LIFE STYLE
JUNE 6, 1933
The first drive-in movie theater opened in Pennsauken, NJ. Owner Richard M. Hollingshead, Jr., advertised his novel venue’s appeal with the slogan: “The whole family is welcome, regardless of how noisy the children are.” It’s still hard to beat the combo of popcorn, starry sky overhead, and the Silver Screen even 76 years later.

JUNE 18, 1983
As a crew member of the space shuttle Challenger, 32-year-old astrophysicist Sally Ride became the first U.S. woman to fly in space 26 years ago. In 2001, she launched Sally Ride Science to let girls know that science is creative, collaborative, and fun.

GOALS
Laid off from her job as a marketing and sales director, Pasha Stocking used one of the most basic forms of advertising, signage, to help land her next gig. In April, Stocking invested $2,000 in a highway billboard on I-95 in Bridgeport, CT, with her image and website next to the words “HIRE ME!” The unemployed single mother of three took this extreme measure to overcome daunting obstacles in the labor market these days. That’s just one way job seekers are taking matters into their own hands, given the tough economy. Others are trying their hand at creating their own jobs. The recent wave of downsizing has produced a new class of entrepreneurs who hope to turn lifelong hobbies or expertise into living wages. One easy, low-cost place to start is a Website. Aynsley Deluce, a former ad agency director, joined forces recently with her fiancé to launch their e-business, parkingspots.com, an online listing of parking spaces for rent in urban areas. It was an idea that the couple had been sitting on for years, and with little to lose they finally poured their energy and savings into their new enterprise. Deluce admits that financing has been tough. Banks were reluctant to lend them money, so the couple turned to friends and family for funds. Their Website connects parking spot owners, who pay a fee for each listing, with drivers. While revenue has trickled in slowly, the site is now expanding to cover more than 30 cities in the United States and Canada. The newly minted entrepreneur is proud of her accomplishments, but what is more rewarding is her personal fulfillment. “I’m working full time now for me,” said Deluce in the Wall Street Journal. “It may sound selfish, but I’d rather do something for me and build my company than help someone else build theirs.”
—Olympia Kyriakides

THE ARTS

Chicago
In his new and widely acclaimed Modern Wing of the Chicago Art Institute, architect Renzo Piano has in one stroke transformed the downtown cityscape. Now the second-largest art museum in the country with the addition of the 264,000-square-foot wing, the institute features more works than ever before from its world-class 20th- and 21st-century collections. Nicollai Ouroussof of the New York Times describes the experience of visiting the new wing: “The idea is to make you aware of the shifts in daylight—over the course of a visit, from one season to another—without distracting you from the artwork, and the effect is magical. On a clear afternoon you can catch faint glimpses through the structural frame of clouds drifting by overhead. But most of the time the art takes center stage, everything else fading quietly into the background.” Ah yes, the art. Highlights of the Modern Wing include the recently treated and reframed Bathers by a River by Henri Matisse, a new installation of sculptures by Constantin Brâncusi, an inspired presentation of Surrealist objects by such artists as Man Ray, René Magritte, and Salvador Dalí, and an elegant new grouping of Pablo Picasso works. And that’s just the Modern European Art on the third floor. For details of these and other treasures, including contemporary art, architecture, design, and photography galleries, see www.artic.edu/aic or call 312-443-3600.

Los Angeles
Of course, if you live in the Los Angeles area, the magic of Piano’s innovative lighting and buoyant architectural forms is not new to you. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is in the midst of a multi-year Piano-planned transformation of its 20-acre campus. His new three-story Broad Contemporary Art Museum debuted last year, and the Resnick Exhibition Pavilion is slated to open next year. This month (through October 4), visitors to LACMA can get an intimate look at the ancient past at “Pompeii and the Roman Villa.” The exhibit combines recent discoveries never before exhibited in the United States with finds from earlier excavations. All are drawn from the premier resort area of the ancient world, on the Bay of Naples near the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, where Roman aristocrats decorated their opulent villas with the finest art, including sculptures, reliefs, wall paintings, and mosaics. The layout follows the floor plan of a typical villa, starting with a cave canem (“beware of dog”) sign at the entrance and continuing through an atrium, gardens, and an open dining room. For more information, visit www.lacma.org or call 323-857-6000.

New York
After a two-year renovation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s American Wing got an official ribbon-cutting reopening by First Lady Michelle Obama in New York on May 18. Diana, the lithe bronze archer by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, is still the centerpiece of the wing’s sculpture court, but now her bronze form gleams in the sunlight in an enlarged and artistically transformed space. Some 60 works of art surround her on the main floor, including marble and bronze figurative works by such American masters as Hiram Powers and Paul Manship. The balcony and new glass-enclosed mezzanine above display some 1,000 decorative works on three sides of the courtyard, for the first time combining the museum’s silver and ceramic collections. Finally, the American Wing’s period rooms, which provide an unparalleled view of American domestic architecture and interior design over three centuries, have been renovated and rearranged in chronological order. For the first time, visitors will be able to take an unbroken tour of American interiors dating from the 17th to the 20th century. For more info, visit www.metmuseum.org or call 212-535-7710.
—Bruce Lacey

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