Brunswick Exhibit at Chicago Cultural Center
By Jody Kravitz
Karl,
While returning from the band organ rally in Flint Michigan, I had a couple of hours to kill in downtown Chicago. I went to the old public library building which has undergone a lot of recent renovation. It is now called the "Chicago Cultural Center". I went mostly to look at the ceramic tile mosaic work in the ceilings, and of course the huge stained glass dome. There is also now a permanent "Museum of Broadcasting" which includes collections of radios, TVs, and studio equipment. They have a huge collection of video tapes which are indexed on computer terminals accessible to the public. If you find something you want to see, they put the tape in a VCR behind the counter and send you to a viewing cubicle with a pair of headphones. There is also a small operational studio where you or you and a friend can sit at a TV news set and read news copy from a teleprompter. For a small fee you can go home with a video tape of this. Believe me, its not as easy as they make it look on the evening news. But I digress....
Brunswick had a large exhibit set up at the cultural center which had a theme something like "150 Years of Brunswick Quality". I think the exact title is "Boating, Bowling, Billiards, and More, the Brunswick Story, 1845-1995". I went into the exhibit hoping to see a pinsetting machine. I was not disappointed. They have made __LOTS__ of other stuff. I think I saw some radios (after the broadcasting museum its kind of a blur). I don't recall seeing anything like what you described. I think finding the Brunswick "curator" of this exhibit would be very interesting. The exhibit is still on display. The cultural center's phone numbers are: offices: 312-744-6630 info: 312-346-3278
There were some flyers at the end of the exhibit with Brunswick's corporate information on them. I'm pretty sure there was an 800 number. I'm sorry, but I didn't get any of the flyers. I'll bet a daytime phone call to the first number above would get you the name of the Brunswick contact.
Jody
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