airport exhibits

A memo from SFO Airport: See this typewriter exhibit

Art, Exhibits, , ,

With all this talk about a ban on laptops and larger-than-smartphone electronic devices being from some airline cabins, consider for a moment the pre-computer age of the typewriter.

Courtesy SFO Museum

A fresh new exhibit at San Francisco International Airport, organized by the SFO Museum, traces the history of typewriters (remember those?) and typewriter technology, from early writing machines to modern portables.

 

courtesy SFO Museum

“A marvel of industrial engineering and ingenuity, it revolutionized communication and was an essential tool for countless writers. To comprehend the typewriter’s impact, consider a world where typing did not exist and handwriting was the main form of non-verbal communication.  The ease and speed of communication on paper increased dramatically when typewriters became available in the late 1800s. Typewriting was efficient, created clear and legible documents, and easily produced multiple copies using carbon paper,” the exhibition notes tell us.

Courtesy SFO Museum

The Typewriter: An Innovation in Writing is post-security in Terminal 2 at San Francisco International Airport through January 28, 2018.

Courtesy SFO Museum

Art of Food exhibit at MSP Int’l Airport

Exhibits, Food, ,

MSP_Art of Food_NowShowing Poster

A new exhibit at Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport is all about the foods and branded edible items that hail from Minnesota and show up on plates around the world.

MSP_DoughboyPersonality1970

Some of the Minnesota-based brands in the exhibit include General Mills Inc.
Land O Lakes Inc, Hormel Foods, RyKrisp and Summit Brewing Company and, in addition to food items, the exhibit includes reels of vintage commercials and their familiar jingles.

The exhibit opened at the end of April and will run through November 15, 2016 in the art gallery near Gate 12.

So far, “the response has been amazing,” said Robyne Robinson, Arts & Culture Director of the MSP Airport Foundation, “It strikes a chord with travelers – They burst into the Spam song from the 1970’s Monty Python sketch, or playfully spar over which cereal was best – Cheerios or Lucky Charms.”

MSP food bottles

msp food guy snap

Photos courtesy MSP Airport and and the Minnesota Historical Society

Fresh art at Phoenix Airport

Art, Exhibits, ,
Susan Folwell, Mimbres Bat-Man Canteen 2012, courtesy PHX Airport

Susan Folwell, Mimbres Bat-Man Canteen 2012, courtesy PHX Airport

A new exhibit at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport titled Between Two Worlds features the work of Native American artist Susan Folwell. She comes from a family of noted potters and combines traditional pottery making techniques and forms with modern themes – like Batman and the experience of flying.

The exhibition is located at Terminal 4 on level 2 in two display cases and will be on view through May 8, 2016. I

Susan Folwell - Come Fly with Me

Susan Folwell – Come Fly with Me

Pow Wow Girl - Susan Folwell - courtesy PHX Airport

Pow Wow Girl – Susan Folwell – courtesy PHX Airport

Magna Carta exhibit at MSP Airport

Airports, Exhibits, , , ,

Ink & Scrolls representative of tools used before the printing press. Photo by Craig Madsen, Thomson Reuters

A new exhibit celebrating the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, titled Magna Carta to Minnesota: the Rule of Law, is on view between Gate C6 to 11 in Concourse C at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

“Celebrating the 800th anniversary of the charter is important because its central to how we live our lives,” said Robyn Robinson, Arts and Culture Director of the MSP Airport Foundation, “Americans are fervent about our personal freedoms and civil rights, now more than ever. The exhibit shows us the basics of where and how those rights originated.”

U. S. Supreme Court Bobbleheads: Justice John Rutledge, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Justice David H. Souter and Justice John Jay (1st Supreme Court Justice). Photo by Craig Madsen, Thomson Reuters

The exhibit, on view through mid-November 2015, includes more than 100 items, ranging from a a painting by U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger to bobble-heads of Supreme Court justices.

Gavel on presentation stand presented to U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger. The pewter band on the gavel reads: “Turned in 1978 from an elm planted on the homestead of John Jay…CA: 1800.” Affixed to the stand is a sterling silver plate with the inscription. “Presented to Chief Justice Warren E. Burger on Queen Anne’s Day, May 5, 1979.” Photo by Craig Madsen, Thomson Reuters

The exhibit is presented by the airport and locally-based Thomson Reuters.

All photos by Craig Madsen, Thomson Reuters.

Flower power at the Atlanta Airport

Art, ,

Traveling can get pretty hectic, so Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is encouraging passengers to stop and smell the roses.

Or at least stop and look at some incredibly real-looking photographs of flowers from the “Les Fleurs Photographic Collection,” by Georgia artist Barry Taratoot.

To photograph the plants, Taratoot placed them against solid-black backgrounds and “without trickery or modern technical manipulation,” somehow made the plants look like paintings. But they’re not.

Go see for yourself. The exhibit is on display in the ATL Airport Atrium through May 16, 2012.

Gardening at Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway Airports

Airports, Exhibits, , ,

A Green Gardens exhibit is on view at O’Hare and Midway International Airports through Monday, April 9 that “re-purposes” some of the floral displays that were on view at the Chicago Flower and Garden Show held at Chicago’s Navy Pier in March.


A series of window façade replicas with window box floral displays from Chicagoland nonprofits, are featured at both airports and, at O’Hare, there’s a replica of the White House Kitchen Garden, with raised beds to show off the ideas of growing fresh, organic, local food that are part of the First Lady Michelle Obama’s childhood anti-obesity initiative.

Vertical hydroponic gardens, which demonstrate how vertical gardens can provide compact and efficient growing space, reduce noise and improve indoor air quality, are on display at both airports.

At Midway, the Green Gardens exhibit is located on the upper level ticketing area. At O’Hare, the exhibit is in Terminal 2, post-security, next to the Kids on the Fly children’s play area, and in Terminal 3, between Concourses H/K and L, post-security.

Photos courtesy: Chicago Department of Aviation (CDA)/kp

World’s largest miniature airport

Air Travel, Airports, Exhibits, Fun Stuff,

Hamburg, Germany has a popular tourist attraction called the Miniatur Wondurland.  It offers visitors the largest model train exhibit in the world, a miniature carnival, several countries in miniature and, now, the Knuffingen Airport, which is being billed as the world’s largest miniature airport.

It cost about $5 million to create and has more than 100 aircraft (many move around – and take off), 15,000 figurines, 500 cars, and 10,000 trees. It’s adorable and incredible.

Here’s a video:

Dino-day on StuckatTheAirport.com

Airport guides,

It’s Dino-Day at StuckatTheAirport.com!

Here’s the 33-foot-long Yangchuanosaurus dinosaur skeleton at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. It’s on loan from the Fernbank Museum of Natural History and is in the Atrium in airport’s main terminal.

Yangchuanosaurus dinosaur skeleton at ATL

(Photo courtesy: ATL)

Here’s the 15 foot tall, 30-foot long Tyrannosaurs rex at Pittsburgh International Airport. Look for it airside, as you enter or leave the people-mover trains.

Here’s an allosaurus, one of the dinos at Toronto’ s Pearson International Airport.

And here’s the much-loved brachiosaurus outside the Field Museum store at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport

DINO AT O'Hare

(Photo courtesy Flickr user ProStaK

Snack Saturday: holiday tamales at Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport

Air Travel, Airport shops, Airports, Exhibits, Food, Fun Stuff, Snack Saturday, , , , , ,

If you don’t make your own holiday tamales or know someone who does, then consider making a stop at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

As they do each year, the folks at El Bravo (Terminal 4, in the D concourse) are selling their popular holiday tamales in special holiday bags.

On the menu: green corn chicken, green corn vegetarian, red beef tamales and the seasonal specialty: sweet bean. All are available frozen.

And while you’re at PHX, take a moment to check out the airport’s bug exhibit.

According to the exhibit notes, Arizona has the richest natural endowment of insect life – including America’s biggest, strangest, most beautiful and most poisonous bugs.

The photos and the bug specimens in “Arizona’s Bizarre and Beautiful Bugs” are provided by Kim Wismann, American Home Naturalist, Tempe, Arizona, and will be displayed in a Terminal 3, Level 2, garage exhibit case through April 2011.