At their best, museums are a great escape. They take us from the drab familiarity of our real world and place us in environments that are colorful and orderly and sometimes even a little spiritual.
The fact that Chicago is called a ”city of musuems,” then, is saying something. We take our cultural religion seriously, so much so that our great old buildings are not governmental or commercial. They are museums.
We have a passion for museums. Inevitably, though, the passion at the greatest museums can be muted. Our city`s art museum is indeed overwhelming, but the display of magnificent objects there is predictable and almost commonplace. Our science museum is so large, and sometimes crowded, that a visitor feels that a return is in order to see it all.
But off the well-beaten museum track there are other, smaller museums that provide sensations of escape that for some people can be stronger. They are surprising places, often empty, and visitors can commune with things that are astonishing for their obscurity. In the Chicago area, there are dozens of such places where curators, many of them amateurs, have rescued and displayed things from the trash heap that turn out to be well worth collecting. Sometimes the people who wander into these narrow little worlds see things they never will forget.
There are dozens of them. Little suburban historical societies. Ethnic museums. Sometimes, just sometimes, they provide us with a jolt into another world. Most are not professionally run. Sometimes they are disorganized. To some people, they would be downright boring. But when a small seed of interest clasps on to a case full of exotic objects, the result can be otherworldly.
For example, the American Police Center and Museum, 1130 S. Wabash Ave., is as idiosyncratic a museum as one could imagine. ”After the riots of the
`60s, we thought there was a need for this,” said Joseph Saccomonto, a Chicago patrolman and curator of the museum. ”We felt there had to be a medium where we could express the way we work and show the tools of the trade.”
The place is visited mostly, though not exclusively, by children who come on class field trips. Upon entering they might be enchanted by police uniforms from around the world (the one from Barbados is very colorful). On closer inspection, they will be much sobered by some photos on exhibit. Above one display case is a row of enlarged mug shots of wanted criminals. In the case, a variety of police photos shows scenes of the crime that are extra-grisly.
The museum is an opportunity for police to express themselves. Part of the world they live in is made up of firearms, of which a number are exhibited. One of Saccomonto`s prouder acquisitions is the service revolver and derringer of one Officer Hamilton, who was at or near the scene of the Haymarket riot in 1886 when anarchists and police clashed. This is perhaps the most famous (and to some, the most notorious) chapter in Chicago police history, and Saccomonto has another display of articles from old Collier`s and Saturday Evening Posts describing the events.
Indeed, it is a dangerous world. In another case, there are a homemade machine gun, a sawed off shotgun and the death mask of John Dillinger, the public enemy and bank robber who was shot dead outside the Biograph Theater on Lincoln Avenue in 1934. In a corner nearby are two facsimile electric chairs
(one from a movie set that came to the museum via Wally Phillips), and in another corner is a casket in which an unspeakable variety of drugs is displayed. There also are a fallen officer`s shrine with a wreath; a photo of Chicago`s latest police fatality; an altar with hat, gloves and badge; and a turning Mars light.
At their best, museum people draw you into their world. And none take it more seriously than the Divine Word missionaries, who have turned a portion of their former seminary (now a conference center) in a place called Techny (near Northbrook) into a multimedia exhibition celebrating their work. The World Alive! exhibit is an extravagant and slick presentation with photos, dioramas and short tape recordings. It was ”inspired by a desire to bring our message to the contemporary world,” said the director, Father Robert Flynn. That message is the effort to teach ”the brotherhood of all peoples.”
There is a bit of strangeness here that is not unpleasant. The museum was designed by a firm that does similar displays for Walt Disney. One enters the exhibit by walking into a chamber filled with the sound of rushing water and in which there are collections of butterflies, insects, marine fossils and other objects. This is the ”Creation” segment. A taped narrator recites some passages from Genesis.
The entire place has an upbeat tone. Later, a diorama and slide show plays jazz music and intones: ”The world of `we` and `they` is no longer possible.” Even the display of the ”seven deadly sins” is more humorous than devastating. Each of the sins–anger, lust, sloth, pride, gluttony, avarice and envy–is presented cleverly. One diorama, utterly abstract, has a tempting voice saying, ”Hang loose, don`t get up tight. Don`t get involved. Come all the way in and get some peace. . .I am sloth.”
As peculiar as it may seem, it is effective. And the Society of the Divine Word is an apt creator of such a thing. Not only is the Catholic order devoted to missionary work–thus the ideas contained–it also has a serious academic side, with some well-known anthropologists and a museum of ethnography near Bonn, West Germany. Since 1900, when the place was founded, the priests and brothers have brought artifacts to Techny and put them on display.
There are other attractions here besides the World Alive! museum. The chapel would rank among the most lavish in Chicago, and in the hall outside it are bronze sculptures by a late priest who worked here. One crucifixion scene by Peter Weyland was sculpted after he hung himself from a cross for periods of time to discover its effect on musculature.
Museums that might someday become great need visionaries to run them, even if they might seem off the wall to contemporaries. Certainly, when Loren Billings first opened her Museum of Fine Arts Research and Holographic Center on a very bleak stretch of the near West Side, she may have seemed just that. It was in 1976 when she acquired the building at 1134 W. Washington Blvd. Since then it has become one of the nation`s most important centers of holography.
Holography is hard to explain or even to illustrate without seeing it
”in person.” It is a photographic method that provides a three-dimensional image, enabling a viewer to look at all sides of the object. This is no ”Stewardesses 3-D” trick (wherein viewers wear glasses and images jump out). Holograms are possible when a laser is split. Half of the beam travels through the photographed object and toward the photo plate. The other half takes another path to the same plate. At those points where the two beams are ”in phase,” or on a coherent wave, an image is recorded on the plate. Through this and several other steps, a three-dimensional image is created.
One needs only see a hologram to be fascinated. Some positively extend into the space. One piece in the museum, which is a handsome space with old paneling, is of a microscope. The neck seems to stick out into the room. When one lines the eye up with the imaginary lense, the microscopic image becomes visible. This and other pieces of ”art” provide glimpses of the technology that holography can make possible.
There are many types of holograms. One of the more fascinating is a cinematic one in which many holgrams are projected like frames of a film. The three-dimensionality of this brings the image alive, much more so than a conventional movie. It is not hard to understand Billings when she insists that holography is a prominent part of our future.
During a walk through the museum, a visitor might meet one of several experts in holography who teach courses there. One of them, Hans Bjelkhagen, is a mechanical engineer from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and now is working on a variety of projects at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and Northwestern University. One project is to develop techniques with fiber optics to do medical testing. Though the technologies are not yet developed, it becomes obvious from a walk in this place that miraculous advances are possible.
More common than futuristics museums are historical ones. But for the right observer, they are no less compelling. Take the Polka Music Hall of Fame and Museum, 4145 S. Kedzie Ave. A visit here is not going to take much time, but a tour led by Gene Wozniak, International Polka Association president, will illuminate the world of the waltz-like European polka, the familiar
”Polish Hop” and the ”Chicago style,” whose music ”is a little slower and more dynamic, with two trumpet parts,” Wozniak said.
The popularizer of the Chicago style, Johnnie Bomba, is 1 of 52 people who have been inducted into the hall of fame since 1968, when the organization got started. Some are promoters, some record producers and others are disc jockeys. Another member, band leader Jimmy Starr, was inducted for bringing polka to Carnegie Hall, Opryland and Las Vegas.
The hall of fame and museum provide a glimpse of history you certainly would not see if you did not visit this former union hall. In the museum are photos from the ”All-State Lumber Polka Party” on WGN-TV in the 1960s. There are old instruments: an accordian from Bohemia and a more modern one decorated in red, white and blue rhinestones with the slogan ”Remember Pearl Harbor.” There are Hall of Famer Stan Seleski`s scrapbooks. One might feel a bit like a voyeur, reading clippings that have little to do with anything most people know or care much about. But to a fertile imagination, it can be entrancing, if only for a few minutes. It gives depth to something–polka–that most people usually pass over without giving it a second thought.
People who build museums are asking you to take them seriously. It might be considered a little grisly to go into a medical museum. But the Museum of Surgical Sciences, 1524 Lake Shore Dr., is engaging partly because people
”come out saying they are so happy to live in this age,” said Dolores Leber, who runs tours through the large, marble-laden mansion.
An amputation kit from the Civil War is a vivid little artifact. There is not much here: a saw, a few scalpels and a tourniquet to stem bleeding somewhat. The guide will offer a few more details: The stump sometimes was cauterized with hot tar. Anesthetic was often limited to a hefty dose of Kentucky cognac. Given the gory details, it is hard not to identify at least a little with the poor souls who went under these knives.
Only a tad more high tech is an iron lung on display. Though primitive
–patients with respiratory problems were placed in it to help their lungs pull in and push out–it promises, like the Model-T, better things to come. Further on down the line are displays of obsidian blades used by surgeons in Pompeii and skulls that illustrate the Incan custom of ”treffining” a hole to relieve cranial pressure (which was a partially legitimate remedy, even if medicine men thought they were doing it to let demons out).
For someone in the right frame of mind, small museums can be fascinating. It is not so much that the artifacts, photos and even the ideas they contain are rare, because many times they are not. They are remarkable because someone went to the trouble to put them all together in such a way that the world at large can understand. Usually they are modest. But that is part of their charm and even power.
They seem to be saying this to visitors: If you feel for just a moment the excitement that inspired the people who assembled these collections, then that is all they are asking. If you can leave your world just long enough to glimpse at what makes people polka fanatics, mad scientists or missionaries, then that makes the considerable work that goes into pulling them together worth the pain and expense of doing it.
A GUIDE TO A WORLD OF UNUSUAL DELIGHTS
The American Police Center and Museum, 1130 S. Wabash Ave., 431-0005. Hours: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday. Weekend tours by reservation. Admission: free.
World Alive!, Techny (on Waukegan Road between Northbrook and Glenview), 272-1100. Hours: 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Saturdays, noon to 5 p.m. Sundays. Admission: $3; $1 for children, students and seniors.
Fine Arts Research and Holographic Center, 1134 W. Washington Blvd., 226-1007. Hours: 12:30 to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. Admission: $2.50.
Polka Music Hall of Fame and Museum, 4145 S. Kedzie Ave., 254-7771. Hours: by arrangement, usually Tuesday evenings. Admission: free.
International Museum of Surgical Sciences, 1524 N. Lake Shore Dr., 642-3555. Hours: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission: free.
