Da Vinci Exhibit in Chicago

If you happen to be visiting the Windy City this summer, mosey over to the Museum of Science and Industry and check out their new exhibit Leonardo Da Vinci: Man, Inventor, Genius. From the New York Times review, May 30, 2006 (read more by clicking the link above):

"This show is almost the inverse of the world of "The Da Vinci Code." A code implies something secret, available only to the initiate, a hidden world in which nothing is what it seems. Focusing on the machines and inventions sketched out in Leonardo's notebooks, the exhibition shows his almost ecstatic efforts to discern and disclose the world's workings and to master its principles, leaving nothing about them secret and hidden. This is a display of decodings.

Pull away the veil of flesh — as Leonardo often did in his dissections of human and animal corpses — and you see his vision of divinity made manifest. Muscle and bone and joint are nature's versions of gears and pulleys and levers. And Leonardo, with the pride of a secondary deity, never ceased combining and recombining these elemental ingredients into machines that still astonish in their simplicity and power. These are the rudimentary skeletons of his introspective Madonnas."

There's an interactive exhibit called "Leonardo's Workshop" where you can play with some of his invention. The exhibit also features a touch screen wall that walks you through a totally groovy interactive Da Vinci game. The game, by Leonardo3, will be available on Cd-ROM in June for those not fortunate enough to visit Chicago. No info on what the CD will cost, but the game itself Leonardo Da Vinci/Inside the Castle Laboratory looks awesome!

The exhibit closes September 4.