Category Archives: Museum

LR Zoo Breaks into Spring

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Little-Rock-zoo-logo-4-c-with-tagSpring starts tomorrow, but the Little Rock Zoo is ready for Spring Breakers all week.

In addition to the new Cheetah and Penguin exhibits, the Zoo is home to elephants, bears, rhinos, giraffes, lions, gorillas, chimpanzees, tigers, and a host of birds and mammals.  And of course no visit to the zoo is complete without a stop off in the reptile house.

In addition, each day there are animal feedings for the public to witness.
10:30am |  Vampire Bats
1:15pm |  Penguins
1:30pm |  Great Ape Scatter Feeds

Speaking of feeding, visitors can take care of their own needs by dining at Cafe Africa.  It is located across from the Civitan Pavilion in the heart of the Little Rock Zoo.  The Cafe features menu items such as hamburgers, cheeseburgers, hotdogs, fries, soda, ice cream, and other food items.

The Little Rock Zoo is the proud home of the Arkansas Carousel, a one-of-a-kind Over-the-Jumps antique carousel that is the only fully operational carousel of its kind in the world.

The Little Rock Zoo is open from 9:00am to 5:00pm, with the last admission is at 4:00pm
The front gates will close at 4:00 pm. Guests who have entered may remain in the park until 5:00pm.

Admission Price
  • Adults: $10.00
  • Seniors 60+: $8.00
  • Children 12 and Under: $8.00
  • Children Under 12 Months of age are admitted free!
  • Active Duty Military (with ID or Adult Dependent ID): $2 off regular admission

Little Rock Look Back: Mayor Pat L. Robinson

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IMG_4517On this date in 1900, future Little Rock Mayor Pat L. Robinson was born.  While I cannot verify that he was indeed named after St. Patrick, it would be fairly reasonable to assume there might be a connection, especially given the fact that he was Catholic.

Robinson was a rising star of Little Rock Democratic politics.  In April 1929, just weeks after his 29th birthday, he was elected Mayor.  He had twice been elected as City Attorney (1926 and 1928) and was one of the youngest to serve in that position.

During Mayor Robinson’s tenure, he announced plans to construct a new airport.  That project led to the creation of what is now the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport.  Mayor Robinson was also involved in helping Philander Smith College secure the property where it is now located.  In addition, during his tenure, what is now the Museum of Discovery was folded into the City of Little Rock.

Single at the time he was in office and generally considered good looking, Mayor Robinson was sometimes referred to as the “Jimmy Walker of the Southwest.” Walker was the handsome and charming Mayor of New York City at the time.

Mayor Robinson ran afoul of some of the Democratic party leaders. Records don’t seem to indicate exactly what actions he took or did not take.  One thing that is brought up is that the City went into financial distress during his tenure.  Considering the Wall Street crash happened shortly after he took office, that financial state was not unique to Little Rock.

IMG_4532During this era in Little Rock, it was customary for an incumbent mayor to be given a second term. But City Clerk Horace Knowlton challenged Robinson in the primary.  It was a bitter campaign with Robinson linking Knowlton to disreputable denizens and Knowlton charging Robinson with “an orgy of spending.”  Robinson initially came out 17 votes ahead. But after a review and a lawsuit, it was found that Knowlton ended up with 10 more votes and became the nominee.  At the time, being the Democratic nominee was tantamount to election.

After he left office, Robinson practiced law for a few years in Little Rock and then left the city.  Records do not indicate where he went but he no longer appeared in the City of Little Rock directory by the early 1940s.

BRAIN AWARENESS DAY at Museum of Discovery

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20120814-171022.jpgMuseum of Discovery will host Brain Awareness Day Saturday, March 16, in conjunction with National Brain Awareness Week.   The event will be held from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. and will include demonstrations and exhibits presented by the Arkansas Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience. The first 725 visitors will receive $2 off their admission.

Representatives from the Center for Toxicological Research (NCTR), the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS), Hendrix College and University of Central Arkansas (UCA) will offer hands-on exhibits and demonstrations on the brain for visitors of all ages.

“Scientific outreach activities such as Brain Awareness events are very important to help kindle interest in science and encourage scientific achievement in young students who participate,” said Dr. Jeff Padberg, assistant professor of neuroscience at UCA. “Engaging the youth of Arkansas in scientific exploration of the world around them, as well as increasing scientific literacy of students at an early age, are the goals of this event.”

 

Brain Awareness Day demonstrations include:

  • “Your Brain on Jell-O” is an interactive exhibit that will allow children to touch artificial brains made of Jell-O and powdered milk.   The activity will show the fragility of the human brain as well as demonstrate its overall size, shape and form. Children 5 and older will use cake frosting to place artificial arteries on the Jell-O brains. Children 4 and younger will use a “brain mold” to make a moon sand brain.
  • “Behavioral Tasks” will show how an Operant Test Battery assesses the intelligence of a monkey
  • “Your Brain and You!” is a hands-on exhibit that will offer many activities describing the shape of the brain. Visitors can color and create their own brain headband and sculpt brains out of clay. Adults will receive information on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) research being conducted at the Brain Imaging Research Center at UAMS while children will learn how MRIs work from a display using magnets and iron filings.
  • “What Can We Learn from Animal Brains?” will show why some animals can give clues as to how the human brain works. Stained sections of armadillo and rat brains will be presented on a microscope along with a rat atlas.
  • “Visual Illusions: Fooling the Brain!” will provide a variety of visual illusions and explain how the mechanisms employed by the eyes and brain that support visual perception can also be deceiving.

“Hosting Brain Awareness Day is in lockstep with our mission at the Museum of Discovery,” said Kelley Bass, museum CEO. “We strive to ignite a passion for science, technology and math in a dynamic, interactive environment – and that’s all about engaging the brains of our visitors. So many of our programs and exhibits are about helping visitors understand how things work, as are so many of the exhibits and demonstrations that will be featured during Brain Awareness Day. It’s a perfect fit.”

For more information on Brain Awareness Day at Museum of Discovery, contact 501-396-7050.

CALS opens new Children’s Library and Learning Center today

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CALS-Childrens-Library-and-Learning-Center-1-630x472Books, plants, vegetable soup, playwriting, and computers. Children will be able to learn more about each of these at the Central Arkansas Library System’s (CALS) Children’s Library and Learning Center, 4800 W. 10 St., when it opens today.

Set on a six-acre site, the $12 million, 30,000 square foot Children’s Library includes a computer lab with fourteen computers, teaching kitchen, large activity area, individual and group study rooms, theater, and community room in addition to a collection of more than 21,000 books, DVDs, and CDs.

In 2007, Little Rock voters approved a bond issue to provide funding for the Children’s Library.

Community input from library patrons as young as eleven years old helped CALS fine tune the concept of a vibrant, happy place for families with children to come for hands-on learning and enrichment. Activities and programs will be geared toward preschool, elementary, and middle school students and key subject areas will focus on the amenities of the site. The teaching kitchen is large enough to accommodate an entire class in learning about all facets of culinary arts, including nutrition, growing, cooking, and eating food.

In the 165-seat theater, children can experience all aspects of theater, including designing and building sets, writing plays, acting, and costume design. The state-of-the-art sound system, lighting, and projection screens will also be used for movies, concerts, and lectures.

The Children’s Library’s grounds are integral to the entire facility’s program. A greenhouse and teaching garden will help children learn about growing healthy foods as well as provide produce that will be used in the teaching kitchen programs. The grounds reflect the topography of Arkansas’s ecosystems, from the native hardwood trees in the highlands to vegetation of the wetland areas, which are both planted and original to the site. Walking paths offer families an attractive place for exercise while learning the names of the trees and plants, and an amphitheater has seating for outdoor programs or nature watching.

Homework and projects may be completed in the lab with fourteen computers or on laptops available for checkout using free Wi-Fi access. Early childhood computers and iPads with literacy apps allow small children to practice reading and computer skills. A limited number of computers and materials are available for adults who bring their children.

The Children’s Library will be open Monday – Thursday from 10 a.m. – 7 p.m., and Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.

Architectural, engineering, construction, and landscaping services were provided by Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects; East-Harding Construction; Engineering Consultants, Inc.; TME, Inc.; McClelland Consulting Engineers, Inc.; Viridian; Ecological Design Group, Inc.; Grubbs, Hoskyn, Barton and Wyatt, Inc.; and Landscape Architecture, Inc. Additional funding for streets, parking, and walking paths came from the City of Little Rock and Pulaski County.

For more information contact 918-3086.

A Princess, a Prince and a Pea at the AAC

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The Arkansas Arts Center Children’s Theatre marches into the new month with a new take on an old tale.  The AAC revisits the Hans Christian Andersen classic The Princess and the Pea.  Alan Keith Smith wrote the adaptation and Artistic Director Bradley Anderson directs this production.

In Smith’s take on the classic tale, there is an added twist of mistaken identity as the Princess’ servant is thought to be the actual Princess.  Though there are new twists, this story still has a Prince, a Queen, twenty mattresses and one tiny pea.

The cast is led by Rachel Haislip as Princess Cordelia, Lucy Miller as her servant Jane, Jeremy Matthey as Prince Perry, Aleigha Morton as Queen Perimeta, John Isner as Womlitt, Michael Pere as Count Quint and Brooke Melton and Rachel Caffey as servants.  Though a play, it features a musical score by Lori Isner.

The Princess and the Pea opened public performances on Friday and runs through March 24.  During Spring Break week, there will be special matinees at 2pm from March 19 through 22.

While at the Arkansas Arts Center, visitors can also check out numerous outstanding exhibits including Edward Weston: Leaves of Grass and Wendy Maruyama: Executive Order 9066.  Dr. Todd Herman is the Executive Director of the Arkansas Arts Center.

HEART/HAND: an architectural lecture by Billie Tsien

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TseinThis month, the Architecture and Design Network features Billie Tsien, AIA, NCAARB, FAAR of Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects of New York City.

Ms. Tsien’s lecture will take place tonight in the Arkansas Arts Center lecture hall.  Her remarks will begin at 6pm following a reception at 5:30.

Born in Ithaca New York, Billie Tsien received her undergraduate degree in Fine Arts from Yale and her Master in Architecture from UCLA. Currently, in addition to practicing, teaching and lecturing, she serves on the advisory council for the Yale School of Architecture. In 2007 Tsien was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Tsien and her husband Tod Williams have been working together since 1977. Their firm, which operates out of a small, unpretentious studio on Central Park South in New York City, has earned wide acclaim for its work. This past December, the American Institute of Architects awarded the firm its prestigious 2013 Architecture Firm Award in recognition of work that “reveals a contemporary sensibility and intelligence.” Given annually, the award is the highest honor the AIA bestows on a firm. It recognizes a practice that has consistently produced distinguished architecture for at least ten years.

Their recently completed, 93,000 square foot museum in Philadelphia, designed for the Barnes Foundation, has drawn critical acclaim from many sources. In January, the AIA gave it a 2013 Institute Honor Award for Architecture. The new facility replaces the original one in Merion, Pennsylvania, established by Dr. Albert C. Barnes in 1922. A challenge to its designers was to replicate the original 12,000 square foot main gallery, replete with art as arranged by the late Dr. Barnes himself. And they did.

Supporters of the Architecture and Design Network, a non-profit organization, include the Arkansas Arts Center, the University of Arkansas Fay Jones School of Architecture and the Central Arkansas Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

The lecture is free and open to the public.

Edward Weston: Leaves of Grass continues at Arkansas Arts Center

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Contraband Bayou, Louisiana - 1941

Contraband Bayou, Louisiana – 1941

As America awaited the declaration of war in the spring of 1941, photographer Edward Weston set out on a cross-country photographic expedition.  Now through April 21, the Arkansas Arts Center is playing host to an exhibit of his photos from that expedition.  Edward Weston: Leaves of Grass was organized by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Weston, one of America’s leading modernist photographers, was making photographs for a new edition of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. The Limited Editions Club of New York commissioned these images to bring together the great nineteenth-century poet’s verbal celebration of America with the great twentieth-century photographer’s visual odyssey.

In accepting the assignment, Weston declined to literally illustrate Whitman’s words, yet the two portraits of America echo one another. Where Whitman’s nineteenth-century verse was shaped by the Civil War, Weston’s images anticipated World War II.

Weston’s trip lasted almost ten months, covering 24 states and nearly 25,000 miles. Weston and his wife, Charis Wilson, drove their trusty Ford, “Walt,” throughout the South, the Mid-Atlantic, New England, and back home to California after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor brought about America’s entry into the war. Weston’s photographs include studies of decaying southern mansions, the Boulder Dam, a homely display of old bottles, the Grand Canyon, New Orleans cemeteries, and haunting portraits of people the photographer met along the way.

Weston’s images form no detached national survey; rather they embody an idiosyncratic personal meditation on selected American places, objects, and people. Edward Weston: Leaves of Grass includes 53 photographs chosen from the approximately 700 negatives Weston developed from the trip.