Today we spent the day at The Field Museum in Chicago. It had been a while since we had been to this excellent museum. One of the reasons we went today was to see a lecture by author Glen Chilton on his new book about Labrador Ducks. Amy wrote some more about this here.
Last Thursday we visited the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee to see the Indiana Jones exhibit (for coverage on that exhibit see my post about it). We were surprised at how much we enjoyed the museum, considering we are not motorcycle enthusiasts. The museum has a huge collection of motorcycles and other Harley-Davidson memorabilia, and the history of the company, which started in 1903, is extremely well laid out in beautiful displays. There’s a motorcycle gallery with bikes going back to 1903, an engine room with interactive exhibits showcasing engine mechanics, the design lab explaining the styling from logos to overall design, and much more.
Yesterday we visited the Harley-Davidson Museum in Milwaukee to see the Indiana Jones exhibit. On display until April 30th are two motorcycles ridden by Harrison Ford and Shia LaBeouf in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Last Sunday we drove up to Eagle, southwest of Milwaukee, and visited Old World Wisconsin, an open air museum with more than 60 historic structures from the 1800s. The buildings range from ethnic farmsteads with furnished houses and rural outbuildings, to a crossroads village with its traditional small-town institutions.
Today we went to Noordwijk and visited the Space Expo exhibition and visitor center of the European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC). The European Space Agency has sites in several European countries. ESTEC is the largest site and the technical heart of ESA. More than 2,000 rocket scientists work here on dozens of space projects. Here’s a view of ESTEC in Noordwijk, with the dunes and North Sea in the background. You can see that the scientists have their own golf course and soccer field. The building at the bottom, to the right of the soccer field, is Space Expo:
Today we visited the new Corpus Museum in Oegstgeest, which opened on 14 March 2008. The museum is housed in an impressive 7-storey building with a statue of a large man sitting on it. Corpus features a 1-hour multimedia tour through a giant body, traveling from the stomach, through the intestines, into the heart, lungs, mouth, eyes and eventually the brain.
Last Saturday was Open Monumentendag, or Open Monument Day, in the Netherlands. Leiden goes a step further and celebrates Openmonumentendagen, or Openmonumentenweekend, opening up over 30 monuments, museums and historical buildings for the entire weekend. Each year the tourist bureau in Leiden also publishes a guide for visitors, with suggested walking or cycling routes. More »
This weekend was Museumweekend in the Netherlands, when many museums offer free or reduced-price entry. Yesterday we were in Amsterdam, and visited the Tropenmuseum, Verzetsmuseum and Allard Pierson Museum. More »
Today the Dutch parliament debated making entrance to some national museums free, as in the United Kingdom. Dutch Culture and Science Secretary Medy van der Laan said that attendance of British museums may have increased, but those are simply the same people visiting more often. He also argued that if the number of visitors of free museums goes up, then those at museums that are not free will go down. More »
A giant squid of 8.62m (28ft), nicknamed Archie after its Latin name Architeuthis dux, is on display at the Darwin Centre of London’s Natural History Museum. It is one of the biggest and most complete giant squids every found! More »