Tag: archaeology

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Star Wars museum exhibits on the move!

Where-Science-Meets-Imagination-x-wingAlready thinking about travel plans for the summer and rest of 2013? The traveling museum exhibitions for Star Wars and Indiana Jones are!

Announced on Thursday with Billy Dee Williams on hand with the mayor of San Jose (yes, San Jose!), alongside Pablo Hidalgo and members of the 501st and Rebel Legions, San Jose’s Tech Museum of Innovation will be hosting the final stop of the Star Wars: Where Science Meets Imagination exhibition from October to next February.

Where-Science-Meets-Imagination-logoThe exhibition has been traveling around the US since 2005 (see my pictures from when it was at Santa Ana’s Discovery Science Center), and is currently wrapping up its stay at the Orlando Science Center (ends April 7). Over the summer, it will be at the Indiana State Museum in Indianapolis (May 25 – Sept. 2). This exhibition brings out props and costumes from the Star Wars films and connects them to real world science and technology, such as space travel, prosthetics, maglevs, and robotics.

Star Wars Identities logoMeanwhile, the Star Wars Identities exhibition, which started in 2012 in Montreal, and focuses on the concepts of identity, through origins, influences, and choices, will be ending this weekend in Edmonton’s Telus World of Science to move to Ottawa’s Canada Aviation and Space Museum from May 10 to September 2.

Indiana Jones The ExhibitionFinally, the Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology exhibition is wrapping up its first US stay, at Santa Ana’s Discovery Science Center, closing April 21. Presented by the National Geographic Society, it highlights the real science of archaeology, and connects it to the four Indiana Jones films with both real world artifacts and movie props, costumes, and artwork. I had a chance to see the exhibition last weekend, and provided an in-depth report earlier. While I am told that this exhibition will be moving onto a new location, it hasn’t been announced yet.

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Visiting the Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology museum exhibition

Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology - Discovery Science Center

Last week, my Fan Force chapter made a club trip to see the Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology exhibition at the Discovery Science Center in Santa Ana, California. Nearly finished with its first American stop, the exhibition is great for both fans of the Indiana Jones films and fans of archaeology, and I’d advise going to check it out before it finishes up on April 21, or catch it at a tour stop near you. X3 Productions, the company behind the Indiana Jones exhibition (as well as Star Wars Identities), has let me know that there are more exhibition stops coming, and to watch for an announcement very soon. I’m a big fan of the Indy films, and a lover of archaeology, history and anthropology (and thus museums as well), so this was a trip I had been eager to organize and take. Here’s what the Indy exhibit had to offer:
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Crystal Skull lawsuit: It belongs in OUR museum! (As do some of the Indiana Jones profits)

Indiana Jones was called a grave robber and “obtainer of rare antiquities” in his career, but at least in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the skull ended up in its rightful place. Not so much with another crystal skull, which was referenced in the 2008 film: the Mitchell-Hedges skull, found in British Honduras (now Belize) in the 1920s.

Now, the Institute of Archaeology of Belize is using the Illinois courts to get the Mitchell-Hedges skull back from its discoverer’s family, and are even claiming that the skull’s likeness was used as the basis for the fictional skull in the Indiana Jones film without Belize’s authorization and thus the country deserves a chunk of the profit from Lucasfilm and Paramount (and now Disney). Or could it be that the crystal skull prop (and the Mitchell-Hedges skull) are based on the design of human skulls (albeit for the movie, some proportions were extended to alien dimensions).

The lawsuit alleges that there are only four known major crystal skulls in the world, including the one in the British Museum. Wait, the British Museum rock crystal skull was determined not to be Mayan or Aztec, but made later, from material not in the pre-Columbian Mexico trade network. Not a good start for this case.

Whether the Mitchell-Hedges skull is stolen property that needs to be repatriated to Belize is one case, but then dragging Lucasfilm into the case for claiming stolen profits is going to be a much tougher case. Or was the goal to just get some PR for this lawsuit?

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Star Wars Identities exhibition to start in Montreal in 2012

Star Wars Identities has been revealed! Lucasfilm is launching a new Star Wars-themed traveling museum exhibition in 2012. Using the characters of Anakin and Luke Skywalker as examples, the exhibition explores the core concepts of human identity, both in the real world and for fictional characters: their origins, influences, and choices. Lucasfilm and Montreal’s X3 Productions, its partner on the Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology traveling exhibition, will be using a collection from the Lucasfilm Archives to develop an interactive journey that will allow visitors to go on a quest to develop their own personal Star Wars identity.

Star Wars Identities will run at the Montreal Science Centre from April 19 through September 16, 2012 before hopefully touring other museums around the world. Go to the exhibition’s official website at starwarsidentities.com/. Looks like Dunc’s guess on what Identities would be just impacted on the surface.

Meanwhile, the Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology exhibit, which premiered this year at the Montreal Science Centre, will be opening in the Príncipe Felipe Science Museum in Valencia, Spain this December, and running through September 2012.

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Inside the Indiana Jones museum exhibition

It belongs in a museum. So do you!The LA Times interviews the creative forces behind the Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology exhibition tour, currently at the Montreal Science Centre until September. While no U.S. dates are on the schedule yet, the Indiana Jones exhibition, which features real archaeological artifacts alongside movie props, costumes and artwork, will travel for the next six years. Interviewed are the exhibits manager at Lucasfilm, Kyra Bowling; National Geographic’s archaeology fellow, Fredrik Hiebert; and co-project manager at X3 Productions, Geneviève Angio-Morneau.

Along with the interview, there’s a photo gallery of some of the props and artifacts on display. Some of the iconic props in the exhibition include the Ark of the Covenant, Holy Grail, and Crystal Skull. X3 has been producing a series of video clips related to the show – Fredrik Hiebert talking about the influence of the films on would-be archaeologists, and James Mathieu about the Penn Museum’s contribution to the exhibit’s real archaeological contents.

The exhibition, produced by X3 Productions, is a collaboration of Lucasfilm and the National Geographic Society. Stay in the loop on the exhibition with the Indiana Jones and the Adventure of Archaeology Facebook page. One of Dr. Jones’ rivals once told the man in the fedora that he belonged in a museum — and now he’s been proven right.