1.
Augustus Saint-Gaudens
–
Augustus Saint-Gaudens was an American sculptor of the Beaux-Arts generation who most embodied the ideals of the American Renaissance. In his later years he founded the Cornish Colony, a colony that included notable painters, sculptors, writers. His brother Louis Saint-Gaudens was also a sculptor with whom he occasionally collaborated. Born in Dublin to a French father and an Irish mother, Saint-Gaudens was raised in New York, in 1861, he became an apprentice to a cameo-cutter, Louis Avet, and took evening art classes at the Cooper Union. Two years later, he was hired as an apprentice of Jules Le Brethon, another cameo cutter, at age 19, his apprenticeship completed and he traveled to Paris in 1867, where he studied in the atelier of François Jouffroy at the École des Beaux-Arts. In 1870, he left Paris for Rome, to art and architecture. Pierrepont, a phrenologist, proved to be a demanding client insisting that Saint-Gaudens make his head larger, in 1876, he won a commission for a bronze David Farragut Memorial. He rented a studio at 49 rue Notre Dame des Champs and it was unveiled on May 25,1881, in Madison Square Park. The statue stood on a 300-foot-high tower, making Diana the highest point in the city and it was also the first statue in that part of Manhattan to be lit at night by electricity. The statue and its tower was a landmark until 1925 when the building was demolished, in New York, he was a member of the Tilers, a group of prominent artists and writers, including Winslow Homer, William Merritt Chase and Arthur Quartley. He was also a member of the Salmagundi Club in New York, two grand equestrian monuments to Civil War generals are outstanding, to General John A. For the Lincoln Centennial in 1909, Saint-Gaudens produced another statue of the president, a seated figure, Abraham Lincoln, The Head of State, is in Chicagos Grant Park. Saint-Gaudens completed the work and had begun casting the statue at the time of his death—his workshop completed it. The statues head was used as the model for the postage stamp issued on the 100th anniversary of Lincolns birth. Saint-Gaudens also created the statue for the monument of Charles Stewart Parnell, with minor modifications, this medallion was reproduced for the Stevenson memorial in St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh. Stevensons cousin and biographer, Graham Balfour, deemed the work the most satisfactory of all the portraits of Stevenson, Balfour also noted that Saint-Gaudens greatly admired Stevenson and had once said he would gladly go a thousand miles for the sake of a sitting with him. Such pieces stand testament to both his appeal and the respect that was given to him by his contemporaries. His medals have been sold at auction for varying sums, a statue of philanthropist Robert Randall stands in the gardens of Sailors Snug Harbor in New York
2.
Grant Park (Chicago)
–
Grant Park is a large urban park in the Loop community area of Chicago. Located in Chicagos central business district, the parks most notable features are Millennium Park, Buckingham Fountain, the Art Institute of Chicago, originally known as Lake Park, and dating from the citys founding, it was renamed in 1901 to honor Ulysses S. Grant. The parks area has expanded several times through land reclamation. It is bordered on the north by Randolph Street, on the south by Roosevelt Road and McFetridge Drive, on the west by Michigan Avenue, the park contains performance venues, gardens, art work, sporting, and harbor facilities. It hosts public gatherings, and several annual events. The park is often called Chicagos front yard and it is governed by the Chicago Park District. The original plans for the town of Chicago left the area east of Michigan Avenue unsubdivided and vacant, when the former Fort Dearborn Reserve became part of the townsite in 1839, the plan of the area east of Michigan Avenue south of Randolph was marked Public ground. Forever to remain vacant of buildings, the city officially designated the land as a park on April 29,1844, naming it Lake Park. When the Illinois Central Railroad was built into Chicago in 1852, the resulting lagoon became stagnant, and was largely filled in 1871 with debris from the Great Chicago Fire, increasing the parkland. In 1896, the city began extending the park into the lake with landfill, on October 9,1901, the park was renamed Grant Park in honor of American Civil War commanding General and United States President Ulysses S. Grant. At the 1868 Republican National Convention in Chicago, Grant had been nominated for his first presidential term, the legal restrictions prohibiting any buildings in the park were ignored in the 19th century, as various civic buildings were sited there. At various times, a post office, exposition center, armory, a 1904 plan prepared by the Olmsted Brothers recommended locating the Field Museum as the parks centerpiece, an idea integrated into Daniel Burnham and Edward H. Bennetts 1909 Plan of Chicago. Chicago businessman Aaron Montgomery Ward ultimately fought four court battles, opposed by nearly every civic leader, the one exception Ward consented to was for the Art Institute of Chicago, constructed in 1892. More landfill in the 1910s and 1920s provided sites for the Adler Planetarium, Field Museum of Natural History, and Shedd Aquarium, in 2004, a section of northern Grant Park, previously occupied by Illinois Central railyards and parking lots, was covered and redeveloped as Millennium Park. The park has been the site of large civic events. It served as the ground for the citys funeral procession for Abraham Lincoln. In 1911, the hosted the major Chicago International Aviation Meet. The park was the scene of clashes between Chicago Police and demonstrators during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, pope John Paul II celebrated an outdoor mass to a large crowd here in 1979
3.
Chicago
–
Chicago, officially the City of Chicago, is the third-most populous city in the United States. With over 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the state of Illinois, and it is the county seat of Cook County. In 2012, Chicago was listed as a global city by the Globalization and World Cities Research Network. Chicago has the third-largest gross metropolitan product in the United States—about $640 billion according to 2015 estimates, the city has one of the worlds largest and most diversified economies with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce. In 2016, Chicago hosted over 54 million domestic and international visitors, landmarks in the city include Millennium Park, Navy Pier, the Magnificent Mile, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum Campus, the Willis Tower, Museum of Science and Industry, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Chicagos culture includes the arts, novels, film, theater, especially improvisational comedy. Chicago also has sports teams in each of the major professional leagues. The city has many nicknames, the best-known being the Windy City, the name Chicago is derived from a French rendering of the Native American word shikaakwa, known to botanists as Allium tricoccum, from the Miami-Illinois language. The first known reference to the site of the current city of Chicago as Checagou was by Robert de LaSalle around 1679 in a memoir, henri Joutel, in his journal of 1688, noted that the wild garlic, called chicagoua, grew abundantly in the area. In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by a Native American tribe known as the Potawatomi, the first known non-indigenous permanent settler in Chicago was Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African and French descent and arrived in the 1780s and he is commonly known as the Founder of Chicago. In 1803, the United States Army built Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed in 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes had ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833, on August 12,1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 4,000 people, on June 15,1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as U. S. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4,1837, as the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicagos first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois, the canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River. A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad, manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade listed the first ever standardized exchange traded forward contracts and these issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage
4.
Bronze
–
These additions produce a range of alloys that may be harder than copper alone, or have other useful properties, such as stiffness, ductility, or machinability. The archeological period where bronze was the hardest metal in use is known as the Bronze Age. In the ancient Near East this began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC, with India and China starting to use bronze around the same time, everywhere it gradually spread across regions. The Bronze Age was followed by the Iron Age starting from about 1300 BC and reaching most of Eurasia by about 500 BC, the discovery of bronze enabled people to create metal objects which were harder and more durable than previously possible. Bronze tools, weapons, armor, and building such as decorative tiles were harder and more durable than their stone. It was only later that tin was used, becoming the major ingredient of bronze in the late 3rd millennium BC. Tin bronze was superior to arsenic bronze in that the process could be more easily controlled. Also, unlike arsenic, metallic tin and fumes from tin refining are not toxic, the earliest tin-alloy bronze dates to 4500 BCE in a Vinča culture site in Pločnik. Other early examples date to the late 4th millennium BC in Africa, Susa and some ancient sites in China, Luristan, ores of copper and the far rarer tin are not often found together, so serious bronze work has always involved trade. Tin sources and trade in ancient times had a influence on the development of cultures. In Europe, a source of tin was the British deposits of ore in Cornwall. In many parts of the world, large hoards of bronze artefacts are found, suggesting that bronze also represented a store of value, in Europe, large hoards of bronze tools, typically socketed axes, are found, which mostly show no signs of wear. With Chinese ritual bronzes, which are documented in the inscriptions they carry and from other sources and these were made in enormous quantities for elite burials, and also used by the living for ritual offerings. Pure iron is soft, and the process of beating and folding sponge iron to wrought iron removes from the metal carbon. Careful control of the alloying and tempering eventually allowed for wrought iron with properties comparable to modern steel, Bronze was still used during the Iron Age, and has continued in use for many purposes to the modern day. Among other advantages, it does not rust, the weaker wrought iron was found to be sufficiently strong for many uses. Archaeologists suspect that a disruption of the tin trade precipitated the transition. The population migrations around 1200–1100 BC reduced the shipping of tin around the Mediterranean, limiting supplies, there are many different bronze alloys, but typically modern bronze is 88% copper and 12% tin
5.
Abraham Lincoln
–
Abraham Lincoln was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 16th President of the United States from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. Lincoln led the United States through its Civil War—its bloodiest war and perhaps its greatest moral, constitutional, in doing so, he preserved the Union, abolished slavery, strengthened the federal government, and modernized the economy. Born in Hodgenville, Kentucky, Lincoln grew up on the frontier in Kentucky. Largely self-educated, he became a lawyer in Illinois, a Whig Party leader, elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1846, Lincoln promoted rapid modernization of the economy through banks, tariffs, and railroads. Reentering politics in 1854, he became a leader in building the new Republican Party, in 1860, Lincoln secured the Republican Party presidential nomination as a moderate from a swing state. Though he gained little support in the slaveholding states of the South. Subsequently, on April 12,1861, a Confederate attack on Fort Sumter inspired the North to enthusiastically rally behind the Union. Politically, Lincoln fought back by pitting his opponents against each other, by carefully planned political patronage and his Gettysburg Address became an iconic endorsement of the principles of nationalism, republicanism, equal rights, liberty, and democracy. Lincoln initially concentrated on the military and political dimensions of the war and his primary goal was to reunite the nation. He suspended habeas corpus, leading to the ex parte Merryman decision. Lincoln closely supervised the war effort, especially the selection of top generals, including his most successful general, Lincoln tried repeatedly to capture the Confederate capital at Richmond, each time a general failed, Lincoln substituted another, until finally Grant succeeded. As the war progressed, his moves toward ending slavery included the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. On April 14,1865, five days after the surrender of Confederate commanding general Robert E. Lee, Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth, a Confederate sympathizer. Secretary of War Edwin Stanton launched a manhunt for Booth, and 12 days later on April 26, Lincoln has been consistently ranked both by scholars and the public as among the greatest U. S. presidents. Abraham Lincoln was born February 12,1809, the child of Thomas and Nancy Hanks Lincoln, in a one-room log cabin on the Sinking Spring Farm near Hodgenville. He was a descendant of Samuel Lincoln, an Englishman who migrated from Hingham, Norfolk to its namesake of Hingham, samuels grandson and great-grandson began the familys western migration, which passed through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. Lincolns paternal grandfather and namesake, Captain Abraham Lincoln, moved the family from Virginia to Jefferson County, Captain Lincoln was killed in an Indian raid in 1786. His children, including eight-year-old Thomas, the presidents father
6.
Exedra
–
In architecture, an exedra is a semicircular recess or plinth, often crowned by a semi-dome, which is sometimes set into a buildings façade or is free-standing. The original Greek sense was applied to a room that opened onto a stoa, ringed with curved high-backed stone benches, an exedra may also be expressed by a curved break in a colonnade, perhaps with a semicircular seat. The exedra would typically have a podium that supported the stone running bench. Monument architects have used this free-standing style in modern times. The exedra achieved particular popularity in Roman architecture during the Roman Empire, an exedra was normally a public feature, when rhetoricians and philosophers disputed in a Roman gymnasium it was in an exedra opening into the peristyle that they gathered. A basilica featured a large exedra at the far end from its entrance and this was called a tribuna in Latin, and tribune is used for an area of raised floor backing onto a wall, often in an exedra. Following precedents from Rome, exedrae continued to be in widespread use architecturally after the fall of Rome, in Byzantine architecture and Romanesque architecture, this familiar feature developed into the apse and is fully treated there. A famous use of the exedra is in Donato Bramantes Cortile del Belvedere extension of the Vatican Palace, in Muslim architecture, the exedra becomes a mihrab and invariably retains religious associations, wherever it is seen, even on the smallest scale, as a prayer niche. Both Baroque and Neoclassical architecture used exedrae, Baroque architects, used them to enrich the play of light and shade and give rein to expressive volumes, Neoclassical architects, to articulate the rhythmic pacing of a wall elevation. The interior exedra was richly exploited by Scottish neoclassical architect Robert Adam, a classic example of a Baroque exedra on a reduced scale within its context, is the central niche of the Trevi Fountain in Rome, sheltering a statue of Neptune. Many classicizing bandshells in public parks are exedrae, for the shape, with its half-dome heading, the Hollywood Bowls shell takes the form of the head of a gargantuan exedra, stripped of classicizing details. During the 18th century, a became an popular garden feature or folly. Examples can be found at Belton House and West Wycombe Park, an exedra can be used in landscape design to visually terminate a garden axis. They can incorporate seating, a fountain, tile-work, and landscape lighting, in traditional or contemporary styles
7.
Stanford White
–
Stanford White was an American architect and partner in the architectural firm McKim, Mead & White, the frontrunner among Beaux-Arts firms. He designed a series of houses for the rich, and numerous public, institutional. His design principles embodied the American Renaissance, in 1906, White was murdered by millionaire Harry Kendall Thaw over Whites relationship with Thaws wife, actress Evelyn Nesbit. This led to a case which was dubbed The Trial of the Century by contemporary reporters. White was the son of Shakespearean scholar Richard Grant White and Alexina Black Mease and his father was a dandy and Anglophile with no money, but a great many connections in New Yorks art world, including painter John LaFarge, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Frederick Law Olmsted. He remained with Richardson for six years, in 1878, White embarked for a year and a half in Europe, and when he returned to New York in September 1879, he joined Charles Follen McKim and William Rutherford Mead to form McKim, Mead and White. As part of the partnership, all designed by the architects were identified as being the work of the collective firm. In 1884, White married 22-year-old Bessie Springs Smith and his new wife hailed from a socially prominent Long Island family, her ancestors were early settlers of the area, and Smithtown, New York, was named for them. Their estate, Box Hill, was not only a home, a son, Lawrence Grant White, was born in 1887. In 1889, White designed the arch at Washington Square. White was the director of the Washington Centennial celebration and created a temporary triumphal arch which was so popular, outside of New York City, White designed the First Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore, Maryland, now Lovely Lane United Methodist Church. He also designed Cocke, Rouss, and Old Cabell halls at the University of Virginia, additionally, he designed the Blair Mansion at 7711 Eastern Ave. in Silver Spring, Maryland, now being used as a restaurant. He was responsible for designing the Boston Public Library and the Boston Hotel Buckminster, in 1902, he designed the Benjamin Walworth Arnold House and Carriage House in Albany, New York, and he helped to develop Nikola Teslas Wardenclyffe Tower, his last design. Just as his Washington Square Arch still stands, so do many of Whites clubhouses, which were focal points of New York society, the Century, Colony, Harmonie, Lambs, Metropolitan, and Players clubs. However, his clubhouse for the Atlantic Yacht Club, built in 1894 overlooking Gravesend Bay, sons of society families also resided in Whites St. Anthony Hall Chapter House at Williams College, now occupied by college offices. In the division of projects within the firm, the sociable and his fluent draftsmanship was highly convincing to clients who might not get much visceral understanding from a floorplan, and his intuition and facility caught the mood. Whites Long Island houses have survived well, despite the loss of Harbor Hill in 1947 and he also designed the Kate Annette Wetherill Estate in 1895. White designed a number of other New York mansions as well, including the Iselin family estate All View, White was also active designing country estate homes in Greenwich, Connecticut
8.
Lincoln Park
–
Lincoln Park is a 1, 208-acre park along the lakefront of Chicago, Illinois North Side, facing Lake Michigan. It is Chicagos largest public park, named after Abraham Lincoln, it stretches for seven miles from Ohio Street on the south to near Ardmore Avenue on the north, just north of the Lake Shore Drive terminus at Hollywood Avenue. Several museums and a zoo are located between North Avenue and Diversey Parkway in the neighborhood takes its name from the park. The park further to the north is characterized by parkland, beaches, recreational areas, nature reserves, to the south, there is a more narrow strip of beaches east of Lake Shore Drive, almost to downtown. With 20 million visitors a year, Lincoln Park is the park in the United States. The park also includes a number of harbors with boating facilities, in 1860, Lake Park, the precursor of todays park, was established by the city on the lands just to the north of the citys burial ground. Five years later, on June 12,1865, the park was renamed to honor the recently assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994, part of the oldest section of todays Lincoln Park near North Avenue began its existence as the City Cemetery in 1843. This was subdivided into a Potters Field, Catholic cemetery, Jewish cemetery, and these cemeteries were the only cemeteries in the Chicago area until 1859. In 1852, David Kennison, who is said to have born in 1736. Another notable burial in the cemetery was Chicago Mayor James Curtiss, throughout the late 1850s, there was discussion of closing the cemetery or abandoning it because of health concerns. The idea was dropped during the Civil War, but revived by Dr. Rauch after the war ended, by 1864, the city council had decided to add all the 120-acre cemetery lands north of North Avenue to the park by relocating the graves. The cemetery sections south of North Avenue were also relocated but this land was left for residential development, to this day, the Couch mausoleum can still be seen as the most visible reminder of the history as a cemetery, standing amidst trees, behind the Chicago History Museum. Ira Couch, who is interred in the tomb, was one of Chicagos earliest innkeepers, Couch is believed to not be the only person interred in the old burial ground in Lincoln Park. A plaque placed nearby states that the remains of six Couch family members, partially due to the destruction of the Chicago Fire of burial markers, it was difficult to remove many of the remains. As recently as 1998, construction in the park has revealed more bodies left over from the nineteenth century, another large and notable group of graves relocated from the site of todays Lincoln Park were those of approximately 4,000 Confederate prisoners of war who died at Camp Douglas. Many prisoners perished between 1862 and 1865 as a result of the condition they were in when taken on the battlefield, or of disease. Although the camp was located south of downtown Chicago, near the stockyards, today, their gravesites may be found at Oak Woods Cemetery in the southern part of Chicago
9.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
–
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially the Met, is located in New York City and is the largest art museum in the United States, and is among the most visited art museums in the world. Its permanent collection contains two million works, divided among seventeen curatorial departments. The main building, on the edge of Central Park along Manhattans Museum Mile, is by area one of the worlds largest art galleries. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains a collection of art, architecture. On March 18,2016, the museum opened the Met Breuer museum at Madison Avenue in the Upper East Side, it extends the museums modern, the Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, Indian, and Islamic art. The museum is home to collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, as well as antique weapons. Several notable interiors, ranging from first-century Rome through modern American design, are installed in its galleries, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870. The founders included businessmen and financiers, as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day and it opened on February 20,1872, and was originally located at 681 Fifth Avenue. The Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, the museum is also home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, and antique weapons and armor from around the world. A number of interiors, ranging from 1st century Rome through modern American design, are permanently installed in the Mets galleries. In addition to its permanent exhibitions, the Met organizes and hosts traveling shows throughout the year. The director of the museum is Thomas P. Campbell, a long-time curator and it was announced on February 28th,2017 that Campbell will be stepping down as the Mets director and CEO, effective June. On March 1st,2017 the BBC reported that Daniel Weiss shall be the acting CEO until a replacement is found, Beginning in the late 19th century, the Met started to acquire ancient art and artifacts from the Near East. From a few tablets and seals, the Mets collection of Near Eastern art has grown to more than 7,000 pieces. The highlights of the include a set of monumental stone lamassu, or guardian figures. The Mets Department of Arms and Armor is one of the museums most popular collections. Among the collections 14,000 objects are many pieces made for and used by kings and princes, including armor belonging to Henry VIII of England, Henry II of France, Rockefeller donated his more than 3, 000-piece collection to the museum. The Mets Asian department holds a collection of Asian art, of more than 35,000 pieces, the collection dates back almost to the founding of the museum, many of the philanthropists who made the earliest gifts to the museum included Asian art in their collections
10.
Michigan Avenue (Chicago)
–
Michigan Avenue is a major north-south street in Chicago which runs at 100 east on the Chicago grid. The northern end of the street is at Lake Shore Drive on the shore of Lake Michigan in the Gold Coast Historic District, the streets southern terminus is at Sibley Boulevard in the southern suburb of Harvey, though like many Chicago streets it exists in several disjointed segments. Michigan Avenue also is the commercial street of Streeterville. It includes all of the Historic Michigan Boulevard District and most of the Michigan–Wacker Historic District, the oldest section of Michigan Avenue is the portion that currently borders Grant Park in the Chicago Loop section of the city. The name came from Lake Michigan, which until 1871 was immediately east of Michigan Avenue, the street at that time ran north to the Chicago River and south to the city limits. Originally, Michigan Avenue was primarily residential, and by the 1860s, large homes, but in the 1900-1907 Ads for the Chicago Musical College, the address was referred to as 202 Michigan Boul. As recently as the 1920s, North Michigan Avenue was referred to as Upper Boul Mich, pariss Boulevard Saint-Michel is the original Boul Mich. In the Great Fire of 1871, all buildings on Michigan Avenue from Congress Street north to the river were destroyed. Beginning in the 1880s, the expansion of the business district replaced houses on Michigan Avenue so that today. The first city showcase on Michigan Avenue was the Exposition Building, which was built on the current site of the Art Institute, the east side of Michigan at Adams, in 1874. By the 1890s, a wall of buildings was constructed on the west side of Michigan Avenue downtown, including the Auditorium Building. As the east side of Michigan Avenue downtown was developed as a park, in 1924, the first traffic lights in Chicago were installed on Michigan Avenue after John D. Hertz fronted the city $34,000 for the purchase, installation, historically, Illinois Route 1 and U. S. Route 41 were routed on Michigan Avenue. Illinois Route 1 has been truncated to Chicagos south side and U. S. Route 41 is now routed on Lake Shore Drive, as early as 1891 plans were proposed to extend Michigan Avenue north across the river. When the Michigan Avenue Bridge was completed, Pine Street was renamed Michigan Avenue, at its north end it merges into Lake Shore Drive near the Drake Hotel. Today, the north of the Chicago River is referred to as the Magnificent Mile. It contains a mixture of upscale department stores, restaurants, high-end retailers, office buildings and hotels, and caters primarily to tourists, the area also has a high concentration of the citys advertising agencies and major media firms, including the Chicago Tribune. North of the center can be found the famous John Hancock Center, the art deco Palmolive Building
11.
Crown Fountain
–
Crown Fountain is an interactive work of public art and video sculpture featured in Chicagos Millennium Park, which is located in the Loop community area. Designed by Catalan artist Jaume Plensa and executed by Krueck and Sexton Architects, the fountain is composed of a black granite reflecting pool placed between a pair of glass brick towers. The towers are 50 feet tall, and they use light-emitting diodes to display digital videos on their inward faces, construction and design of the Crown Fountain cost $17 million. The water operates from May to October, intermittently cascading down the two towers and spouting through a nozzle on each towers front face, residents and critics have praised the fountain for its artistic and entertainment features. It highlights Plensas themes of dualism, light, and water and its use of water is unique among Chicagos many fountains, in that it promotes physical interaction between the public and the water. Both the fountain and Millennium Park are highly accessible because of their universal design, Crown Fountain has been one of the most controversial of all the Millennium Park features. Before it was built, some were concerned that the sculptures height violated the aesthetic tradition of the park. After construction, surveillance cameras were installed atop the fountain, which led to a public outcry, however, the fountain has survived its contentious beginnings to find its way into Chicago pop culture. It is a subject for photographers and a common gathering place. The fountain is a play area and offers people an escape from summer heat. Grant Park, which is between Lake Michigan and the business district, is commonly called Chicagos Front Yard. Its northwest corner had been Illinois Central rail yards and parking lots until 1997, as of 2007, Millennium Park trails only Navy Pier as a Chicago tourist attraction. Looking north from the fountain, viewers see some of the tallest buildings in the United States, in December 1999, Lester Crown and his family agreed to sponsor a water feature in Millennium Park. The Crowns were open-minded about the choice of artist, wanting a modern work, Jaume Plensa researched the traditions and history of fountains and studied anthropomorphism in fountain imagery. Some of his ideas for the project referenced Buckingham Fountain. His presentation to the Crown family started with a show of fountains from the Middle Ages through the 20th century. Plensa focused on the meanings associated with fountains, their history, use. His presentation included computer animation of facial expressions, the other finalists were Maya Lin, who presented a low-height horizontal form, and Robert Venturi, who presented a fountain that would have been 150 feet tall
12.
Field Museum of Natural History
–
The Field Museum of Natural History, also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. Additionally, the Field Museum maintains an exhibition program of traveling shows as well as in-house produced topical exhibitions. The professional staff maintains collections of over 24 million specimens and objects that provide the basis for the scientific research programs. These collections include the range of existing biodiversity, gems, meteorites, fossils, as well as rich anthropological collections. The Field Museum and its collections originated from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, during the period from 1943 to 1966, the museum was known as the Chicago Natural History Museum. In 1921, the Museum moved from its location in Jackson Park to its present site on Chicago Park District property near downtown. By the late 1930s the Field emerged as one of the three museums in the United States, the other two being the American Museum of Natural History and the National Museum of Natural History. The Field Museum is part of Chicago’s lakefront Museum Campus that includes the John G. Shedd Aquarium, in 2015, it became public that an employee had defrauded the museum of $900,000 over a seven-year period to 2014. The Hall of Jades focuses on Chinese jade artifacts spanning 8,000 years, the Underground Adventure gives visitors a bugs-eye look at the world beneath their feet. Visitors can see what insects and soil look like from that size, while learning about the biodiversity of soil, inside Ancient Egypt offers a glimpse into what life was like for ancient Egyptians. Twenty-three human mummies are on display as well as many mummified animals, the exhibit features a tomb that visitors can enter, complete with 5, 000-year-old hieroglyphs. There are also many interactive displays, for children and adults, as well as a shrine to the cat goddess Sekhmet and her kinder, less hostile form. A popular feature of the exhibit is the replica of the chapel in the tomb of Unis-Ankh, evolving Planet follows the history and the evolution of life on Earth over 4 billion years, from the first organism to present-day life. Visitors can see how mass extinctions in Earth’s history helped shape all the organisms, there is also an expanded dinosaur hall, with dinosaurs from every era, as well as interactive displays. The Ancient Americas displays 13,000 years of human ingenuity and achievement in the Western Hemisphere, in this large permanent exhibition visitors can learn the epic story of the peopling of these continents, from the Arctic to the tip of South America. Working Laboratories DNA Discovery Center, Visitors can watch real scientists extract DNA from a variety of organisms, Museum goers can also speak to a live scientist through the glass every day and ask them any questions about DNA. McDonalds Fossil Prep Lab, The public can watch as paleontologists prepare real fossils for study, the Regenstein Pacific Conservation Laboratory,1, 600-square-foot conservation and collections facility. Visitors can watch as conservators work to preserve and study anthropological specimens from all over the world, other exhibitions include sections on Tibet and China, where visitors can view traditional clothing
