Section A · Page 9
The University Daily Kansan
Monday, April 12, 1999
Museum Day celebrates exhibits
By Matt Merkel-Hess
Special to the Kansan
The bubbly voices of children filled the Spencer Museum of Art yesterday as visitors worked on activities at the 19th annual Museum Day, held at four campus museums.
Parents and children made up most of the crowd of about 200, but off to the side, children-at-heart Charyse Herman, 36, and Gabriella Kehmer, 39, sat on the floor using Polaroid snapshots to create self-portraits.
The two had decided to visit a museum and arrived to find the museums bustling with visitors and special events for Museum Day. The art museum was their third stop.
"It's so much more fun." Kehmer said. "We wouldn't have gone to so many museums if this hadn't happened."
About 400 people visited the Natural History Museum throughout the day. A formal dedication of the mosaasaur skeleton, the newest permanent exhibit, began shortly after 12:30 p.m. and was attended by about 75 people.
"This is literally the largest lizard of all time," said Larry Martin, curator of vertebrate paleontology, of the fossil, which was found near Scott City. The display, a 60-foot cast of the swimming lizard's bones, was completed last September.
Bob Sieber and Dave Gomez, Facilities Operations employees, who put the bone casts together and assembled the skeleton, were present with their families.
"It was a challenge," Sieber said. "But it was fun and a good experience."
They worked about seven hours a day beginning last March to mount the skeleton. Sieber said.
Emily Gerry,7,a museum member, came to the museums with her brother David,4,a friend,B.J.Simpson,5,and her parents, Martin and Beatrice.
Mary Miller, Lawrence senior, fills out a questionnaire as she studies the Venus de Milo replicas in the Wilcox Classical Museum in Lippincott Hall. Visitors took part in yesterday's Museum Day, which also included activities in the Spencer Museum of Art, the Museum of Anthropology and the Natural History Museum. Photo by Erin McElhiney/KANSAN.
Time the games, Enjoy said:
She is interested in science and recently switched her career plans from astronaut to paleontologist.
"I like the games," Emily said.
This was the Gerry family's second Museum Day.
"There are wonderful activities for kids and its very hands on," Beatrice Gerry said. "It makes science come to life."
About 150 people stopped by the Museum of Anthropology to take a museum quiz, see a mock-up of an archaeological dig and make bracelets out of recycled objects such as bottle caps, wire, yarn and aluminum discs.
"The idea is that various things get recycled, and it's not just a thing we've done in the past 20 years," said Shelly Berger. Mason. Mich._graduate student.
The smallest of the museums, the Wilcox Classical Museum, was busy for its size with a group of about 70. Three members of Eta Sigma Phi, the classics department honors club, helped visitors.
—Edited by Juan Heath
Homeless Sleepout raises $1,600 for Jubilee Cafe
By Dan Curry
dcurry@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
Burcham Park gets bone-cold at night when the air slides off the Kaw River and moves onto the shadowed banks like an expected and unwelcome relative.
That's why the people who slept there could see their breath when they spoke.
That's why they d:ank cocoa and huddled in groups to keep warm.
That's why the students and community members, who decided to spend a night outdoors by the river, raised more than $1,600 in donations for the Jubilee Cafe, a program that serves a hot breakfast restaurant-style to anyone who needs it.
The Homeless Sleepout, sponsored by the Center of Community Outreach, brought out more than 100 people last Friday for a night of feasting on contributed food, listening to funk music and hearing people without homes tell a story or read a poem.
Students asked people for pledges, and community businesses donated food and coffee, said Christina Harms, coordinator for Into The Streets Week. All proceeds went to benefit the Jubilee Cafe
Harms, Wichita sophomore, said the event was a success, both in numbers of people who participated and numbers of dollars raised.
"I'm glad people are here," Harms said.
"That's what I'm most happy about."
Harms said there was a lot the Lawrence community still needed to do to take care of people without homes, such as financing a year-round homeless shelter, which the city lacks.
She said she hoped the Homeless Sleep-out raised awareness of these needs.
"I just think that once people see what's happening it will spur people to do something about it." Harms said.
Paul Bryant, a recent candidate for city commission and a former GTA at the University of Kansas, said his homelessness was not something he just let happen.
"This problem is a social disease rather than some just punishment for peoples' misdeeds." Brvant said.
Bryant said his only ticket out of being homeless or going to jail was to publish the book he had been writing — and that was a long shot.
"How many people do you know who can publish their book?" he asked.
The book exposes what Bryant sees as unfair and unethical policies of credit card companies.
Bryant, who has been homeless for more than a year, now catches four hours of sleep on the sticky floor of a convenience shop or spends part of the night in his car, he said.
Into the Streets Week raised more than $2,000 for local community services.
"That's a lot of meals," said Chris Hess, one of the directors of the Center for Community Outreach. "That's a big impact."
Edited by Jodi Smith
Controversial Christ film draws 150 to Kansas Union
By Jennifer Roush
jrush@kansan.com
Kansan staff writer
A crowd of about 150 people saw Martin Scorsese's controversial film The Last Temptation of Christ Friday night at Woodruff Auditorium in the Kansas Union. It was the first time the movie had been shown on campus in the past five years.
The movie, which was released in theaters in 1988, has been protested and condemned for its stark portrayal of Jesus as a man
struggling with his conflicting duties to God and his family and friends. The last temptation mentioned in the title refers to the guardian angel sent by Satan to remove Jesus from the cross at Calvary and allow him to live out his life as a mortal man.
Alexis Stevens, executive director of the KU chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said she and Buddy Lloyd, KU ACLU president, had approached Student Union Activities in February about showing the film on campus.
"We wanted to do it because the movie has been censored since it came out by various groups and religious organizations," Stevens said. "We didn't do it to offend anyone. It was an exercise of our freedoms."
She said employees at Kino kept a running file of incidents at colleges that were related to the film.
Jessica Rosner, director for non-theatrical releases at Kino International, the company that distributes the film, said she knew of at least three colleges that tried to ban the film.
In fact, Rosner said the movie had raised so much controversy since its release that the cans that contained the rolls of film were not labeled with the movie's title. Instead, they are labeled as "The Event," to discourage potential theft or vandalism to the film.
Many of the students who attended the movie did so because of the controversy surrounding it.
Neill Barnes, Lawrence sophmore, said he went to the movie because he was a member of KU ACLU and had heard about the movie but had never seen it.
"It caused such controversy because it showed Christ as more human than the fundamentalists liked," Barnes said.
Other students saw the movie as educational as well as controversial.
"I came partly because of the controversy, partly because of history and partly because I just love movies," said Melineh Kurdian, Wichita junior. "Anything that makes people think is a good thing," she said. "I was quite pleased."
— Edited by Steph Brewer
TO RENT OR NOT TO RENT
Where to find The Last Temptation of Christ on video in Lawrence:
LOCATION: COPIES:
Blockbuster (1516 W. 23rd St.) 0
Liberty Hall (642 Mass. St.) 2
Hastings (1900 W. 23rd St.) 1
Dillons (1700 Mass. St.) 0
Dillons (3000 W. 6th St.) 1
Dillons (1015 W. 23rd St.) 0
Hy-Vee (3504 Clinton Parkway) 1
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