Giant, Lifelike Dinosaurs Will Stalk The Field Museum Lawn For 'Jurassic World' Exhibit
By Stephen Gossett in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 23, 2017 7:41PM
The Dungeons & Dragons-loving, "they/them" pronoun-using SUE will no doubt always be number one in our hearts, but the Field Museum's headlining T rex will soon have some blockbuster dinosaur company. That's "blockbuster" as in summer-movie-tentpole levels. The Field Museum announced on Thursday the impending arrival of a Jurassic World: The Exhibition.
An interactive adaptation of the Paleo-CGI mega-hit franchise, the large-scale exhibition will bring a small army of lifelike animatronic dinosaurs to the front lawn of the museum. (At a whopping 16,000 square feet, Jurassic World is so big, they'll have to keep it outside—a first for the museum.) The Field promises that the hyper-realistic dinos—designed by the company that worked on Walking with Dinosaurs and scaling upwards of 20-plus feet—are the best approximation yet created. All your favorites—from Brachiosaurus to Velociraptor to, yes, Tyrannosaurus rex—will be represented.
The exhibition will also feature a re-creation of the Jurassic World gates, a "creation lab," guided tours and more. The exhibition debuted in Melbourne, Australia before making its way to the Franklin Institute, in Philadelphia. The Field will be its third stop.
The pop-culture crossover at science/educational institutions is nothing new; and Field officials hope and expect the collaboration will gateway visitors to explore the rest of the museum's impressive dinosaur and Paleolithic collection. Re-creating the beasts in the film franchise tended to turn out rather poorly for the characters involved, of course, but we expect better things here.
“One of our goals as a museum is to provide visitors with the best dinosaur experience in the world,” said Field Museum President Richard Lariviere in a release. “Our fossil collections are one of the greatest things about The Field Museum, and the Jurassic World dinosaurs are an incredible way to spark our imaginations about them. After experiencing an animatronic T. rex, you can come inside, witness SUE, and picture what an incredible animal she must have been in real life.”
Jurassic World: The Exhibition will run from May 26, 2017, to January 7, 2018. Daytime tickets pare $10 for children and $15 for adults ; evening tickets are $20 for children and $25 for adults.