Exhibits

Sunday Near Millennium Park Without Anyone Named George – July 21, 2019

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Interestingly, both Doctors Without Borders and Borders book stores, which no one was able to save (thereby making the doctors’ organizational name prescient), were founded in 1971. On the other hand, Crossing Borders Music, which put on the concert by my piano teacher, Marianne Parker, that I attended at the Chicago Cultural Center, across Michigan Avenue from Millennium Park, originated in 2011.

The wonderful solo concert featured music from Marianne’s new album of Haitian music, entitled Pages intimes. As I told her afterward, she obviously has been holding out on me, not teaching me everything she knows, because, shockingly, I can’t play like she can. What other reason could there be?

I then rushed over to the Art Institute, across Monroe Street from Millennium Park, to attend its annual Block Party. On my way to the Impressionism room containing Van Gogh’s The Drinkers, for a program put on by the Brewseum, I passed by Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, thereby completing my park-adjacent trilogy.

Pub historian, and Brewseum founder and executive director, Liz Garibay presented a delightful lecture to the crowd on both the Van Gogh painting and the history and culture of drinking and drinking establishments in Chicago, including the 1855 Lager Beer Riot. After this educational tasting, I now thirst for more information, which I attend to drink in at the Brewseum’s exhibition currently on tap at the Field Museum.

I ended my near-the-park Sunday by watching Mucca Pazza (which translates as mad cow) end the party with one of their unique musical performances. P.T. Barnum would have been proud of the way they closed by marching through the Monroe Street exit, helping to clear the building by leading out hundreds of visitors, who then realized that the show was over.  This way to the egress.

MSI After Hours – Wired to Wear – Museum of Science and Industry – May 31, 2019

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I was hoping to see the museum’s exhibits come alive as in one of the Night at the Museum movies, but, upon second thought, the simulated tornado in the Science Storms exhibit, for example, might have brought the party to a crashing halt, and the adventure just wouldn’t be the same without Robin Williams.

The museum’s new Wired to Wear exhibit is fascinating. It’s described as “smart clothing and devices designed to extend the human body’s capabilities and make us healthier, stronger and safer.” Although I have my doubts that the dress that barks like a dog when someone gets too close to the wearer will catch on, there are a lot of interesting innovations that are likely to result in useful options for the disabled, the professional athlete, and the idle rich searching for a Halloween costume.

In addition to the new exhibit and access to all the others at the museum without having to fight off busloads of school children, this adults-only party offered microscopic veggie sliders, generous-pour bartenders, and access to a live podcast of WBEZ’s Nerdette, featuring two of the Wired to Wear inventors.

If you listen to the podcast once they post it, you’ll likely get a digitally-cleansed version, so you won’t be able to appreciate the fact that the guest tech nerds couldn’t figure out that you have to hold the microphone near your mouth when you’re talking so that the audience can hear you, and you probably won’t hear me yelling from the audience “can’t hear you”, an act that didn’t get me kicked out, brought a murmur of appreciation from a part of the audience, and caused one of the guests to use the microphone properly for two seconds, before once again holding it as far away from his mouth as humanly possible.

Perhaps clothing with a built-in amplifier would be more useful than clothing that barks like a dog.

Louder Than Words: Rock, Power & Politics – Museum of Broadcast Communications – May 24, 2019

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I didn’t know that Neil Young wrote Ohio in an hour or ever think that I would see his handwritten lyrics for that anthem on a scrap of paper, but now I have, along with a lot of other interesting memorabilia and historical insights.

Going the morning of opening day, I was the first paying customer (there had been an invitation-only preview to which I wasn’t invited – I must be slipping) to see the museum’s new exhibit, on loan from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

I had a nice chat with a museum curator who approached me to ask me if I was enjoying the exhibit. I assured him I was (I really was – it’s great), but, me being me, I led him to one of the didactic wall panels on which there are a couple statements that I thought were inconsistent and confusing, though not of sufficient importance to shut down the exhibit. He assured me that he understood my concern and would discuss it with higher powers.

I couldn’t tell whether he was just being polite, but he did inform that I wasn’t the first person to point out an issue. At the preview (again, to which I wasn’t invited) someone noticed that the reed on the Bill Clinton saxophone on exhibit was improperly attached to the mouthpiece (insert own joke here). The curator, without the authority to change anything, had sent a message, with a picture of the saxophone, to the Rock & Roll Museum and was awaiting word as to whether they would be sending a swat team to correct the error.

The exhibit is arranged chronologically, with reference to the President of the time, starting with Eisenhower. Interestingly, there is a photograph of Clinton with Lou Reed, who did not appear to be improperly attached.

International Museum of Surgical Science – April 23, 2019

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Dr. Robert Liston (1794-1847) was renowned for his ability to quickly amputate a limb, a skill that was highly valued in the days before anesthesia. He was nicknamed the Fastest Knife in the West End (London), but apparently sometimes was a little too quick, there being stories about him cutting off more than he was supposed to (like his assistant’s fingers in one instance). He died before the days of Jack the Ripper. I double-checked out of curiosity.

The International Museum of Surgical Science includes medical exhibits that go beyond surgery, including a Hall of Immortals, containing full length sculptures of people like Hippocrates. But, it occurred to me, if they were immortal, why couldn’t they be there in person? Perhaps it should be called the Hall of Physicians of Enduring Fame. Not catchy enough?

On display were Patent Medicine Trade Cards, which were used for advertising, though I couldn’t find mention of whether people traded them, or if there were things like rookie cards for new patents.

There’s a collection of gall, kidney, and bladder stones, a few of which are disturbingly large.

There’s a shoe-fitting fluoroscope in the Medical Imaging and X-Ray room. I remember those machines from when I was growing up. They seemed cool at the time, until, like so many other things, we discovered that they were hazardous to your health.  Not like in the movie Sleeper, where things like deep fat turn out to be good for you.

The ophthalmology exhibit includes a wide variety of eyeglasses. Extending the theme of the day, I looked for, but couldn’t find the broken glasses that H.G. Welles replaces from a museum exhibit in Time After Time while chasing after Jack the Ripper.  Admittedly, that was in San Francisco.  As was the antique shop where Captain Kirk pawned his glasses in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. I couldn’t find them either.

Boston Typewriter Orchestra – ONWORD – American Writers Museum Annual Benefit – Four Seasons Hotel – April 9, 2019

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The ONWORD event featured, on display, eight typewriters from the forthcoming Tools of the Trade exhibit, opening in June at the American Writers Museum. There were typewriters that had been used by Ernest Hemingway, Ray Bradbury, and Hugh Hefner, among others.

Working off the theme of the exhibit, the entertainment was the Boston Typewriter Orchestra. I’m not sure what makes the Boston Typewriter Orchestra an orchestra, which is normally thought of as consisting of instruments from different families, such as strings and woodwinds, as opposed to an ensemble of, in this case, only percussion instruments. My guess is that it’s because the name sounds more pretentious.

Nevertheless, the idea of a typewriter orchestra sounded interesting, as it turned out, more interesting than the orchestra sounded. Keep in mind, I’m not talking about someone playing Leroy Anderson’s famous Typewriter on a typewriter with The Brandenburg Symphony Orchestra. That’s two minutes of fun.

I think the all-typewriter Boston group should have combined their music with a literary theme. For example, with a nod to the earth’s monkey population, they could have read whatever they typed as a result of their “music” to see if their compositions resulted in Shakespeare.

Or, they could have taken a piece of written work and tunefully typed it out in a manner that reflected the substance of the work. Maybe, even make it a name that tune, or rather book, game. Listen to the typewriters and try to guess what book they’re typing. That would have kept everyone’s attention longer than the 15 seconds that the actual performance did.

I wonder what the museum will do next year.  Perhaps they’ll bring in the Chicago Metamorphosis Orchestra Project and its Paper Orchestra.  Or, what about a fountain pen orchestra, making different sounds with different colors of ink? Too subtle?

Culture Like a Local at the Chicago Association of Specialized Museums Kickoff Event and Gallery Opening – Cards Against Humanity Theater – April 5, 2019

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The Chicago Association of Specialized Museums is a self-described “coalition of small and quirky institutions throughout Chicago.”

Each museum invited its members to the party to introduce them to the other museums. Unfortunately, the space at the Cards Against Humanity Theater was too small to allow for a real appreciation of the visual presentations on the walls, though it did make it easy to mingle. All you had to do was turn around or try to scratch your nose.

What I did appreciate, however, was that, as at the opening of the American Writers Museum Bob Dylan exhibit, there was Heaven’s Door whiskey available for tasting. Also, the Fat Shallot food truck had excellent sandwiches.

The Chicago Gadhon Ensemble provided the Javanese gamelan background music on bamboo flutes and xylophones. I would have preferred Lionel Hampton and a jazz selection, but he hasn’t been available for quite a while.

I’ll mention a few of the museums. You can look the rest of them up on the association’s website. I was invited as a member of the American Writers Museum, which I love and have written about many times.

The Museum of Broadcast Communications is great. I get there regularly because it’s an early voting location and they let you roam around the museum for free if you go there to vote.

I’ve walked past the Poetry Foundation a million times, and if I ever figure out where the door is, I might check it out.

I also have never been to the International Museum of Surgical Science, but I see that they have an upcoming Nerd Night, for which they suggest that, after that night’s three featured talks, one of which is titled “Fecal transplants: Real science or a load of crap?”, you grab a drink at their bar and look at the exhibits because “everyone will be too drunk to mock you for reading every letter of every plaque!” Sounds like fun.

The Science Behind Pixar – Museum of Science and Industry – October 25, 2018

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As promised, after seeing the robot exhibit in January, I came back to the museum for The Science Behind Pixar. If you go in the afternoon it’s less crowded, because the school field trips are finishing up, and, after all, your competition to get into the exhibit is children of a lesser age.

Each of the nine elements of the Pixar Production Pipeline – story and art, modeling, rigging, surfaces, sets and cameras, animation, simulation, lighting, and rendering – has its own section where you can play at the process and hear from people at Pixar who do the jobs associated with that specialty. I now want to be one of them, although I have absolutely no knowledge in any of the areas.

The company says it employs between 500 and 1000 people. That’s a little vague considering their technical expertise. Perhaps job security, except at the top of the food chain, isn’t so great. But, given that I’m already retired, that’s not a deterrent.

Their website lists, as qualifications for an internship, “enrollment in an undergraduate or graduate program, or have graduated within one year from start of internship” That might be a problem. But what if I went back to school?

The element of rendering holds some promise. In computing it’s defined as “the processing of an outline image using color and shading to make it appear solid and three-dimensional.” Apparently I’ve been rendering my personality for years, without the aid of a computer.

And there’s a current opening for Vice President, Renderman. It’s always been my understanding that vice presidents don’t have to know or do much.

While at the museum I also went through the mirror maze in the Numbers in Nature exhibit. It’s also advantageous to see this exhibit in the afternoon, as a day’s worth of fingerprints on the mirrors helps you navigate, and, if you get lost, staff probably will rescue you before closing time.

 

Amplified Chicago Blues – Chicago History Museum – April 24, 2018

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In the 1970s I went to hear the blues fairly often, at places like Kingston Mines and The Checkerboard Lounge, where I accompanied a friend who was “dating” blues guitarist Lefty Dizz at the time. Neither Lefty (who wasn’t a big enough name) nor the Checkerboard (which didn’t open until 1972) made it into the Chicago History Museum Exhibit, which is more about earlier years; places like Pepper’s Lounge, Delmark Records, and The Fickle Pickle (you have to love that name); and more well-known musicians like Willie Dixon, Muddy Waters, and Howlin’ Wolf.

The exhibit features a lot more pictures than music but there are three musical parts of the exhibit.

There is a karaoke room, where you can sing Sweet Home Chicago. No one tried it while I was there, including me, for which I’m sure everyone wandering around the museum was grateful. There were school children in the building who could have been scarred for life.

Another part of the exhibit gives you the opportunity to learn how to play blues on an electric guitar. The sounds coming from the guitar when I tried to follow the instructions sounded nothing like blues, or music for that matter. The exhibit will be there until August 10, 2019. I’ll go back and try again.

There also is a sound panel where you can learn how to mix music, I think, because it wasn’t working. I would have been better at that. I made a lot of party tapes in college. I’ll go back when it’s fixed.

From the gallery outside the museum’s theater, it sounded like there was a blues movie playing, but the theater was closed for a private event. One more reason to go back.  Good thing it was a Tuesday afternoon, when the museum is free for Illinois residents, or I might have been miffed.

As a result of these issues, I only spent 45 minutes at the museum. Of course I only spent 45 minutes at the Louvre when I was there. Mostly pictures there too (some sculptures), no music.

Museums – 2017

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In 2017 I visited exhibits at the Museum of Broadcast Communications, Art Institute, American Writers Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), and Musical Instrument Museum.

The Musical Instrument Museum is supposedly in Phoenix, but I didn’t see anything but desert for miles around it, which reminds me, I also visited the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum in Tucson, where I learned that javelinas look similar to, but are not pigs. Okay, good to know. The special exhibit at the instrument museum was Dragons and Vines: Inlaid Guitar Masterpieces. The guitars were much more attractive than the javelinas.

The Breakup exhibit at the MCA was mostly related to a serious topic, but what caught my attention was that it also had some cool memorabilia related to theories on the timeline of the breakup of The Beatles. Spoiler alert – they’re not getting back together.

The Saturday Night Live: The Experience exhibit at the Museum of Broadcast Communications offers you the possibility of paying more money on top of your admission fee to have your picture taken behind the Weekend Update news desk. I passed on that part of the experience, went home, and sat behind my own desk for free.

I went to the Rodin exhibit at the Art Institute expecting to see paintings of a giant flying monster from a 1956 Japanese horror film (oops, that was Rodan), but instead saw a bunch of sculptures, including one of some naked guy thinking. I wonder whether he was thinking about giant flying monsters.

I’ve been to Jack Kerouac’s grave in Lowell Massachusetts (wasn’t my idea), and seen Jack Kerouac Alley across the street from City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, but I’ve never read On the Road Again, even though it was the anthem of my generation, or so I’m told. I loved Canned Heat’s hit On the Road Again, way before Willie Nelson recorded it. I’m not sure what to make of all that, but it was still interesting to see the 120-foot-long roll of paper upon which Kerouac typed the On the Road manuscript, which was on display at the American Writers Museum last October. By the way, in case you’re wondering, it’s not toilet paper, though that would have made an even better story.

Museum of Science and Industry – Robots – January 3, 2018

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There was no way I was going to miss the special robot exhibit at the museum, even if it meant navigating a sea of children. I love the underground parking at the museum and though, having arrived in the early afternoon, I had to go around and around searching for a space, my downward journey led me to park on the level where the main entrance is – bizarre justice.

The robots were great, although I witnessed one draw a game of tic tac toe with a child when a winning move was there for the taking by the robot.  I’m not sure whether this was good public relations, faulty programming, or misguided mechanical parenting.

I also witnessed the robot blackjack dealer pull a card off the bottom of the deck. Okay, not literally, but all three human players were sitting on 20, when the robot came up with 21. Very suspicious.  Good thing they weren’t playing for money, although there was an extra charge to see the robot exhibit.

There was another station where you could build your own vehicle out of various colored attachable blocks, one type of which included a battery to power the vehicle. I tried in vain to manufacture a mobile unit, even enlisting the help of a young mother whose child’s work far exceeded my pitiful efforts.  She was sympathetic but unable to help, being clueless herself and unable to gain her child’s attention long enough to explain the process to us.  Tail between my legs, I moved on.

I took in some of the long-time exhibits. One can’t go to the museum without seeing the trains.  And though I didn’t intentionally go to see the submarine, I found myself, for a few minutes, wandering aimlessly through World War 2, unable to find my way out, as if trapped in a Kurt Vonnegut story.

I eventually prevailed, and, on my way out, saw the sign for the Pixar exhibit coming in May. I’ll be back!