Date Night: First Fridays at the Natural History Museum

If you secretly long for your clubbing days (pre-children), try getting pre-historic with your date night endeavors at the Natural History Museum’s First Fridays series. Dance with the North American Mammals or sip drinks with the main lobby dinosaur skeletons. With a venue like the Natural History Museum, the right combination of live music, dim, mood-lit ambience, drinks, performances and academic discussions makes this the perfect place to revisit your youth while keeping the adults that you’ve become firmly intact.

The Natural History Museum First Friday events begin at 5:30 p.m. every (you guessed it!) first Friday of the month with the museum staying open for the occasions until an absolutely reasonable 10 p.m. Make the date with your significant other for Opening Night this Friday, January 8, 2010. The theme and talk will be about Spider Silks: Natural Engineering Marvels with Dr. Cheryl Y. Hayashi, a MacArthur Fellow and Current Professor of Biology at the UC Riverside. Spinning throughout the night is resident DJ Them Jeans, aka DJ Jason Stewart, and headliner DJ Spider with Atlas Sound and Tune-Yards at 8 p.m. and 9 p.m., respectively. To celebrate the opening night of First Fridays, a temporary art installation by Gerard Minakawa (Bamboo DNA), featuring a giant bamboo spider made of sustainable materials, is on display on the Museum’s South Lawn. The best part of the evening? Admission is only $9 and includes admission to the entire museum and its collections.

If this Friday is too last minute to secure a sitter, don’t worry—you’ll have five more First Fridays to check out as the series will go on until June.

First Fridays at the Natural History Museum

900 Exposition Blvd. Los Angeles, 90007; (213) 763-DINO
Friday, January 8, 2010
5:30 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.
Ages: Adults
Cost: $9 and FREE for NHM members. (Purchase tickets in advance HERE)
Website

SCHEDULE

5:30 p.m. Curatorial Tours

Meet the Silk Makers tour with Brent “The Bug Guy” Karner, NHM’s Invertebrate
Living Collections Manager

6:30 p.m. Discussion

Spider Silks: Natural Engineering Marvels with Dr. Cheryl Y. Hayashi, MacArthur Fellow and Current Professor of Biology at the University of California, Riverside

Their medium is silk; their mission is to spin! Spiders are the unparalleled architects and engineers of the natural world, and in this talk, Hayashi introduces the basic biology of spider silk, and shares recent research on its genetics and biomechanics. Despite their gossamer appearance, spider silks have incredible mechanical properties, ranking among the strongest and toughest materials on the planet. Hayashi is revealing key information about their miracle silk, from which biomaterials including biodegradable fishing lines, medical sutures, and protective armor cloth are currently being developed.

Born and raised in Hawaii, Hayashi received a B.S. from Yale University and a Ph.D. in Biology through a joint program with Yale University and the American Museum of Natural History. She was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wyoming, and in 2001 joined the faculty at the University of California, Riverside, where she is now a professor of biology. In 2007, Hayashi was named a MacArthur Fellow.

The discussion will be moderated by Dr. Michael W. Quick (Department of Biological Sciences and Executive Vice Dean, University of Southern California College of Letters, Arts & Sciences)

7 p.m. -10 p.m. Resident DJ Them Jeans (aka Jason Stewart) and headliner DJ Spider

Though his roots stem from a deep love for hip-hop, Spider has cultivated his sound to include an eclectic mix of cuts that transgress nearly every genre of music. He’s been known to take timeless hits such as “Sexual Healing” by Marvin Gaye, mix in the newest club-banger, and blend into an Aretha Franklin classic. It is this variety and originality that makes Spider one of the most coveted DJ’s across the globe today.

With musical tastes spanning from hardcore punk to dance floor-friendly hip-hop, post-rock to ambient electronic, Them Jeans never fails to deliver a set with the perfect mood for the gathering.

8 p.m. Atlas Sound (8 p.m.) and Tune-Yards (9 p.m.)

Atlas Sound is the solo project of Bradford Cox, the striking and eccentric vocalist for experimental indie rocker act Deerhunter.

The Tune-Yards’ electronic folk nucleus is Merrill Garbus, who started as a one-woman show with ukulele and a human beat box of a voice.

This year’s band line-ups are again co-curated with Spaceland, the Eastside presenting and programming powerhouse.