-million-year-old bird fossils from Wyoming’s Green River Formation… We’re lucky to have the world’s largest collection of these perfectly preserved fossils—picture bones and feathers!—that can help piece together the bird family tree.”

Her mother was a geologist. She grew up in Pasadena, California and moved to Beijing after she earned her Ph.D. In 2015, she became the youngest full professor at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (I.V.P.P.). In April of that same year, Dr. O’Connor and several colleagues at the I.V.P.P. represented the Chinese Academy of Sciences at an event held at The Field Museum: the 2015 Workshop Of Sino-US Collaborative Research in Paleontology (“Rise of Modern Biological Diversity in the Phanerozoic”). Click here to listen to Kara Snyder interview her last year for the Le vital corps Salon podcast.

The Field Museum stated, “She discovered a Microraptor with a new species of lizard in its stomach and helped show that a group of dinosaurs, the scansoriopterygids, had bat-like wings and could fly.” She was one of five paleontologists whom Nat Geo had speak in “Imagining Dinosaurs” via National Geographic Facebook (www.facebook.com/natgeo) on Thursday, October 8, A.D. 2020.

You can meet her at a virtual event and hear about her time studying dinosaur fossils in China. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic (I assume), this year the Field Associates’ annual fundraiser gala is a virtual event. Dr. Ryan Williams, Associate Curator and Chair of the Anthropology Department, will also be on hand to talk about the global history of beer. Second City, Chicago’s famed improv comedy group, will host the second hour, along with brewmaster Dan Whitley. The event, EVOLVE 2020: Monster Masquerade, will be held on Saturday, October 17, A.D. 2020 from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $50 per login (with one login per household). If you would like to host a watch party, there is a suggested donation of $25 for additional guests. Click here to purchase tickets.

Earlier on the same night, Dr. O’Connor will be participating in the 2020 Virtual Gala (“Night at the Museum”). This event will be taking place from 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 17, A.D. 2020. Held by the Women’s Board and the Board of Trustees, the speakers will include Dr. O’Connor; Julian Siggers, Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of The Field Museum; James Holstein, Collections Manager and Geologist; William Parkinson, Ph.D., Curator of Anthropology; Lesley de Souza, Ph.D., Conservation Scientist and Ichthyologist; and Janet Voight, Ph.D., Women’s Board Associate Curator of Invertebrate Zoology. The guest speaker will be Dame Jane Goodall, Ph.D., D.B.E. Connie and Dennis Keller will be receiving the Marshall Field V Award for Distinguished Leadership in recognition of their philanthropy. Click here to register for the 2020 Virtual Gala with PJH & Associates, Inc. Sponsorship levels range from $1,000 contributions to $100,000 to be on the Premier Host Committee. Click here to watch the 2020 Virtual Gala via YouTube.

Figure 1 Credit: Jochen Stierberger Caption: This is Jingmai O’Connor (dubbed the “Punk Rock Paleontologist”).

The Field Museum declared September 30, A.D. 2020 was “Field Giving Day” and had a fundraising goal of $100,000. On October 1, A.D. 2020, The Field Museum announced it had reached an “extended #FieldGivingDay goal” by raising $150,000.

The Field Museum re-opened in July after being closed for months due to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. Click here to learn about visiting The Field Museum in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Credit: The Field Museum Caption: This is a video about procedures to follow at The Field Museum since it re-opened in July after being closed for months due to the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown.

The Field Museum is open from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. with the last admission at 4:00 p.m. Currently, it is closed Tuesdays and Wednesdays to undergo cleaning.

As I explained in April, The Field Museum announced after an eight-month-long search that Dr. Siggers would become the next President and Chief Executive Officer in September. Two years ago, The Field Museum celebrated the 125^th anniversary of its foundation in the wake of Chicago’s first World’s Fair, the World’s Columbian Exposition (1893).

The Field Museum is located on the Museum Campus at the northern end of the Chicago Park District’s Burnham Park, across from Grant Park. The address is 1400 South Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, Illinois 60605. The phone number is (312) 922-9410. The Website is https://www.fieldmuseum.org/.

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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.