Exhibits

Marvelous miniature aircraft at the SFO Museum

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(Fokker T-2 model aircraft)

Here’s a great airport exibit for avgeeks, model builders or anyone who loves marvelous, hand-crafted items and get to the pre-security area of the International Terminal at San Francisco International Airport (SFO).

(Douglas World Cruiser Chicago model aircraft)

From now through March 2027 (so you have some time to make your plans…) the Aviation Museum & Library at SFO is exhibiting 8 model aicraft from its collection, all created by Edward Chavez, who was a recognized master of scratch building within the model-making community.

In 1961, the owners of the Nut Tree Restaurant, a sprawling roadside dining, shopping and amusement attraction in Vacaville, CA that operated from 1921 to 1996, commissioned Chavez to build display models of renowned aircraft.

The commissions continued for 27 years.

(Northrop Gamma 2A Texaco Sky Chief model aircraft)

Edwin I. Power, Jr., a pilot and one of the restaurant’s owners who helped develop the adjacent Nut Tree Airport (still there and sporting an Observation Deck), had seen Chavez’s work at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. And in 1997 the SFO Museum acquired the majority of the models that Chavez and his occasional collaborator, Robert Fogg, had created for the restuarant over the years.

Magnificence in Miniature: The Nut Tree Airport Models of Edward Chavez is a free SFO Museum exhibit at SFO’ Aviation Museumn & Library, located pre-security, Departures Level 3 in the International Terminal

(Lockheed Model 5B Vega Winnie Mae model aircraft)

All images courtesy of the SFO Museum

IND Airport exhibit celebrates Indianapolis Children’s Museum at 100

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The Indianapolis International Airport (IND) partnered with the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis last spring to install a 33-foot T. rex fossil in the pre-security Civic Plaza as part of the year-long celebration of the museum’s 100th birthday.

Now the two institutions are coming together againg to present a exhibit at the airport’s KIND Gallery titled “Memories, Wonders, and Dreams: Stories from 100 Years”—a centennial tribute to the world’s largest children’s museum.

The exhibit is located post-security in Concourse A at IND and will be showcasing a curated selection of objects and photographs from the museum’s vast archive and collection through January 26.

Be sure to stop by.

Cool places to go. Great things to see. Many free.

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(Photo: Hooloomooloo, by Frank Stella at DCA Airport)

It’s Friday. Finally.

So we are digging into the inbox to share some of the messages we’ve saved about cool places we’d love to go and great things we’d love to see. As always, we give bonus points for anything cool and free.

Visit Vessel for free

The “Vessel” structure at Hudson Yards in New York City is a 16-story honeycomb-looking attraction that has 154 flights of stairs and 2,500 steps and plenty of landings where you can see catch great views of the city.

It costs $10 to visit on a specific day and time. And $15 if you choose a flexible day and time to arrive.

But if you’re a New York City resident, you can visit for free on Thursdays.

There are some hoops and strings, of course. Free ticket reservations are being released on the last Friday of every month at 9 AM for the following month. But a limited number of free, day-of tickets will also be available to reserve every Thursday.

(DaM-FunK, Bohemian Cristal Instrument, Photay – courtesy LAWA)

The 2025 LAX Presents music series at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) is underway,

And if you’re traveling to or through LAX between now and June, check to see if you can catch one of the cool acts offered in various locations across the domestic and international terminals.

Nebraska? Why not?

When we’re not in airports, the Stuck at the Airport team is all about quirky places and unusual museums.

And Nebraska beckons with all that. And more.

In addition to odd attractions such as Carhenge (above), Nebraska has a great list of odd museums we’re hankering to visit, including the National Museum of Roller Skating in Lincoln, the Hastings Museum Kool-Aid Exhibit in the birthplace of the Kool-Aid and Lee’s Legendary Marbles & Collectibles in York.

Meteorites galore at Portland Int’l Jetport in Maine

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Much of Maine will be in the path of the total solar eclipse on April 8.

But pieces of the Moon and Mars area landing at Portland International Jetport (PWM) in Portland, Maine on March 26th.

For the next five years, the airport will be home to a museum-level exhibit from the Maine Mineral & Gem Museum’s meteorite collection.

The 20-foot-long exhibit is located in the gate area and includes 18 meteorites.

Among them is the second-largest piece of the Moon on Earth and one of the largest pieces of Mars on Earth.

(Second largest piece of the Moon here on Earth)

The “Fly Me to the Moon” exhibit also includes an iconic Gibeon meteorite that looks a lot like Edvard Munch’s “The Scream.”

(“The Scream” is on loan from Macovich Collection through the Maine Mineral & Gem Museum)

“This exhibit will be full of beautiful examples of meteorite specimens from the Moon, Mars, and the asteroid 4 Vesta,” said Cari Corrigan, Curator of Meteorites at the Smithsonian Institution. “Having all of these samples on exhibit together in an airport, free of charge to the public, is an amazing educational and inspirational opportunity for those lucky enough to fly through Portland.”

Want to see more of the Moon? The Maine Mineral and Gem Museum is in Bethel, less than 70 miles from Portland, Maine. The museum has 17 interactive exhibits and boasts that it has more of the Moon than all of the natural history museums in the world combined.

At PHL Airport: a collection of collections

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The exhibition program at Philadelphia International Airport (PHL) is offering an exhibition featuring a wonderful collection of collections.

Personal Collection – Private Obsessions features an assortment of private collections that are borrowed from residents of the Greater Philadelphia area and from employees at Philadelphia International Airport.

Passengers traveling through PHL between now and May 2024 will see some collections representing nostalgic objects, such as handbags, sewing thimbles, antique glass, airline silverware, and John F. Kennedy ephemera.

Other collections feature more familiar objects from popular culture—ice cream scoops, bobbleheads, bottle caps, Funko Pop! figures, travel magnets, and Philadelphia Eagles hats.

The exhibit notes point out that while the activity of collecting is a universal experience, each collection is as personal and unique as each object and often represents a specific remembrance or story.

“This is the 4th exhibition of collections that we have presented over the past 25 years of the exhibitions program,” said Leah Douglas, PHL’s Director of Guest Experience. “The current installation is by far the most extensive one to date and it is proving to be a big hit with our guests and employees,” she said.

Personal Collections – Private Obsessions is on view at Philadelphia International Airport through May 2024 and is located between Terminals C and D accessible to ticketed passengers.

What do you collect?

It seems everyone collects something. Or many things. Please share a note about your collections in the comments section below.

Cool collections on display at PHL Airport

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Do you collect anything? (Or a lot of things?)

Here at the Seattle headquarters of Stuck at the Airport, we share space with Space Needle souvenirs, cowgirl memorabilia, and other collections. (Not counting that pile of unread New Yorker magazines).

So we’re delighted to see the Philadelphia International Airport’s (PHL) exhibition program kicking off the new year with a fun show titled “Private Collections: Personal Obsessions.”

On view in Terminal D, the exhibition is a festival of collections on loan from Philadelphia-area residents, including a few people who work at PHL.

The cases include a sampling of collections dedicated to architectural salvage, brooches, cable cars, beer bottles, hearts, masks, magnets, mail art, wind-up toys, and lots more.

“Most [of the collections] have been gathered primarily as a hobby for the collector’s own enjoyment or handed down from one family member to another,” says Leah Douglas, PHL Director of Guest Experience and Chief Curator.

“While the activity of collecting is a universal experience, each collection is personal and unique as each object often represents a specific remembrance or story,” she adds.

The beer bottles on display are courtesy of David Rosenblum, PHL’s photographer/videographer, whose late father collected more than 4000 bottles. “His most prized bottles were always the older bottles from Philadelphia-area brewers,” says Rosenblum.

The refrigerator magnets in the exhibit are on loan from the collection of PHL’s public affairs manager, Heather Redfern.

“[M]agnets are inexpensive trinkets that tell the story of where I have traveled, favorite trips, and great experiences I have had along the way,” says Redfern. “I am reminded of where I have been and where I would still like to go every time I walk past the refrigerator.”

Do you have a collection you have put together from your travels? We’d love to hear about it and see some snaps.

All photos courtesy of PHL Airport and David Rosenblum.

If/Then: Women in Aviation Statues at Dallas Love Field

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In 2021. Dallas’ NorthPark Center will present #IfThenSheCan – The Exhibit, which will feature 123 3-D printed statues of contemporary women working in the STEM professions of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

In the meantime, 15 of those statues are on display through March 9, 2021, at Dallas Love Field. Included in the group are 10 statues that portray women who work in aviation or aerospace-related fields, including astrophysicists, a rocket scientist, and an aviation maintenance technician.

To create the statues each subject stands in a scanning booth that uses 89 cameras and 25 projectors to generate a 3D image. A special machine then takes up to ten hours to slowly build up the layers of acrylic gel that make the statue.

Here’s a list of the women whose statues are in the DAL pop-up exhibit.

1. Adriana Bailey – Atmospheric Scientist, National Center for Atmospheric Research
2. Charita Castro – Social Science Researcher, Office of the US Trade Representative
3. Xyla Foxlin – Engineer, Entrepreneur, and Nonprofit Director, Beauty and the Bolt
4. Miriam Fuchs – Telescope Systems Specialist, East Asian Observatory
5. Joyonna Gamble-George – Health Scientist, National Institutes of Health
6. Erika Hamden – Professor of Astrophysics, University of Arizona
7. Kelly Korreck – Astrophysicist, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
8. Adele Luta – Scientist and Innovator, Oceaneering
9. Jenn Makins – STEM Educator and Inventor, Parish Episcopal School
10. Amanda Masino – Biologist, Professor and Research Director, Huston-Tillotson University
11. Tiffany Panko – Women’s Health Researcher, Rochester Institute of Technology
12. Jasmine Sadler – Dancing Rocket Scientist and STEAM Entrepreneur, The STEAM Collaborative
13. Nikki Sereika – Aviation Maintenance Technician, Southwest Airlines
14. Nicole Sharp – Aerospace Engineer and Science Communicator, Sharp Science Communication Consulting
15. Mary Beth Westmoreland – Vice President, Amazon

And here’s a short time-lapse video of the statues being installed.

DFW Airport pops open a new Coca-Cola themed lounge

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Coca-Cola’s new ‘Around the World Experience’ lounge at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) is now open to travelers in Terminal D.

The 2, 106-foot-square lounge has seating and power charging stations and lots of Coca-Cola themed exhibits and attractions.

In addition to Coca-Cola vending machines, the lounge space has two display cases filled with vintage artifacts and memorabilia from the Coca-Cola Archives. The mini-museum has an 1896 syrup urn and pieces from ad campaigns featuring Run DMC, Max Headroom, and the Coca-Cola Polar Bear.

The Coca-Cola Around the World Experience also features an interactive photo booth, folk art Coca-Cola bottles, a digital coke store, and a digital display with interactive timelines, stories, trivia, and digitized images from around the world.

Oh, did we mention that Coca-Cola is the official beverage sponsor of DFW Airport? We didn’t know airports had official beverages either.

But, evidently, they do.

Surf Music exhibit at SFO has its own soundtrack

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Fender Jazzmaster – 1965, played by Bob Demmon of The Astronauts

The SFO Museum at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) has a fun new exhibit celebrating the instrumental surf music popular in the United States in the early 1960s.

SFO Museum General Exhibition 2020

Surf’s Up! Instrumental Rock ‘n’ Roll

So much fun stuff comes from Southern California.

One example: surf music,

“Energetic and melodic with little or no vocal accompaniment, instrumental surf music originated in Southern California along with a booming interest in surfing and the subsequent pop-cultural craze,” the exhibit notes tell us.

“The most authentic surf music reflected a youthful lifestyle and started at the grassroots, often by teenagers who formed bands to play dances and other functions.”

Here are some of our favorite photos from the exhibit.

DoubleJunk” Fender Jazzmaster/Jaguar 1992 & Weather King bass drumhead  1989

Howard custom double-neck guitar 1960
played by Duane Eddy, “The King of Twangy Guitar”

More surf tidbits from the exhibit notes:

“Surf music was influenced by the rock ‘n’ roll instrumentals of the late 1950s when many bands replaced vocal melodies with leads played by the saxophone, piano, organ, and guitar.

Duane Eddy and The Rebels scored a major guitar hit with “Rebel Rouser” in 1958, the same year that “Rumble” by Link Wray & The Wraymen was banned by radio stations for its “suggestive” title.

The Ventures refined instrumentals with brilliantly simple lead-guitar lines layered over rhythm- and bass-guitar melodies. In 1960 their arrangement of “Walk—Don’t Run” landed at #2, the first in a string of instrumental hits by the group.”

“By 1963, surf music was a full-fledged phenomenon that received national attention. A revival of instrumental surf music occurred during the early 1980s and spread worldwide in the 1990s. The music is now more diverse than ever, and there are active surf and instrumental scenes throughout the United States and in Mexico, Brazil, Australia, Japan, and across Europe.”


Surf’s Up! Instrumental Rock ‘n’ Roll is located post-security in Terminal 2 of the San Francisco International Airport through July 18, 2021.

You can see many of the exhibit items in the online exhibition and, even better, listen to a Spotify surf music playlist here.

All photos courtesy SFO Museum.

Scenic wallpaper exhibit at San Francisco Int’l Airport

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Courtesy Zuber et Cie and SFO Museum

The SFO Museum at San Francisco International Airport is hosting a charming exhibition featuring a rare set of scenic wallpaper.

Scenic wallpaper? Yes.

It was and, in some forms, continues to be a thing.

Here’s the museum’s introduction to “Zuber: The Art of French Scenic Wallpaper”:

The French have manufactured several types of wallpaper over the centuries, though their nineteenth-century handcrafted scenic landscape papers are arguably the most spectacular. This unique wallpaper created a breathtaking panoramic experience with all the walls in a room covered with non-repeating scenes.

These mural-like papers transformed rooms, providing the opportunity for viewers to be swept away to an exotic place or immersed in an exciting period in history.

Scenic papers enjoyed a golden era in both Europe and North America from the first decade of the 1800s until the 1860s, though they remained in print well after this period.

Zuber et Cie is the only firm that fabricates these papers today. And they still use the original antique printing blocks, which have designated Historical Monuments by the French Ministry of Culture.

The SFO Museum exhibit includes a complete set of Views of North America wallpare as well as individual lengths from other series.

Here are few more images. You can see the full set on view at San Francisco International Airport in pre-security/departures level of the International Terminal through April 2020.

All photos courtesy SFO Museum.