I know it's not the Jackson 5, but this is my favorite Michael Jackson performance. It seemed more fun than a photo of Joe Jackson. A Jackson 5 museum is in the preliminary planning stages in Gary, but it got a visibility boost after patriarch Joe Jackson announced his support for the project yesteray. So far, there's no groundbreaking date and no timeline for completion. In other words, people are sort of talking about......

Eco-friendly advancements are being made in building design and construction—think sustainable materials, efficiency of resources, and energy-reducing wiring and appliances. If this topic interests you, the new Smart Home: Green + Wired exhibit, opening tomorrow at the Museum of Science and Industry, is a neat opportunity to learn more about green buildings. The exhibit is a real, fully functional, 2,500 square foot home squatting on the museum’s east lawn, demonstrating how landscaping, design, and technology......

Oh my god, nerdgasm. The MSI is planning a 40-foot artificial tornado that visitors can stand in. Dibs! Those bad boys don't come cheap, though. The Museum announced its plan for the 'nado as part of its $205 million fund-raising effort. So far, the MSI has raised $128 million, according to its press release. See that little kid or whoever standing in the tornado? That is me the day this opens. The funds will also......

A new exhibit at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago sheds light on the looting and destruction of Iraqi artifacts in the wake of the Fall of Sadaam. Catastrophe! The Looting and Destruction of Iraq’s Past, opened yesterday, the five year anniversary of the Fall of Baghdad, and continues through the end of the year. The exhibit focuses not only on the well-publicized looting of the Iraq Museum, but on the continued looting......

Oh man, we almost forgot about the Children's Museum debate! Luckily, Alderman Brendan Reilly wants to keep it front and center, which is why he sent the Museum a list of 24 possible places it could relocate that aren't Grant Park: + Museum Campus + Northerly Island + Logan Square + Garfield Park Conservatory + Pritzker Park + Washington Park + Bronzeville + Calumet Park + Englewood + State and Van Buren + McCormick Place......

We loved the Museum of Science and Industry even prior to having our kid (the submarine! the Omnimax! Clarence Darrow’s ghost!), but MSI’s "Idea Factory" is, arguably, the best kid-centered exhibit in Chicago. Since the museum has closed this exhibit for repairs until the end of March, we wondered how toddler-friendly the rest of the museum would be. In short, not much. Let’s start with what we loved. Bring four quarters to purchase a “Net......

The Museum of Science and Industry is raising its prices. Adult Chicago residents will now pay $12 (up from $10), adult non-Chicagoans $13 (from $11), Chicago children $8.50 ($6.25), non-Chicago children $9 ($7), Chicago seniors $11 ($8.75), and non-Chicago seniors $12 ($9.50). But fear not, oh ye of little funds. The MSI is free the rest of January, as well as February 29 (Hotcha! Leap year! Ahem, celebratory performance of the Pirates of Penzance...); June......

The Shedd Aquarium is free through Friday, and Chicagoist can’t think of a more mesmerizing place to take your kids. The Wild Reef and the Oceanarium are an extra fee ($15 for both) but worth it. The Wild Reef, Shedd’s newest permanent exhibit, is an underground and enclosed tribute to Pacific coral reef ecosystems. Unlike the aquariums on the main floor, many of the tanks here span the length of the wall, with some reaching......

The Museum of Science and Industry announced today that a fully-functional, three-story "green" home will be built just east of the museum on its Jackson Park grounds in Hyde Park this spring. The foundation is currently being laid, and it will be open to the public from May 8, 2008 through January 4, 2009. The 2,500-square-foot home will exhibit some of the latest environmentally-friendly technologies and offer a primer on incorporating these innovations into......

The biggest cultural stories of 2008 are likely less predictable than this week’s Rose Bowl. Every year we see our share of breakout artists and surprising storefront gems, and 2008 promises to be no different. But 2007 left some unfinished business and we’re eager to see how these stories play out: Stingy in Springfield Blago’s veto of the FY08 State budget reduced Illinois Arts Council funding by 30%. And a trickle-down economics of pain proceeds:......

Lots of Chicagoans haven't been to the Field Museum since elementary school. But guess what? It's just as fun now as it was then. And we were able to accomplish a life goal: Get all the mold-a-rama dinosaur toys from the food court. As we made our way from machine to machine, burning our hands on our newly-formed toys, a group of kids on a field trip started following us. "Are you getting the......

This week, we're taking another visit back to our childhood stomping grounds on the Northwest side. But we're going way back, waaayyy back to 1917. Our father's side of the family immigrated to America from Greece four years earlier, settling in Greektown. Our mother's side of the family was at least a decade away from moving to the East Village from Virginia. The photo you're looking at at the top of this entry is......

Need an original idea for a hot (read: nerdy) date or just an escape from the city this weekend that includes dinosaurs? The Walking with Dinosaurs exhibit won't be showing in Chicago, but it is open today through the 9th in Milwaukee at the Bradley Center. Tickets are a little pricey, $35-70, when you could just buy the DVD for less than $50 online and stay toasty at home, but really, how can you......

Busy day for local museums: the Field Museum is raising its admissions prices, and the Shedd Aquarium is looking to expand its office space. Adler Planetarium? Anything? No? Shedd officials say their 300 employees are cramped, thus an additional 24,000 square feet of workspace, plus "a ground level terrace on the north side of the structure, build another elevator and upgrade its food-service kitchen." The proposed addition apparently wouldn't really affect how the Oceanarium......

Yeah, people knew how to fly the friendly skies on November 21st, 1965, when the menu above was served on a United Airlines flight from Denver to San Francisco. This and 380 other menus from airlines, ocean liners, and railroad lines are available for perusal online at the Transportation Library archives of Northwestern University. The archives hark back to a time when multiple course meals were de rigueur not only for first class passengers,......

Londonist got the big scoop of the week with what may be the first images of notorious street artist Banksy in action. They also got on a runaway train without an operator provoking a response from the transport authorities. Elsewhere, London's answer to Central Station is about to open for business, and Londonist got a sneak preview. Meanwhile, spooky goings-on beneath London Bridge, where a cache of skeletons provided an apt story for Hallowe'en.......

Nostalgic for the pre-Mapquest world? Do your dogeared city guides and abused atlases sit proudly on your bookshelves? Have we got an event for you. The citywide Festival of Maps kicks off tomorrow, and is a tribute to those simpler, flatter world guides we’d consult constantly before the internets helped us find the best non-highway crosstown routes quicker than you could say "Western Avenue." It’s the first fest of its kind, and is a collaboration......

Dun-dun duuun, duuun, dadada duuuuuuuun! The "Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination" exhibit opens at the MSI today, sure to delight both science and Lucasfilm geeks alike with its focus on the legit science behind some of the fantasy elements of the movies. The 10,000-square-foot traveling exhibit is split into two main themes: Getting Around, about transportation, and Robots and People, about ... yes, robots and people. There are plenty of props from the movies,......

The recent debate over the Chicago Children’s Museum’s relocation has overshadowed the opening of a new hands-on kids area at The Field Museum. The Crown Family Playlab, opened on September 14, is 7,500 square feet of wonderfully messy interactive history. Separated into six different themes, the Playlab aims to make the highlights of the Field Museum accessible to a younger audience. Kids can become a part of two dioramas, donning a coyote costume to cavort......

We give you some lion-skull bones, you give us a 1.5 million-year-old hominid boy skeleton. Deal? That's what's in the works — maybe — for the Field Museum and the National Museums of Kenya, according to the Sun Times. The Field Museum is home to the skulls and stuffed skins of "the Man-Eaters Of Tsavo," two lions who killed and ate at least 140 railroad workers in 1898 in Tsavo, Kenya. Lt. Col. John Henry......

It was about time Mayor Daley entered the fray surrounding the Chicago Children’s Museum’s proposed move to Grant Park. To exactly no one’s surprise, he favors the plan. Loves it so much he’s enlisted his good buddies false choice and specious reasoning. Make no mistake: if you oppose the Museum’s move to Grant Park, you hate children. You want them to grow up miserable, lacking any sense of civic pride or patriotism, addicted to meth,......

The debate over the Chicago Children's Museum plan to relocate to Grant Park has escalated since Monday’s neighborhood meeting at Daley Bicentennial Plaza. There, museum officials introduced plans for a more sunken, environmentally friendly design adjacent to the Plaza. The Museum’s growth has been remarkable. Founded in 1982 in two Chicago Public Library hallways, it’s since moved three times, most recently to Navy Pier in 1995. Twelve years later, they’ve apparently outgrown that tourist magnet.......

Earlier this year when we interviewed ME-TV's Neal Sabin, he let drop that cult fave series "Night Gallery" would soon be part of the weekly line-up. True to his word, the early 70's horror anthology show created by Rod Serling is now on every Sunday from 5 to 6. That's two half-hour episodes back to back. It's part of the channel's "chill" new Sunday evening schedule. "Night Gallery" is followed by a full hour of......

No, it isn't us; we'll get there soon enough, thank you. The Big Mac, one of Oak Brook-based McDonald's signature hamburgers, debuted forty years ago this week. The sandwich was created by Jim Delligatti in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. Even though the Big Mac today is a part of American food and popular culture, Delligatti had to convince executives at Hamburger U that the concept of "two all beef patties, special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, onions on......

Before we teleported up into the great nightclub in outer space, Chicagoist took a few hours to walk around Grant Park this weekend and have a friendly chit-chat with some of the many fine folks who came to Lolla this weekend. Some of them came from nearby - North Side, South Side and the suburbs. Others came from farther away, places like New Jersey. Still others came to visit us from other countries, like Ireland.......

The city's biggest music festival of the summer kicks off tomorrow, and you can feel the excitement building in the Chicagoist offices. However, we've had to put our cub reporters through some summer festival basic training, since this one blows all the others out of the water in sheer scope and size. The bands are the draw, and the primary source of fun, but there are a few other things you -- and our cub......

Where Do I Take Mom?...

Chicagoist loves parenting in Chicago; we’re happy for now to give up the sprawling lawns of suburbia to enjoy all the city has to offer in the summer months. Recently, we discovered a new favorite: “Niki in the Garden,” an exhibition of sculptures by Niki de Saint Phalle at the Garfield Park Conservatory. We know what you’re thinking: why would we take a kid to see some plants and statues? The thirty art pieces created......

Head 300 miles south to The Creation Museum and you may be dazzled by their Because The Bible Said So, That’s Why! explanation of life’s origins. That prospect is too much for The Field Museum. On Friday they open Darwin, a new traveling exhibition focused on the man and scientist considered the creationists’ biggest gadfly. Now a household name, Charles Darwin is remembered primarily for publishing Origin of Species and Descent of Man, the most......

“Had the Des Plaines and Chicago Rivers not been so close and had a mountain -- instead of a small hill -- separated them, perhaps there might not have been a Chicago.” Before launching into the story of the Chicago River, the exhibit at the McCormick Tribune Bridgehouse & Chicago River Museum contemplates this thought, illustrating the essential relationship between the development of Chicago into its current metropolis and the river that flows through it.......