Field Museum Chicago Special Exhibits

Field Museum Free Days

Are you an Illinois resident? Then you are eligible for free entrance on the Field Museum Free Days. This is a great way to explore the basic exhibits at the Field Museum for free. You can also pay to add on some of the fee-based exhibits.

Our family usually goes on a free day once a year and have found that there is enough to do for free that we do not need to add on anything extra.

However, seeing you arent paying for admission, its not a bad deal to add on an extra exhibit. We have also found that although there might be a line to get in on a free day, once you are inside, the museum it is so large that it doesnt seem over crowded.

Find the dates for Field Museum Free Days and a list of all Chicago Museum Free Days.

Sensory Saturdays & Accessibility

The Field Museum offers a sensory-friendly app called “Field App for All” to help children on the spectrum get the most out of their visit by being able to preview exhibits, customize a schedule and use a sensory-friendly map.

Also available are Sensory Saturdays from 9-10 am on select Saturdays. It is free with advance registration, but space is limited to 40 guests so that families can enjoy a crowd-free space. To register for a Sensory Saturday event, please email or visit the Official Sensory Saturday webpage.

Lightscape Through Jan 5 And Seasonally At Chicago Botanic Garden

The North Shore horticultural destination finally got into the holiday lights game this year, joining the big zoos and the Morton Arboretum. Its series of artful illumination set pieces along a mile-long path surprise and delight and give your lazy carcass a reason to quit the couch in wintertime. But the best of all the Lightscape displays needs no plug: Scores of flickering firepots arrayed in the Rose Garden speak to the pagan still lurking in all of us.

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Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit Chicago

The Immersive Van Gogh Exhibit Chicago is the first of its kind in the U.S. fusing high-tech installations and state-of-the-art soundscape with the Dutch painters revolutionary masterpieces. The 35-foot walls of the Victorian landmarks Lighthouse ArtSpace Chicago are now adorned with flawless digital projections that offer an art experience like no other.

Surrounded by famous works like Irises, The Bedroom in Arles, and Starry Night, guests can take an hour-long journey through the kaleidoscopic displays and submerge themselves in the elegance of Van Goghs creativity whilst unraveling his tormented mind.

Designed and conceived by Massimiliano Siccardi and Luca Longobardi, who pioneered the exhibitions Parisian precursor, guests are invited to step inside Van Goghs iconic creations. Rather than playing the passive spectator a walk through the memories of the eccentric genius offers the chance to be galvanized by the passion behind every laden brushstroke.

With this innovative exhibition comes an exclusive opportunity to encounter one of the most famous painters to have ever lived via a visual, scholarly, and emotional journey through his world.

Chicago Public Schools All

As part of the Year of Creative Youth, the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events will present the annual Chicago Public Schools All-City High School Visual Art Exhibition. This juried art exhibition highlights the diverse talent and work of Chicago Public School students in the professional platform of a gallery setting.

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Everyones A Designer/everyones Design

Presented as part of Art Design Chicago, an initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art exploring Chicagos art and design legacy, “Everyones a Designer/Everyones Design” is a free traveling museum exhibition that explores and celebrates everyday Chicagoans influence on art and design in the city.

Matthew Girson: The Painters Other Library

May 24August 10, 2014

The Painters Other Library is a meditation on silence. The quiet of the library is evoked in the paintings as well as the history of the building and the galleries that house the exhibit.

May 16July 13, 2014

Pedal into the past, present and future of cycling with this bike-inspired exhibit.

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Wired To Wear Continuing At The Museum Of Science And Industry

Wearable tech may be a contemporary middle-class fad that expresses itself primarily in step-counting wristbands, but it also makes for a surprisingly engaging museum show. The MSIs the Griffins? big survey of technologically advanced garmentry displays safer football helmets, trucker caps that jolt you awake if you start dozing and a prosthetic arm designed by a teenage girls that fires a fusillade of glitter. And, yes, the show has a functional jet pack.

Caravans Of Gold: Fragments In Time At The Block Museum

Far more ambitious than what you typically find in even the best university museums, this Northwestern museum exhibition told the story of the richest man ever to walk the Earth, the 14th-century Mali king Mansa Musa, and of a rich African culture largely written out of history. Ancient pottery fragments, fully realized metal works and early maps and money helped tell an extraordinary, corrective story.

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Tips For Buying Your Tickets At The Field Museum

We visited the Field Museum on a sunny Saturday at the end of spring break. The lines weren’t too long, we stood in queue for 10 minutes, at the most. When we approached the agent to pay we were presented two options: the All Access Pass and the Discovery Pass . The All Access Pass includes admission, all special exhibits and a 3D film. The Discovery Pass includes admission, one special exhibit or 3D movie. As those were the two options we were given we chose the Discovery Pass- which set us back $74 .

What I found out after the fact is that there is another, more affordable option: the Basic Admission, which allows you to explore the museum but includes no special exhibits or 3D movies. Had this been offered to us I would have chosen it . Be sure to ask for the basic admission if it isn’t offered . It would have saved my family $24- not a small sum.

Planning to visit a few Chicago attractions? We recommend CityPASS.

New Insights Into Some Of Earth’s Oldest Rocks

Jennika Greer, UChicago resident graduate student at the Robert A. Pritzker Center for Meteoritics and Polar Studies published a new paper on some of the oldest rocks on Earth. Earth is currently our only data point for life, and by understanding how life can arise on our planet, we can better understand how life can arise on others. However, our planet is incredibly geologically active, and constant resurfacing events have erased much of our planets early history. This is why analyzing the remnants of early crust that still survive is so important- and the Nuvvuagittuq supracrustal belt is one of the least studied of these. At 3.8 billion years old, and located in a relatively inaccessible part of northern Canada, this paper aims to better understand the geological context of these ancient rocks. This is done through chemical analysis of these rocks and uranium-lead dating of the zircons within them. Not only does this paper put these rocks into better geological context, it also provides compelling evidence of more ancient terrains in the area, previously undiscovered.

The field site is difficult for scientists to traverse but while collecting the rocks surrounding the Nuvvuagittuq supracrustal belt, scientists found other supracrustals floating like rafts in the younger granites. With further exploration of the area, which is simultaneously marshy and rocky, it is possible that scientists might find the oldest rock still preserved on our planet.

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How To Save On Your Ticket Fees

If you are visiting the city and plan to go to several Chicago attractions look into purchasing a CityPASS. The CityPASS bundles together the price to visit 5 Chicago attractions over a 9-day period and saves you up to 50% on admission fees.

Plus youre a VIP and get to skip the lines in many of the museums. Its a great deal for tourists.

Find out if its right for you in my City Pass Review.

Oriental Institute 100th Anniversary Makeover Continuing

This great collector of Egyptian and other ancient near Eastern artifacts on the University of Chicago campus was an inspiration for the Indiana Jones character. Its also a mini-British Museum in the heart of Hyde Park. Thanks to a thoughtful multimillion-dollar reimagining for its milestone anniversary, its now more broadly accessible without sacrificing the scholarly underpinnings. The OIs light is no longer hiding under a sarcophagus.

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Nice Museum With Various Exhibits

In many ways this is your typical Natural History museum and has many similar displays as others places.The dinosaur skeletons are amazing to see and walk around, which sets it apart from others places.Many of the exhibits require additional tickets, so be sure to plan ahead if you want to see it all.

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Keith Haring: The Chicago Mural

Having rocketed to worldwide fame in the 1980s, graffiti artist Keith Haring worked with 500 Chicago Public School students to paint a monumental mural in Chicago’s Grant Park in 1989. This exhibition included a large selection of the mural reflecting the artist’s incisive draftsmanship and unsettling cast of symbolic characters .

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Vivian Maier In Color

Talking of selfies, the renowned photographer Vivian Maier was a master of selfies long before they were a thing. The late Chicago photographer Vivian Maier, whose work only gained notoriety after her death has become a cult phenomenon in the global photographer community.

Whilst working as a nanny in Chicago Maeir snapped hundreds of thousands of photos of everyday moments and life unfolding in the Chicago suburbs as well as numerous arresting self-portraits. She had an affinity with the poor due to her own economic constraints, and as such her photos often also portray the lives of those struggling to get by. Falling behind on payments Maier was forced to auction her negatives in her later years, which went on to become a viral phenomenon and today a much-sought-after collectors item.

Vivian Maier: In Color features 65 color images made during her time as a suburban Chicago nanny from the 1950s to 1970s, most of which have never been on display, as well as film clips, quotations, and sound bites.

You can read more about it here.

Where: Chicago History Museum

Whats A Machine Thats Built To Survive Move And Discover

All living thingsincluding you!contain remarkable feats of engineering.

Investigate natures mechanical marvels in The Machine Inside: Biomechanics. Youll uncover surprising strengths and hidden talents: jaws that can crush over 8,000 pounds in one bite, ears that act as air conditioners, and a spring-like body that sprints at 80 miles per hour.

All ages can try out interactive experiences that show how mechanics like wings and fins, pumps and pipes, and claws and jaws work in nature.

The exhibition is presented in both English and Spanish. La exhibición está presentada en inglés y español.

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More Chicago Attractions To Visit With Kids

Use our guides to experience more Chicago Attractions for a great family vacation or Chicago Staycation. Theyll tell you everything you need to know before you go!

• Everything to do in Chicagoland with Kids All the fun in the City and Suburbs

I hope these tips will help you have a fun filled family day at the Chicago Field Museum of Natural History. It is one of the great Chicago Attractions and you will be so glad your family visited.

Do you have any questions or tips of your own? Please share with us in the comments.

If your looking for more family travel tips or fun things to do in Chicago make sure to join my newsletter and never miss a new destination. Bonus get my Ultimate Family Travel Checklist when you sign up.

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Dining At The Field Museum

If you spend more than a couple hours wandering through the Field Museum chances are someone will become hungry. There are a few options for dining. Two areas are set aside on the ground level with seating. If you plan ahead and bring a lunch you can leave it in your car and retrieve it when it’s time to eat. Simply get your hand stamped and be sure to take along your ticket for re-entry. The Siragusa Center also has has vending. The Field Museum has two restaurants, the Field Bistro and the Explorer Cafe. Both restaurants have a focus on locally sourced and seasonal items which, though tasty and healthy, may hit your wallet a bit hard.

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Mandela: Struggle For Freedom

Mandela: Struggle for Freedom illustrates the life of the eponymous human rights champion paying homage to his legacy and unbreakable will, but also explores themes such as the role of nonviolent protest, the power of youth, and the indignities of incarceration that still resonate today.

Among its many dramatic features, the immersive exhibition has a replica of the eight-foot by seven-foot cell where the Nobel Peace Prize winner spent 18 years of his life. Stepping within, the enclosing walls illuminate around you showing projections that evince the dehumanizing conditions of Robben Islands and tell tales of repression and resilience.

In one room of the exhibition, an enormous tank-like truck emerges from one wall moving towards the onlookers. Visitors who dare can grab a trashcan lid as their only protection and get a feel of what it was like to be a student during the Soweto uprising. Schwe-schwe fabrics and rhythmic toyi-toyi dancing make it a culturally enriching experience as well as immersive and interactive.

Hamilton: The Exhibition At Northerly Island

It is probably true now that no one will ever again spend $13 million to make and mount such a fine, full, visually imaginative American history exhibition. It is certainly true that if they do, they wont maroon it in a temporary building way out on Northerly Island, a spot more accessible to migratory birds than to tourists and other fans of the Hamilton! musical. But even as it only lasted four months before the curtain crashed down, this Quixotic project from the musicals makers was a great success in artistic terms. Never before has early 1800s monetary policy been made so engaging.

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Fantastic Landscapes: Hokusai And Hiroshige

The work of two artists of far lesser notoriety over here is currently on show at the Art Institute Of Chicago. Japanese printmaking saw two concurrent trends in the 19th century: an intensification of color and a rise in the popularity of landscape images. Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige capitalized on these trends and became the most successful print designers of their time.

The vibrant, daring, mystical displays depicted in their work garnered attention around the globe and fueled worldwide demand for their landscape art. Brilliant blue waterfalls, jade hills, chartreuse cliffs, and pink skies made up a new palette for the natural world and introduces new realms of imagination in art. Many of these intensely colorful landscape images are now on display at and a rise in the popularity of Art Institute Of Chicago through October 11.

You can read more about it here.

Where: Art Institute Of Chicago

Dates: Happening now until October 11, 2021

Field Museum Of Natural History

The Field Museum of Natural History , also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum is a popular natural-history museum for the size and quality of its educational and scientific programs, as well as due to its extensive scientific-specimen and artifact collections. The permanent exhibitions, which attract up to two million visitors annually, include fossils, current cultures from around the world, and interactive programming demonstrating today’s urgent conservation needs. The museum is named in honor of its first major benefactor, the department-store magnate . The museum and its collections originated from the 1893 Worlds Columbian Exposition and the artifacts displayed at the fair.

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Strandbeest: The Dream Machines Of Theo Jansen

In the first major American exhibition tour, Theo Jansens wholly distinctive kinetic creations blur the lines of art, engineering, science and performance. The exhibition celebrates the thrill of the Strandbeests locomotion and shows the processes that have driven their evolutionary development.

Aguas Zarcas Meteorite Featured In Science

We are excited that our work at the Field Museum’s Robert A. Pritzker Center on Aguas Zarcas appeared in a feature article and video in Science Magazine. The main mass of Aguas Zarcas and additional material were donated to the Museum by the Boudreaux Family. The fragments are in cryogenic storage in liquid nitrogen and the main mass is kept in a nitrogen desiccator.

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