Science in action is getting a new permanent home at the Field Museum, but the exhibits themselves will be anything but.
The new Grainger Science Hub, on the museum’s main floor, is meant to showcase cutting-edge discoveries, oddities from the collection and just plain interesting artifacts and stories that otherwise haven’t made it into the museum’s displays. And it will change them up every three months, a heartbeat compared with the measured pace at which major museums usually work.
As the exhibit prepares to open Friday, the Field is showcasing a rock containing zircon crystals from 4.4 billion years ago, “the oldest minerals found on Earth,” the sign says. Studying it has helped to show that the planet then wasn’t a “hot ball of lava,” as previously thought, but a place of more moderate climate.
On the opposite wall is a selection of biological samples — including a dead crow and a whale shark fin — and a quiz about each one meant to showcase the power of DNA in biological studies. In the case of the crow, it’s an example of a 2000 virus that killed most of Chicago’s crow population.
Perhaps the most significant feature of the space, however, is highlighted by the blue and red neon sign that points to the new room: “Fresh Science Served Daily,” it says.
From 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. daily, museum educators will be there, in the roughly 1,000-square-foot room, working from a countertop space in the room’s center and offering a deeper dive into the two exhibits being presented.
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The first reason for the science hub is to have a better home for the “flash news” — a new dinosaur discovery, for instance, or a meteorite donation — that in recent years has been squeezed into a small display case on a corner of the central Stanley Field Hall, said Tom Skwerski, project manager in exhibitions.
“The second part of it is this idea of a facilitated experience here at the museum,” he said. “We want to bring Field Museum science and scientists to the visitor.”
The science hub will take over as host space for Meet a Scientist, the every-Friday program that brings a Field scientist in front of the public from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. First up, this Friday, is geologist Phillipp Heck.
The new room is set up with a video screen and a camera to allow for conversations with Field scholars out doing research in the world, and an overhead cam, like for a cooking show, can showcase what somebody is working on at the counter below.
Affiliated with the science hub are four red information carts that travel the floor with volunteer staffers, currently pushing topics including Creature Features and Hidden in the Collections.
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