Children Get a Feel for Artwork

--Turnabout makes fair play for children at a Minneapolis sculpture garden, where the diminutive art appreciators are actually encouraged to climb, clasp and otherwise touchingly experience the works of world-famous artists. Visitors to the 7 1/2-acre art park, which is being formally dedicated Saturday, can swing on a platform suspended from the large, steel-beamed sculpture “Arikidea” by Mark di Suvero, or lie on their backs in the aluminum human form that faces the sky to become part of Peter Shelton’s “BLACKVAULTfalloffstone.” The 40-sculpture, $12.8-million garden also features the works of Henry Moore, Isamu Noguchi and Los Angeles architect Frank Gehry. Gehry’s work is framed by a dozen palm trees that tower nearly 60 feet high over his 22-foot-high sculpture “Standing Glass Fish,” which rises from a pool of white water lilies. Children have already shown a strong feeling for the art. “I see children playing around and among the sculptures. They become active participants like you probably couldn’t have in a museum,” said David Fisher, superintendent of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board.

--Two noted researchers on human sexual behavior have decided to marry this month, but that may be one of the few times they are together on anything--the pair, who live in separate cities, will be wed in two ceremonies and will continue to live apart after the marriage. June Reinisch, 45, director of the famed Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University, will marry Leonard A. Rosenblum, 52, a founding member of the International Academy of Sex Research, first in a ceremony Saturday at a restaurant in New York, where the bridegroom is a professor at the State University of New York. The second ceremony will be Sept. 10 in Indianapolis, where Reinisch lives. “The marriage will not affect our careers,” Reinisch said.

--George Lucas, who gave new life to the old Saturday matinee adventure serials, is Houston’s choice to revitalize the aging Albert Thomas Convention Center into a $50-million entertainment complex. “This is a city that is futuristic. The idea of ‘Star Wars’ in downtown Houston is something that I think will catch on,” Mayor Kathy Whitmire said. Plans call for the city-owned property to be transformed into a complex featuring restaurants, nightclubs, movie theaters, a children’s museum and specialty shops. Jon Jerde, whose Jerde Partnership designed the Westside Pavilion in West Los Angeles, will be the architectural designer.