Museums

Watch out for the dinosaur at IND Airport

Museums,

A 33-foot-long Tyrannosaurus Rex is currently towering over passengers and visitors in the pre-security Civic Plaza at Indianapolis International Airport (IND).

Bucky the T. rex, as he’s known, will be onsite at IND until April 11 to help celebrate the 100th birthday of the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, which is the world’s largest children’s museum.

While the airport’s dino is a replica, visitors can see the real Bucky T. rex fossil on permanent display at The Children’s Museum, which actively digs for, prepares, and displays unique and one-of-a-kind dinosaur fossils.

The Children’s Museum offers a cool Dinosphere experience and this week is also debuting a 110-foot-tall Centennial Ferris wheel, making this museum even more of a must-see destination for kids and adults than ever.

Bonus: earlier this week, while the festivities for Bucky the T. rex were underway at IND Airport, Rex, the official mascot of the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis, practiced the journey through the airport.

Good work, Rex!

Take a free museum tour at SFO Airport

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Arriving early for a flight or spending a long layover at San Francisco International Airport (SFO) can be a treat because SFO is one of the few US airports with an official museum program.

At any one time, the airport’s SFO Museum hosts up to a dozen temporary exhibitions and keeps an eye on a vast public art collection.

(The Author & Her Story– Jason Jägel – Courtesy SFO Museum)

Occasionally, the SFO Museum staff offers public tours of its exhibitions.

And starting April 8, the museum is offering free weekly public tours of its exhibition, “Rosie the Riveter: Womanpower in Wartime”, which is located post-security in Harvey Milk Terminal 1.

The exhibition tells the story of Rosie the Riveter and the great accomplishments made by women in the World War II workforce.

The exhibit features a treasure-trove of related objects, including uniforms, welding masks, ID badges, images, and period music.

Tours begin April 8, 2025, and run every Tuesday until the exhibition closes on May 11, 2025.

Sign up for a tour here.

Let’s get out of here

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(Courtesy State Library & Archives of Florida, via Flickr Commons)

Feeling like you need a break?

We do.

Between the news and the weather and, well, really just the news, we’re reading every email that pops into our inbox that has a whiff of something fun to do somewhere else.

Here are some museum exhibits we’re putting on the “let’s go there” list:”

Asian Comics: Evolution of an Art Form in Seattle

(Du Gu, Zao Dao, 2014, character design for “Le Vent traversant les pin”)

This week Seattle’s MoPop Museum opens Asian Comics: Evolution of an Art Form, an exhibition that features over 400 works from Japan, China, Bhutan, Cambodia, India, Afghanistan, and Vietnam and explores the diversity and creativity of Asian comic art and its powerful impact on global pop culture.

In San Diego: the Spooniverse at Mingei International Museum 

(Photo courtesy of Erica Moody)

Across the Spooniverse opens April 12 and runs through August 17 at San Diego’s charming Mingei International Museum with over 100 spoons from across the globe.

Yes, spoons.

“Some are adorned with exquisite carvings of human and animal figures, and others are brilliant for their simplicity of form,” the exhibit notes tell us. “Some show decades or even centuries of wear and use, and others are pristine. As objects of use, spoons are universally understood.”

(Photo courtesy of Ron Kerner)

250th anniversary of the American Revolution at the Concord Museum

 

The 250th anniversary of the start of the American Revolution is coming up and in Concord, Massachusetts, the Concord Museum is ready to rumble.

The museum has the best collection of items related to April 19, 1775 – the day “the shot heard round the world” kicked off the American Revolution – including the original lantern used as a signal on the night of Paul Revere’s famous midnight ride.

And for the 250th, more than 200 Revolutionary War-era muskets, powder horns, flints, supplies and other objects will be on display across five galleries. 

Where to go?

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(Queen Elizabeth II by Andy Warhol (1985). Credit: Courtesy of UCR ARTS)

California sounds good

Maybe it’s the new year. Maybe it’s the cold, rainy weather here at Stuck at the Airport headquarters in Seattle.

But we want to go everywhere – and see everything – that pops into our inbox.

In California, the Catalina Museum for Art & History on Catalina Island is getting ready to open Pop Icons, an exhibition that features influential artists of the Pop Art movement.

The exhibition includes a print of Andy Warhol’s f Queen Elizabeth II (1985) and prints from his Campbell’s Soup series, alongside works by other Pop Art figures such as Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg and Claes Oldenburg.

Pop Icons runs January 18 – April 13,  2025

(Stitches by Robert Rauschenberg. Courtesy of UCR ARTS)

Places we’d go: Stradivarius exhibit in Phoenix at the Museum of Musical Instruments

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The Stuck at the Airport Museum Team missed visiting the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in Phoenix, AZ our last time through and we plan to make the MIM our first stop the next time we head that way.

Which may be soon.

The museum displays more than 4,200 instruments representing all the world’s countries and many territories. 

This week MIM unveiled Stradivarius and the Golden Age of Violins and Guitars, showcasing more than 70 exceptional string instruments and bows crafted by master luthiers such as Antonio Stradivari, Andrea Amati, and Giuseppe Guarneri “del GesĂą.”

This exhibition includes violins, guitars, lutes, and bows from the 16th to 19th centuries—many of which have never been publicly displayed before.

Exhibition highlights include:

  • The â€śTartini” violin by Antonio Stradivari (1726). This comes from late in his golden period when he made his most mature instruments.
  • A mandolino coristo by Antonio Stradivari. This is one of only two known surviving mandolins crafted by the iconic luthier.
  • A violin by Andrea Amati who created the violin and the violin family as we know them today. This violin is one of only twenty-three documented Amati instruments known to survive today.
  • A guitar from the school of Matteo Sellas, c. 1625. This Venetian guitar is embellished with ivory, ebony, tortoiseshell, and pearl, and it has a tiered “wedding cake” rose, a common feature of guitars until the mid-18th century.

If you’re a music fan flying into Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport (PHX), check the airport’s Traveling Tunes live music program schedule. Local artists take the stage and play live music on the Traveling Tunes music stage in Terminal 3, Level 4 on the main concourse, and in the Terminal 4 Food Court on Level 3.

There’s a different musical genre featured each month. And for November the theme is classical.

See you there!