Morris Museum

Free museums this weekend

August 4, 2016Harriet BaskasFree Stuff, MuseumsAlder Planetarium, AVAM, Free museum admission, Morris Museum, Museums on Us

When I’m not in an airport, I’m checking out museums – especially on the first weekend of each month when the Museums on Us program gives Bank of America cardholders free access to more than 150 museums and cultural institutions around the country.

Ivory telescope from the Alder Plantarium

If I could zip around the country, I’d use my bank card to gain free access this weekend to the Alder Planetarium in Chicago (general admission: $12), to see the telescope collection and the temporary exhibition that explores the post-Pluto question: What is a Planet?.

I’d also head to American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore to see the Big Hope Show – which is closing soon – and to Morristown, New Jersey to see the Toothpick World exhibition and the fortune -tellers, gambling machines and other early coin-operated entertainment machines at the Morris Museum.

Side trip Tuesday: antique arcade amusements

July 5, 2016Harriet BaskasMuseumsantique amusements, Arace machines, coin-op machines, Morris Museum

In the early 20th century, all it took was a nickel, or maybe a dime, to bring to life the vending machines, gambling devices and other coin-operated mechanical amusements in “For Amusement Only,” an exhibition on view through October 10 at the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey.

My slide-show about the exhibit first appeared on CNBC.com, but here’s a preview of some fun arcade items from the show:

The Seaside Musicians played several melodies and had wooden cams to provide animation that allowed the musicians’ heads to turn from side to side and their arms to play the musical instruments. A coin would buy about a minute-long performance.

Some machines offered a few minutes of music or entertainment in exchange for a coin, others delivered products such as postage stamps, tobacco, cigarettes and sweets.

The Automatic Chicken clucked and dispensed (from its rear end) either an actual hardboiled egg or an egg-shaped tin with candy or treats.

Fortune telling machines based on early models such as this one, called “Grandmother Predictions” (circa 1932), can still be found in some modern-day arcades

See the full For Amusement Only slide-show here.

(All photos courtesy of the Morris Museum, Morristown, New Jersey)

At the SFO Museum: “self-moving mechanical creations”

November 23, 2011Harriet BaskasArt, ExhibitsAirport art, automata, Morris Museum, SFO, SFO Museum

If you’re very lucky, you’ll end up getting stuck for a while at San Francisco International Airport sometime between now and the end of May 2012.

When you do, rush over to the pre-security departure lobby of the International Terminal Main Hall to see the exhibition of automata and “self-moving” mechanical creations on loan from the Morris Museum in Morristown New Jersey, which houses the incredible Murtogh D. Guinness Collection of Mechanical Musical Instruments and Automata.

Here’s a link to a radio piece I produced about the collection for NPR back in the 2005.