Everywhere a Sign

Posted on October 1, 2014 by admin

A question to ponder: How can Crème Caramel Chicago’s product be so good? Ingredients: milk, eggs, sugar, cream, caramel, vanilla. That’s it. Yet in the words of Shakespeare, it’s a wow.

It’s also a product of EU Foods, though it has nothing to do with that supranational entity, I think, since it was made in Bensenville, Illinois.

Another thing to ponder: a thematic men’s room sign.

I saw it about a year ago in Dallas at the Ann & Gabriel Barbier-Mueller Museum. As I write this, the wires – quaint, that term – are burning up with news of the first U.S. Ebola case, and the honor goes to Dallas. Well, why not? Texas excels at so much else.

I doubt that we’ll get an epidemic, though. What we will get is excessive news coverage. Just another reason to avoid cable news, out in that vast wasteland. Vaster now than when I was born; a regular Sahara.

I didn’t know that Newton Minow had an honorary street sign in Chicago, but I saw it downtown last month. I’m happy to report that at 88, Mr. Minow is still alive and kicking.

The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art

Posted on August 5, 2014 by admin

I forget which rest stop it was now, but somewhere in Iowa we stopped for the usual reasons, and Ann asked for a cold drink from one of the machines. I fed it my dollar and then some coins, which it returned. But not the dollar. And no drink. There were blank slips to fill out in case of machine failures and a slot to drop them in. My experience with such things is hit or miss – Lighthouse Place Premium Outlets, or at least its vending concession, still owes me a dollar from the mid-00s – but I duly filled it out.

DESCRIBE PROBLEM: Took dollar. Won’t take coins. No refund of dollar.

While looking through my pile of mail when I got home, I noticed a little envelope from Pop Top Vending of Grinnell, Iowa. My slip was inside. So was one Yankee dollar. Good for you, Pop Top. Good customer service isn’t the baseline in this country (as Yuriko often points out), so it needs to be recognized.

The shortest route from metro Dallas to metro Chicago is north on US 75 into Oklahoma, which turns into US 69 – both are divided most of the way – and eventually that runs into I-44. Take that road east to St. Louis, where you catch I-55 northbound for the run up to Chicago. I’ve done it many times over the last 25 years. I used to overnight at Zeno’s Motel in Rolla, Mo., but in more recent years I’ve spent the night at the Munger Moss Motel in Lebanon, Mo. I knew Zeno’s had closed, and the lot seems to be vacant now.

Munger Moss is a solid independent motel. A tourist court. The kind of place where Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert might show up for the night. I was going to take a picture of the neon motel sign, but the co-proprietor – Ramona Lehman, who greeted me at the desk when we arrived at about 9 – turned it off for the night before I got around to it. So I settled for an interior pic of Room 70.

Lilly saw the picture and said, “That’s retro.” The pictures on the wall depicted bygone US 66 sites, so yes. Retro. But not completely. Note the TV and the AC. We didn’t turn on TV. Didn’t seem like the thing to do. We did use the air conditioner and access the property’s wifi, though. I had a column to file, and Ann wanted her entertainment. Nostalgia’s fine, but we have to live in our own time.

We arrived latish in Lebanon because I detoured slightly off the most direct route. In northeastern Oklahoma, I turned on US 412 and took it east to I-49 in Arkansas, and then north to Bentonville (I-49 was still called I-540 on my maps, but apparently the name changed recently). Bentonville is known as the hometown of Always Low Prices. Always. It’s the site of the Ur-Walmart and still the location of the behemoth’s HQ.

That isn’t why I came. I wanted to see the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art. One of the things to do if you happen to be a billionaire is found a museum and stock it with the fine art you’ve been collecting for years. Alice Walton, daughter of Sam Walton, did exactly that. Not another institution on either coast or any of the major cities of the interior, but in the northwest corner of Arkansas. It’s been open only since late 2011.

You’d think most of the museum’s paintings — and it is heavy on paintings, though there’s a sculpture garden we didn’t have time to see — would already have been locked away in major museum collections, so high is the quality. Shows you what I know about the fine art trade.

From a NYT article published shortly after the museum opened: “It was only in May 2005 that Ms. Walton announced the selection of the Israeli-born Boston architect Moshe Safdie to design the museum and ruffled feathers along the Eastern Seaboard by buying a landmark of Hudson River School landscape painting, ‘Kindred Spirits,’ by Asher B. Durand, from the New York Public Library for around $35 million. The purchase came early in an extended shopping spree that rattled nerves, aroused skepticism and stimulated the art market.”

Ruffled feathers and rattled nerves, eh? But I bet when it comes to bidding for art, “riche” always trumps “nouveau.” The museum’s rooms are mostly chronological, from Colonial America to very recent items. A handful of works are astonishingly familiar, such as one of the Gilbert Stuart portraits of President Washington. Many more fall under the category of, You know, I’ve seen that somewhere — it’s here? Such as “Cupid and Psyche” by Benjamin West, or “Winter Scene in Brooklyn” by Francis Guy, or the delightful “War News from Mexico” by Richard Caton Woodville and the completely charming “The Lantern Bearers” by Maxfield Parrish. (All of those paintings are reproduced under “Selected Works.”)

A few of my pics came out decent, such as “Boy Eating Berries” by Joseph Decker, no date (but the artist lived from 1853 to 1924).

Did a few detail shots, too. This is RLS from “Robert Louis Stevenson and His Wife” by John Singer Sargent (1885).

From “The Lantern Bearers,” which was a Collier’s cover in 1910.

A few of my sculpture pics turned out passable as well. Here’s an antebellum example, “Atala and Chactas,” by Randolph Rogers (1854). You don’t hear much about that story any more.

Next, a video-killed-the-radio-star example, “John Cage Robot II,” by Nam June Paik (1995). Eleven wood TV cabinets, 10 Panasonic color TVs, one Samsung, two DVD players and mixed media elements that include piano keys and piano hammers, books, chessmen, and wood mushrooms. You can’t tell from this still, but all the of TVs were playing video loops.

The museum also happened to be showing an exhibit about architect Moshe Safdie, including a lot of models of his building designs in such places as Ottawa (how did I miss that?), Jerusalem, Salt Lake City and others. I don’t think I’ve seen anything of his besides Crystal Bridges, which is an interesting work.

“Nestled between two hills in the Ozark… [the museum] traverses a stream within the wild landscape,” notes designboom.com, which annoyingly doesn’t believe in capital letters, so I’ve added them. “Covering 120 acres, the grounds are crossed with an extensive trail network which leads through mature forests of dogwoods, oaks and white pines and eventually leading into the nearby downtown area. The environment fuses art with nature, allowing visitors to descend from the site’s entrance and immerse themselves into the center’s recessed setting, encountering a cluster of pavilions wrapped around a focal pond.”

We arrived at about 4:30, ahead of closing at 6, so we didn’t have the time to walk around some of the wooded areas. Or to visit downtown Bentonville or the not-far-away Walmart Museum which, no doubt without a hint of irony, celebrates the five-and-dime that Sam Walton founded in Bentonville more than 60 years ago. Also no time for Pea Ridge National Military Park, which is in this part of Arkansas. I’m told I visited when I was small, but I don’t remember it. Ah, well. I might pass this way again sometime.

The Duke in Winterset

Posted on July 30, 2014 by admin

The thing to do when heading out of Des Moines in a southerly direction is to detour into rural Madison County, southwest of the capital, whose county seat is Winterset. If you have time. I decided we had time, since how could I pass up a look at a bronze of Winterset’s favorite son, Marion Robert Morrison?

JOHN WAYNE

Born Marion Robert Morrison

In Winterset, Iowa

May 26, 1907

Sculpture donated to the

People of Madison County

By the John Wayne Family

The statue of John Wayne is a short block from his birthplace house, now a museum that (like the capitol) happened to be closed when we arrived. No matter. A good look at the bronze was enough for now, and we weren’t the only ones doing so. A few other families pulled up for a look-see while we were there. Wayne’s fame has some staying power.

Next to the statue is a Chevy van, detailed to honor Wayne. According to the birth site museum web site, “Several years ago, an anonymous person from Arizona donated a full-size 1980 Chevy van that has been extensively customized for the true John Wayne fan….

“This one-of-a-kind vehicle is covered with $50,000 of artwork from John Wayne movies—even the windows are etched to continue the design! The interior boasts hardwood floors, carpeted walls, a wet bar, TV and VCR (this was 1980, remember?), a souped-up sound system, and saloon-style swinging doors that lead to the queen-sized bedroom [sic] in the back.”

I didn’t realize it when we were there, but the statue usually resides at a corner of Washington St. and John Wayne Dr. – one of the main drags through town – but has been moved a block away, so it won’t be damaged during construction of the John Wayne Birthplace Museum. Work started in 2013 on the new museum, which is slated for completion for the 2015 John Wayne Birthday Celebration (and it’s convenient that baby Marion was born pretty close to Memorial Day). Last year my old friend Kevin, quite the fan of the Duke, went to the birthday fest. He said he had a large time.

One more thing: there are other John Wayne bronzes out in the wider world. You have to go to California to see these two.

The Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center

Posted on July 28, 2014 by admin

Why Kansas? Even the Kansas Cosmosphere and Space Center web site asks that question in its FAQ page. Why is a first-rate spacecraft museum – absolutely the best I’ve ever seen, except for the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum – in Hutchinson, Kansas, a town of about 42,000 northwest of Wichita? The answer: that’s the way the cookie crumbled. Right place, right time.

“The Cosmosphere began in 1962 as nothing more than a tiny planetarium on the Kansas State Fairgrounds,” the page says. When the planetarium outgrew its original facility and moved to its current location, Patricia Brooks Carey and the Hutchinson Planetarium’s board of directors sought business advice from Max Ary, then director of Ft. Worth’s Noble Planetarium. “Interestingly, Ary was also part of a Smithsonian Institution committee in charge of relocating thousands of space hardware artifacts to museums throughout the U.S. The Cosmosphere was granted many of the artifacts.”

These days the museum measures over 105,000 square feet and includes a large exhibit space for rockets and spacecraft, plus a planetarium, dome theater, and more. We arrived in the mid-afternoon of July 13, too late to catch a planetarium show, but in plenty of time to look at a lot of space stuff, expertly and chronically organized for display.

“Most everything you see in the museum was either flown in space, built as a back up for what was flown in space, built as a testing unit for what was flown in space, or was the real deal, but was never meant for space,” the museum continues. “Only a few artifacts are replicas, and those that are replicas, are for good reason. For example, the lunar module and lunar rover in the Apollo Gallery are replicas (though built by the same company that produced the flown modules), because those that went in space, stayed in space. No museum in the world carries a flown lunar module or rover. In fact, they’re all still on the Moon.”

The displays begin at the beginning of modern rocketry – Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and Robert Goddard and on to Nazi rockets, including a restored V-1 and V-2.

Then on to Soviet and U.S. rockets and capsules that ventured into space, plus a lot of ancillary items. It’s an astonishing collection, including a replica of the X-1, a flight-ready backup for Sputnik 1, a backup version of the Vanguard 1, a Russian Vostok capsule – the only one outside Russia – Liberty Bell 7 (pulled from the ocean floor and restored), a Redstone rocket and a Titan, too, the Gemini 10 capsule, a Voskhod capsule, the Apollo 13 Command Module, a Soyuz capsule, various Soviet and American rocket engines, an Apollo 11 Moon rock, and a lot of smaller artifacts.

I took a particular interest in the Russian equipment because I’ve seen so little of it. In fact, I’d never seen a Vostok, and there it was. Looking like a large bowling ball behind glass. “Hop in, Comrade, and we’ll shoot you into space.”

The American equipment was impressive, too, though more familiar. It’s always an impressive thing to stand under a rocket like a Titan, which used to deliver Gemini into orbit.

Ann seemed to enjoy herself, and probably learned something. But to really appreciate this museum, it helps to have been an eight-year-old boy in 1969. You find yourself turning the corner and saying, “Wow, look at that!” a lot.

The George Bush Presidential Library

Posted on May 15, 2014 by admin

I’m told that we went to the Eisenhower Library when I was a child, but I don’t remember it. Since then I’ve visited other presidential libraries or museums: Lincoln, Hoover, Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter. And now the George Bush Presidential Library, focusing on George Bush the elder. Jay and I visited just before we left College Station.

His library opened in 1997 on the Texas A&M campus, though it’s way out from everything else. Bush didn’t attend A&M, famously being a Yale man, but presumably the Aggies put in the best bid. Besides, he did make his name in the oil business in Texas. A&M oversees the place with the National Archives and Records Administration. It’s an HOK design, which from the front looks a little like it’s missing a dome.

Presidential history’s interesting (of course it is), but I thought that the most interesting exhibit in this particular museum was a temporary one about offshore oil drilling. Called “Offshore Drilling: The Promise of Discovery” (sponsored by Shell), the museum says that it’s “a tribute to [Bush’s] role in the development and use of the innovative independent leg offshore jack-up rig Scorpion launched by LeTourneau in 1956… It focuses on the history, development and future of offshore drilling, with an emphasis on the work of George Bush, emerging technologies and ongoing research at Texas A&M University.”

An independent leg offshore jack-up rig is a mobile offshore platform stable enough for the open ocean, but flexible enough to be moved when the time comes. Before 1956, offshore platforms mostly had to be fixed permanently to the bottom, limiting their usefulness; the few floating platforms couldn’t stand heavy seas, so they tended to be near shore. LeTourneau was an inventor: Robert Gilmour LeTourneau (1888-1969). He was, says Wiki, “a prolific inventor of earthmoving machinery. His machines represented nearly 70 percent of the earthmoving equipment and engineering vehicles used during World War II, and over the course of his life he secured nearly 300 patents.”

Drilling Contractor (Sept/Oct 2005) further tells the story: “Although the concept of a deep-sea, mobile offshore platform aroused considerable interest among the oil companies, none of the companies were prepared to help finance construction of such an expensive (nearly $3 million) and unproven project. Then [in the early 1950s] Mr. LeTourneau proposed the idea to Zapata Off-Shore Company of Houston, headed by future United States President George H.W. Bush.” (The article is here.)

Zapata. You have to like that name for an oil company. (Apparently Bush and his partners were inspired by the movie Viva Zapata!) So Zapata became the first oil company to use an independent leg offshore jack-up rig. The exhibit tells that story, but even better, it includes models of various rigs, platforms and supply vessels that have been used over the years by the industry — exceptionally detailed models — as well as pieces of drilling equipment.

The rest of the museum has pretty much what you’d expect: exhibits about different stages of the life and career of George Bush the elder, including his harrowing escapes from death as a naval aviator in the Pacific in 1944 (over the course of the year, his squadron suffered a 300 percent casualty rate), though no mention of this story that I saw, and his various public-sector jobs, both elected and appointed. A well-done set of displays, but even so it’s hard to think of any presidency that happened while you’re an adult as history.

Other items included a big hunk of the Berlin Wall, a replica Oval Office – any presidential museum worth its salt has one – and a life-sized bronze of Bush, depicting him as Ambassador to the United Nations.

I didn’t make a picture of the oddest bit of art we saw in the museum. Called “1000 Points of Light,” it was painted for the Points of Light Foundation, which encourages volunteerism. A presidential George Bush reaches for a nimbus-ed U.S. flag, while a crowd of enraptured everyday Americans watches. I’d call the style Socialist Realism, but there’s no socialist content here. Maybe Volunteerist Realism. The artist is Frank Hopper, who seems to excel at this kind of thing, and is also fixated on mermaids.

Stranger still are the ghost presidents in the sky, watching. And not just any ghost presidents. With the exception of Washington and Jefferson and either Madison or Monroe, all the rest of them are ghost Republican presidents, all the way from Lincoln to Reagan. The faces are a little spectral, but I think the only ones left out are Arthur and Harding. Take a look.

In the plaza outside the museum stands another work of art, “The Day the Wall Came Down,” by Veryl Goodnight.

Bronze horses racing over replicated bits of the Berlin Wall, with graffiti copied from the actual wall (the west side, naturally). With the horses, the plaque tells us, “representing the freedom of the human spirit.” Fine figures of horses, and all very kinetic, which is fitting for the destruction of the wall, but I’m not sure how well beasts of burden stand in for the unconquerable human spirit.

Though the pieces of the Berlin Wall in “The Day the Wall Came Down” seem to be simulations, the sculpture (and the actual piece inside) did get me thinking. Like pieces of the World Trade Center, or moon rocks, where are all the scattered bits of that former communist concrete now? Relics tend to get around.

The Eiteljorg Museum

Posted on May 6, 2014 by admin

The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art is one of a number of attractions at downtown Indianapolis’ White River State Park, just west of the capitol and the CBD. We parked in an underground facility and entered the Eiteljorg through its back entrance, which faces Indy’s canal. The museum’s small sculpture garden is outside that entrance.

When the museum specifies “American Indians and Western Art,” it means Indian art and artifacts of historic interest, but also artwork by contemporary American Indians, as well as art by non-Indians with a theme of the American West. Its collection along these three lines is substantial, housed in a large building adjacent to the Indiana State Museum, and well worth a look.

Ann’s in front of an example of contemporary Indian art in the sculpture garden: “Water Whispers” (2005), a steel-and-glass creation of Truman Lowe, a Ho-Chunk born in 1944 and professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Art Department.

We entered the back entrance and immediately were face-to-face with a totem pole. Nothing like a totem pole right next to you to get your attention.

It’s a replica of a 19th-century Haida totem pole, carved by one Lee Wallace in 1996, great-grandson of the carver of the original pole, Dwight Wallace. Apparently the original pole had made its way from British Columbia to Alaska to the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair to Indianapolis industrialist David M. Parry, who kept it on his land (as the Golden Hill totem pole) until it deteriorated and fell in 1939. The new pole, “The Legend of Wasgo,” is made of red cedar with acrylic paint.

The Eiteljorg’s Native American collection, according to the museum, “began with the personal holdings of founder Harrison Eiteljorg and the Museum of Indian Heritage formerly located in Eagle Creek Park. Ranging from traditional objects of material culture such as weaponry, clothing, and basketry, to contemporary Hopi Katsina carvings, jewelry, and Inuit sculpture, the collection includes works of historical and aesthetic significance as well as articles produced for everyday use.”

As for the contemporary Indian art, “the collection consists of copious materials from photographs, beadwork, works on paper and canvas, to beaver fur and hides, traditional paintings and large installation pieces incorporating several mediums. While there is recognizable imagery in a lot of the work, it also represents works that are non-representational such as the work of Harry Fonseca (Maidu/Niseman, Portuguese, Hawaiian) who’s painting is inspired by Navajo blankets or James Lavadour’s (Walla Walla) multifaceted landscapes influenced by hiking through the mountains.”

Two large galleries are devoted to Western-themed art. I’d only vaguely been aware of the Taos School, but I got a lesson about it at Eiteljorg. “The collection is especially strong in art by members of the Taos Society of Artists from the late 1890s to the late 1920s,” the museum notes. “The museum collection also includes an expressive collection of works by early modernist artists who found the West to be inspiring. Among highlights in this broad area are works by Georgia O’Keeffe, Robert Henri, Marsden Hartley, Randall Davey, and many more.”

On exhibit at the Eiteljorg until early August is a fine exhibit of 75 Ansel Adams prints, all apparently selected by the photographer himself at some point as his greatest hits (it could have been as recently as 30-odd years ago; I hadn’t realized, or forgotten, that Adams lived until 1984). A good many images were familiar — great hits, all right — but not all of them, including a handful of portraits of people. Not something he’s known for, but he did them sometimes. One of the portraits was of an elderly woman on a screened-in porch somewhere out West, and she reminded me of my grandmother.

As we were headed for the exit – and the gift shop before that – we chanced across an Art*o*Mat, a repurposed cigarette machine that now sells small pieces of art. I’d seen one of those before, at the Chicago Cultural Center, but that was some years ago. For $5 we got some handmade earrings.

I also got a picture of my family reflected in the Art*o*Mat mirror.

Centuries Come, Centuries Go

Posted on April 9, 2014 by admin

Last week I took note of some of the monumental items at the Oriental Institute Museum, but of course the museum is home to a lot more artifacts, and most of them were more modest in size. But no less interesting for it. Such as some dice from Roman Egypt.

Cool. Especially since anyone alive now, two millennia after they were made, could look at them and know exactly what they’re for, even if the games of chance aren’t quite the same. Even cooler is that dice were ancient even then, so much so that their origin is obscure.

Also on display were some knucklebones, an alternative to dice that are probably just as old, if not older (and the ancestor of modern playing jacks?). According the museum, “knucklebones of sheep or oxen were used to determine the number of moves on game boards. The four sides of each bone are distinctive, and each was assigned a specific number. They were normally thrown in pairs, allowing for ten possible combinations.”

The museum also sported plenty of figurines.

Still charming after all these centuries. Thought to come from a tomb of a courtier named Nykauinpu at Giza, made of limestone and dating from the Old Kingdom, Dynasty 5 of the 25th century BC. So by the time of Julius Caesar, this statue was already older than anything from the time of Julius Caesar is now. Even on a human scale (not to mention geological or cosmological), time’s mind-boggling.

On a sign describing another man-and-woman set of Egyptian figurines, I noted these lines, referring to the way the woman was dressed (emphasis added): “This style of dress was popular for the entire 3,000 years of pharaonic history.” I’ll say one thing about the ancient Egyptians — they found something they liked and stuck with it.

Born in Babylonia, Moved to Chicago

Posted on April 3, 2014 by admin

The Oriental Institute Museum in Hyde Park, Chicago, houses an embarrassment of riches, a surfeit of treasures, and an abundance of artifacts from times lost to time. Not bad for an organization that isn’t even a century old. The institute’s web site puts it succinctly: “The Oriental Institute is a research organization and museum devoted to the study of the ancient Near East. Founded in 1919 by James Henry Breasted, the Institute, a part of the University of Chicago, is an internationally recognized pioneer in the archaeology, philology, and history of early Near Eastern civilizations.”

Besides the obviously high quality of the collection, which I’m only partly able to appreciate – it’s hard for me to sort out of who was who and when was when in the ancient Near East, except for places that were eventually part of the Roman Empire — I like the museum for two other reasons. First, it’s never been crowded in all the times I’ve been there since the 1980s. Second, it doesn’t pander to visitors with a lot of whiz-bang, touch-it-wow gimmicks. It’s got stuff, and signs describing that stuff. An old-fashioned, static approach to museum organization, for sure. If you go to the Oriental Institute Museum, you’ve got to be prepared to look at things and read about them.

But who’s so jaded that he wouldn’t be impressed by this?

Or this?

Or this?

The first item is a colossal bull head from the Hundred-Column Hall of Persepolis, dating from the reigns of Xerxes and Artaxerxes I in the fifth century BC (note: the signs in the museum use BC, not BCE). The horns are lost, which makes me suspect they were made of something really valuable, looted long ago.

Next is a human-headed winged bull — a lamassu — which once was at the entrance to the throne room of Assyrian King Sargon II . Weighs 40 tons. I wouldn’t want to get on his bad side.

Finally, a 17-foot-plus statue of Tutankhamun. Well, sort of. The institute says: “The statue is inscribed for Horemheb whose name was recut over that of King Aye. The statue is assigned to the reign of Tutankhamun on stylistic grounds, for it resembles other representations of that king.” Sure, but it’ll always be King Tut to me.

Hyde Park ’14

Posted on March 31, 2014 by admin

On the northeast corner of S. Woodlawn Ave. and E. 58th St. in Hyde Park, on the South Side of Chicago, is the Frederick C. Robie House, on that site for more than 100 years and best known as an exemplar of the Prairie School of Design. Next door to its north, at 5751 S. Woodlawn, is the Seminary Co-op Bookstore, one of my favorite bookstores anywhere, though new to the site. One block west of the intersection is the Oriental Institute Museum, repository of Near Eastern treasures, most of which they’ve dug up themselves. The Rockefeller Memorial Chapel rises to the southwest of the intersection, an ornate, soaring structure. That’s a lot within a short walk.

Last week was spring break for Lilly and Ann. Last year I took them to Texas for the occasion, but for various reasons this year, the idea of going anywhere never really took root. Still, I wanted to go somewhere – even if only a few miles away and for a few hours – and see something new if possible. In the summer of 2003, I wrote, “I walked by the Robie House, a creation of Frank Lloyd Wright. Him again. One of these days, I will take the tour, but not today.”

I didn’t know at the time that renovation of the Robie House had barely started, and hasn’t been completed even now, though mostly it has. The main goal last Friday was to tour the Robie House, which we did. Afterward we walked over to Rockefeller Chapel, and then spent an hour or so in the Oriental Institute Museum.

It was still fairly cold, but at least the sidewalks were clear of ice, and we didn’t have far to walk. Street parking always seems to be available next to the Midway Plaisance, just south of our destinations. In 1893, the Midway was briefly the focus of the world’s attention as part of the world’s fair, but now it’s a little-known urban green space, at least outside Chicago. That’s too bad, because it’s certainly interesting, if you know what was there.

We didn’t go into the Seminary Co-op Bookstore. I was astonished to see its new location, which I hadn’t heard about. Until a year and a half ago, the store was snugly located in the basement of the Chicago Theological Seminary, at 5757 S. University Ave. Turns out the seminary has moved, too, and now the building is home to the U of C’s Dept. of Economics, so famed in free market song and story.

Wiki, for what it’s worth, says: “The seminary move was controversial: it involved the disinterring of multiple graves.” I didn’t know anyone was buried there. Who was buried there? I’ll have to look into that sometime. Once upon a time, I did enjoy the Thorndike Hilton Memorial Chapel and the collection of rocks embedded in the seminary wall. I assume those are part of the Chicago School of Economics now.

Currently the streetscape between the Robie House and where the Seminary Co-op Bookstore used to be – which is across the street from the Oriental Institute Museum — is under construction.

I was surprised to see the bookstore’s new location, which even seems to include a café, like you might see in a Barnes & Noble. It didn’t seem right. At the basement location, there was no room for anything but books and more books. This video, at least, assures us that the new location still has a “maze aspect” and that Stanley Tigerman did the design (himself or Tigerman McCurry Architects staff?), which I guess counts for something.

But how could the new site have the book-cave charm of the old? Next time I’m in Hyde Park, I’ll take a look, to see if the new can hold a candle to the old.

Old Tractors & Old Abe

Posted on November 10, 2013 by admin

At the College of the Ozarks is the Ralph Foster Museum, and at the Ralph Foster Museum is a modified 1921 Oldsmobile Model 46 Roadster, the truck used in the Beverly Hillbillies. I didn’t get to see that because the museum was closed the day I visited in early November last year.

Instead we went to the Gaetz Tractor Museum. On display are such marvels of the machine age as the two-cylinder, three-ton Advance Rumely, introduced in 1924.

There’s also a Rumely 6A, vintage 1930, as well as four-cylinder, three-ton Case model K, ca. 1927.

Made by the J.I. Case Threshing Machine Co., which was eventually M&A’d out of existence as a separate entity. Now that’s a corporate name. Beats much of what we have now, such as the Three Initial Corp. or the Random-Syllable Co.

Note the eagle. That was J.I. Case’s corporate symbol, but it isn’t just any eagle. It’s Old Abe.

Old Abe – a living eagle – was the mascot of the 8th Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry Regiment from 1861 to ’64. Quite a story. Bonanzaville, an open-air museum in West Fargo, ND, that we visited in ’06, has a striking Case Eagle on display.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: Museums