Word: planetariums
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...largest collection of presidential materials ever because its subject is not only the most investigated President in history but also the most photographed, most recorded and most documented. The building is being designed by one of America's leading architects, James Polshek, who did the new, award-winning Hayden Planetarium in New York City. The exhibits that will tell the story of Clinton's life and times are being curated by Ralph Appelbaum, who worked on the planetarium as well as the distinguished U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Clinton is, not surprisingly, "one of the most attentive clients...
...scientist and educator, Tyson also knew that the existing planetarium, with its '30s design and technology, didn't come close to conveying the astonishing discoveries modern astronomy has made in the past few decades, from the Big Bang to black holes. Plummeting attendance in recent years simply confirmed that the Hayden was more compelling as memory than as fact. So Tyson set aside his nostalgia, sat down with architect James Polshek and exhibition designer Ralph Applebaum and got to work...
Last week, four years and $210 million later, the new Hayden (and the Rose Center for Earth and Space that surrounds it) finally made its debut--and it's already clear that this is not your grandfather's planetarium. First there's the building itself--a 10-story glass-walled cube with an 87-ft. aluminum sphere seemingly floating within it. Then there's the space around the sphere. While the old Hayden had only a handful of faded exhibitions to get visitors into a cosmic mood, the new planetarium is overstuffed with information. "We don't really expect anyone...
...Rose's centerpiece, literally and dramatically, is the planetarium itself, located in the upper half of the sphere. The stars inside actually twinkle, thanks to the Hayden's one-of-a-kind Zeiss Mark IX projector. It even projects stars you can't see, unless you bring binoculars into the dome, and shows constellations with 3-D reality. A second projection system, driven by a Silicon Graphics supercomputer loaded with real astronomical data, lets visitors "fly" beyond the Milky Way. As they look back on their gradually diminishing home, it becomes just one more speck amid a lacy network...
...firm is best known for subdued historical renovations, but he and partner Todd Schliemann conceived the Rose Center as a brisk geometric eruption, like I.M. Pei's Louvre pyramid, that shakes up the buildings around them. The old Hayden Planetarium, demolished to make way for the Rose, had blended all too well with the museum's flavorless north end. Polshek's forms, by contrast, operate on our deepest fantasies about the order of the universe. His sphere is covered with steel panels that inscribe it with meridians and latitude lines, so it stands in easily for the earth...