Above: plaque at entrance, grand Entrance, map at entrance (I’d bring my own, too!)
This week, I’ve been highlighting all kinds of things Flushing, Queens, especially the World’s Fair grounds at Flushing Meadows Park. You can find all of my Flushing/Fair post here, or navigate to specific posts using this list:
You can find lots of information about the fair grounds and all that they have at nycgovparks.org, this page includes a little map that you might want to use in conjunction with google maps. There are also a number of about.com articles about the park if you want help planning a visit.
To end my fair grounds posts, I’ll just highlight a few additional places I stopped by briefly at the grounds — you can’t quite do everything in a single day!
Above: I want to point out “The Fountain of the Planet of the Grapes of Wrath” (actual fountain at center, title at right) from the Flushing Park map at the entrance to the fair grounds. Do you think the word “planet” is a typo from “The Fountain of the Planet of the Apes?’
Above: The New York Hall of Science is also at the fair grounds. Although it’s more expensive than the art museum, it looks like a fabulous place to take kids — there is a crazy looking playground out back!
Above: There is a carousel right next to the zoo! I couldn’t resist the cotton candy.
If you’re in Manhattan, you have dozens of amazing museums at your disposal — so why would you make a trip out to Queens to see a lesser-known museum, with lesser known artwork? One word: PANORAMA. The Queens Museum of Art, located just behind the unisphere in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, home to the New York World’s Fairs of old, has a mixed bag of exhibits, but the Panorama of New York City really steals the show.
The panorama is a giant, 3D, scale, changing (the buildings aren’t glued down, so when the city changes, the panorama changes) map of all boroughs of New York City. (Yes, if you live anywhere in NYC and have a sense of direction, you can find your house!)
Check out the picture above carefully and you can see people on the platform in the background — that should help give you a sense of scale. The entire panorama is bigger than the average Manhattan apartment (according to CNN, the average Manhattan apartment is about 1300 square feet, in which case the panorama seven times larger at 9,335 square feet)! It was created for the 1964 World’s Fair and contains over 895,000 individual structures. The panorama is to scale, 1 inch equaling 100 feet.
Museum Info: Hour long tours of the panorama are offered at 4pm Saturdays and Sundays, but you can visit the Panorama during any museum hours without a tour. Although the museum web-page suggests that museum entry costs about $5, I got in for $2 with a student ID. As for travel, you can get there by bus, train, subway, or car (free parking), all modes of transport are described on the museum’s web-site. You can make a day of it and visit the World’s Fair grounds, right outside the museum’s front door, at the same time.
If you want more info on the panorama, or you want to see a person standing in the middle of it, check out this NY Times article from last year.
Remember to check out all of my articles on Flushing here — more will be added throughout the week!
On my last trip to Washington DC I visited The International Spy Museum, another DC “edutainment” museum, like the Newseum, that costs a $18 entrance fee, but is well worth it due to its sleek, new design and fun atmosphere. (I love well designed museums.)
The museum includes a mix of fact and fiction, including true-life spy stories and some prominent television spy history as well. Exhibits like “The Secret History of History” explain early code making and historical spy missions. Most exhibits include interactive features that help to keep older children (and child-like adults) entertained.
If you are in for a little Carmen Sandiego-like adventure, I encourage you to get a $25 ticket that includes the Operation Spy adventure. This adventure isn’t really very educational, and could be written off as a silly gimmick, but I found that it’s fun for adults and older children. You have to break into a room and a safe, follow someone on a security camera, and more.
If you choose not to do the Spy adventure, the museum provides you with a mini-adventure of its own, asking to you choose and memorize a “spy identity” throughout your museum trip.
As you may know, I spent approximately the last week in Washington DC. This time around I enjoyed a day at the Newseum. Unfortunately, it’s one of the DC museums that actually costs money, but for that money you get interactive, clean, sleek design (unlike some of the less-updated museums, such as the Air & Space Museum).
The Newseum is one among a brand of new “edutainment” museums popping up in DC (the New York Times recently reviewed some of these museums here).
My favorite exhibit, “Today’s Front Pages”, was on the top floor.
“More than 500 newspapers transmit their front pages electronically to the Newseum every day. Up to 80 are enlarged and printed for display in this gallery — among them one from every state and the District of Columbia as well as a sampling of international newspapers. Additional front pages are displayed outside the Newseum on Pennsylvania Avenue” (newseum.org).
I also enjoyed the special exhibit on G-Men & Journalists, where I got to see the actual cabin that the Unabomber lived in (yes, this is exciting to me). My cousins (and my aunts, actually) really enjoyed making their own newscast, which was later availible for download online.
If you’d like, take a 3D tour of the museum here, but I recommend an in-person visit!
Technorati Tags: Newseum, museum, edutainment, education, entertainment, Washington DC, travel, review, children, news
I know, the MOMA (Museum of Modern Art) and the MET (Metropolitan Museum of Art) are the places to go in NYC, but if you want the kind of out-of-city experience you can only find in Manhattan, I recommend The Frick (5th & 70th). Why?
“The Frick Collection is housed in the former residence of Henry Clay Frick (1849-1919), the Pittsburgh coke-and-steel industrialist…. Mr. Frick bequeathed the residence and the works of art he had collected over a period of forty years to the Board of Trustees…” (frick.org; pictures also from the web-site).
If you are student (or someone who considers herself to be a life-long student and still happens to have a seemingly valid Student ID card…), everyday is your lucky day because the entrance fee is a mere $5. If you aren’t a student the fee is $15, though Sundays are “pay as you wish” from 11am-1pm. (Fairly or unfairly, those under 10 aren’t allowed in the museum at all and those under 16 need adult supervision.)
My favorite painting there is
