Weekend events May 13 - May 15: Cosmic Collisions, “Metropolis” With Music, Stripmall Ballads

Friday, May 13 Not Your Father's Planetarium Show

Cosmic Collisions, a planetarium show, is the story of a speeding comet that collides with Earth's atmosphere. Zipping along at 40 million years per second, the film takes visitors on a journey through time and space that includes colossal impacts and exciting explosions. Scientific visualizations, images from NASA and advanced simulation and imaging technology enhance the experience. Seven shows daily, beginning at 11:00 AM. Tickets are $6.50 members, $9.00 adult (13-and up), $8.00 senior, $7.50 youth (2-12 years old). Albert Einstein Planetarium at the National Air & Space Museum

Saturday, May 14 "Metropolis" with live musical accompaniment

Silent Orchestra returns to the Smithsonian American Art Museum and National Portrait Gallery to premiere an original score for the classic film Metropolis. This 1927 silent German film is set in a society divided into two classes: one of planners and managers who live in luxury, and one of workers who live and work underground. Check out the interview of these film score producers at the Eye Level. 3:00 PM. Free, but tickets required; available in the G Street lobby thirty minutes prior to the screening. American Art Museum

Sunday, May 15 Stripmall Ballads

The Smithsonian American Art Museum says that Edward Mitchell Bannister lived his entire life by the sea and probably made this painting, Untitled (moon over a harbor, wharf scene with full moon and masts of boats), while he was living in Boston in the late 1860s. Although he never traveled abroad, Bannister was influenced by late 19th-century French landscape painting, which shows in his thick brushstrokes, subdued colors and simple compositions. In the painting misty colors and bleak landscape create a mysterious scene, as if Bannister had painted it in the middle of the night. View Bannister’s work of the moonlit harbor and hear more about its creator at 1:30 PM, followed by  Stripmall Ballads, contemporary folk music at 2:00 PM. Free. American Art Museum