Arrive Magazine - January/February, 2008

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the global microscope can display breaking science news. If, say, Mount St. Helens erupts, museumgoers will be able to view the fiery crater and listen to a scientist from a remote location explaining the event through a picture-in-picture broadcast.

The popular new exhibit called Skyscraper! goes to new lengths in explaining the architectural marvels visible just across the Hudson River. There’s a 20-foot- long wind tunnel that demonstrates how tall buildings behave in high winds, even a Walk the Steel experience (complete with safety harness) that lets visitors cross a narrow beam 18 feet above the gallery floor. A 4,000- square-foot exhibition called Eat and Be Eaten looks at chemical warfare, camouflage and other aspects of predator/prey relationships in the animal world. Infection Connection explores disease. Those whose feet are weary from traversing the six new exhibition areas can head for comfortable seats in the nation’s largest IMAX dome theater.

222 Jersey City Blvd.; 201-200-1000; isc.org

A BIGGER FOOTPRINT
FOR A PHILLY FAVORITE
Philadelphia Museum of Art

PHILADELPHIA

Philadelphia’s art museum, the neoclassical colossus made famous by Rocky Balboa’s dash up its front steps, began welcoming visitors last fall to the first expansion of its footprint since its opening in 1928. The new space offers an additional 59,000 square feet and enables the museum to display more of its vast holdings, much of which previously was relegated to basement storage.

Just across the street, the Ruth and Raymond G. Perelman Building now showcases revolving exhibits of the museum’s trove of photography, costumes and textiles. The 2,000-square-foot

Spain Gallery of Costume and Textiles, just
off the first-floor, skylighted galleria, nearly
triples the exhibition space dedicated to
costume and textiles, permitting several
in-depth special exhibitions per year. Not
currently on display but certain to reap-
pear in the future is one of the art museum’s
most cherished items: the wedding dress of
native daughter Grace Kelly.

The new Perelman Building is an attraction in its own right. Listed in the National Register of Historic Places, it’s a stunning example of art deco architecture and design. It opened in 1927 as the headquarters of the Fidelity Mutual Life Insurance Company. The Egyptian-inspired flora and fauna decorating the building’s exterior, the most elaborately sculpted facade of any 20th-century building in the city, were carved by sculptor Lee Lawrie, whose work adorns Rockefeller Center and the Library of Congress.

2600 Benjamin Franklin Parkway; 215-763-8100; philamuseum.org

to a place where
sailboats get the best parking spots. Eat crabs in
their natural habitat. Take a tour by watercraft.
Or take in the Wednesday Night Sailboat Race.
But don’t expect landlubbers’ rules to apply.
Because things are a little different here.