Upcoming Events At The Indiana State Museum, By Josh Schubert and Eric Worley

The Indiana State Museum offers more than a glimpse into Indiana's history; it is a time capsule of unique and intriguing treasures. Each year the Indiana State Museum host special events and exhibits that entertain and amuse guests of all ages.

Part of the White River State Park in downtown Indianapolis, IMAX Theater delivers the ultimate cinema experience to moviegoers with 12,000 watts of digital surround sound. Using state-of-the-art technology, the IMAX Theater experience gives viewers a unique, larger-than-life way to go to the movies.

"Watching these larger-then-life sea creatures on our 6 story movie screen is both incredible and fascinating," said Craig Mince theater manager of the Downtown IMAX. "It's really refreshing to see a film about what was going on in the Earth's oceans before dinosaurs ruled the land." In the IMAX 3D movie, Sea Rex 3D: Journey To A Prehistoric World you'll travel back to explore the life of a extraordinary prehistoric underwater world and its remarkably huge creatures, which with their daunting size and natural ability for predation, were ruling the seas 20 million years before dinosaurs roamed the earth.

You're host on this journey is an imaginative young woman named Julie, who you travel with across the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretaceous periods to discover a little-known universe populated by amazing animals: the powerful Liopleurodon, the long-necked Elasmosaurus, the "eye-lizard" Ophthalmosaurus, the ferocious Prognathodon, and the gigantic 75-foot Shonisaurus.

Engaging Exhibits At The Indiana State Museum

The IMAX Theater in the Indiana State Museum and 3D Entertainment Distribution invite you to take an incredible voyage, 200 million years back in time, for a face-to-face encounter with the T-Rex of the seas in a new IMAX 3D movie, Sea Rex 3D: Journey To A Prehistoric World. IMAX® Theater in the Indiana State Museum offers entertaining and educational 2D and 3D films on a screen six stories tall and 84 feet wide, the largest movie screen in the state. Part of the White River State Park in downtown Indianapolis, IMAX Theater delivers the ultimate cinema experience to moviegoers with 12,000 watts of digital surround sound. Using state-of-the-art technology, the IMAX Theater experience gives viewers a unique, larger-than-life way to go to the movies.

View the Next Up painting by Robert Weaver, and other exhibits at the Indiana State Museum

This year will be just as exciting, and includes the exhibit called Indiana Realities: Regionalist Painting, which features the works from the Robert L. and Ellen E. Haan Collection. Among the highlights of this exhibit are works by Robert Weaver; the Peru, Indiana native who was born in 1913, and passed in 1991), spent his summers, while a student at the Herron Art Institute, working for a traveling circus and sketching the people and animals around him.

With one of his circus paintings, Weaver won the John Armstrong Chaloner national award to study in Europe. Admired for their strong draftsmanship and rich colors, his paintings now provide important visual records of an institution that has all but vanished. "Next Up" was reproduced on advertising tins in the 1930's, and is a lively painting of activity behind the scenes brings circus performers to life. Confining his composition to a crowded backstage area allowed the artist, Robert Weaver, to include many colorful subjects.

Another fascinating exhibit at the Indiana State Museum is Odd Indiana, which explores the baffling and amusing aspects of the Hoosier state. In the Odd Indiana exhibit you'll discover objects selected from the museum’s own collections that are oddities, rarities or commonplace things with intriguing stories. Over 50 unusual items that represent science and culture reveal the museum’s collecting activities over the past 100 plus years.

Through Mid Summer the Indiana State Museum will also feature Frugal & Fancy – Indiana Quilts on exhibit that showcases how quilting traditions merged in the New World when the formal needlework tradition of the European elite met the more informal Scots-Irish tradition of scrap or strip quilts. Both styles became integral to American quilting. See quilts from the Indiana State Museum collection that are a reflection of both aspects of this craft.

And, In Her Honor; a tribute to Mary Anna “Marty” Wyall, Marty, currently of Fort Wayne and Indiana’s only living WASP, recently received the Congressional Gold Medal in Washington, D.C., for her service. As you'll find out in this exhibit, while other women were home taking care of their Victory Gardens and their families during World War II, Mary Anna “Marty” Wyall was flying planes as a Women Airforce Service Pilot (WASP). The WASP were the first women in history trained to fly American military aircraft. In Her Honor features several of Wyall’s personal belongings as well as her Congressional Gold Medal. She shares her stories about being a WASP in a short documentary.

Plan Your Indiana Getaway

To explore other IMAX movies showing at the Indiana State Museum theater, or for show times and ticket information, visit www.imaxindy.com. The Indiana State Museum is located at 650 W. Washington Street in the White River State Park in Indianapolis. To discover more exciting events and exhibits to enjoy on your visit to the Indiana State Museum go to their website online at http://www.indianamuseum.org.

F or great discounts and exciting attractions, and things to do in Indy, and around the state visit the Indianapolis Convention & Visitors Association at www.visitindy.com.