Airports cater to art lovers with intriguing installations

If you enjoy spending your leisure time visiting art galleries, but instead end up wasting time in airports, you're in luck. This season, many airports around the country are hosting intriguing temporary exhibitions and unveiling new permanent public artwork that can turn a long layover into a cultural adventure. Or at least keep you from getting bored.

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  Courtesy Jacksonville International Airport

  The kites in "Kites and Flights," on display at Florida's Jacksonville International Airport, depict birds, insects, clouds, airplanes, balloons, rockets and other flying objects.

Courtesy Jacksonville International Airport

The kites in "Kites and Flights," on display at Florida's Jacksonville International Airport, depict birds, insects, clouds, airplanes, balloons, rockets and other flying objects.

Here are some highlights:

Atlanta  

At Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, you'll soon find an exhibit of couture fashions made entirely from trash by Nancy Judd of Recycle Runway.

Included among the 18 pieces is an outfit commissioned by Delta Air Lines that Judd has dubbed "Environmental Steward-ess." The vintage-style flight attendant uniform, which includes a hat and purse, is made from worn-out leather seat covers from Delta planes. The purse, made by Tierra Ideas, has a liner made from recycled wool curtains. The best part: The cape, which was inspired by Wonder Woman's invisible plane from early comic book days, is made from outdated seatback safety cards, discarded pretzel bags, old plane tickets and past issues of Sky Magazine.

Find it: The Recycle Runway exhibit opens April 18th and continues until April 2012 in nine cases on Atlanta International Airport's Concourse E. A video about Recycle Runway will also run on the airport's CNN channel at each gate.

• PHOTOS: What's on display at America's airports

San Francisco 

The recently rebranded SFO Museum already maintains about 20 exhibit spaces throughout San Francisco International Airport. The museum gets yet another gallery to program in the renovated Terminal 2, which opens to the flying public on April 14th. The first exhibition is as shiny as the new terminal and features bronze candlesticks, pewter and sterling silver bowls and more than one hundred other extraordinary examples of silver and metalwork design and craftsmanship from throughout the world.

• SAN FRANCISCO: Airport's new Terminal 2 'T2' dazzles

Find it: A Century of Silver and Metalwork from the Margo Grant Walsh Collection is post-security in SFO Terminal 2 through October 2, 2011. For those not traveling on American Airlines or Virgin America, the two airlines with gates in T2, there is an online exhibition.

Miami 

Travelers can get a dose of the Everglades the only place where alligators and crocodiles co-exist in the wild at Miami International Airport, which is displaying 26 large-format photographs featuring the reserve's wildlife and lush landscapes. The photos were taken by a half-dozen photographers who had the opportunity to live and work in the park's subtropical environment for a month as part of the Everglades National Park's Artist-in-Residence program.

Find it: The 26 large-scale photographs in Experience the Everglades are in the international arrivals corridor in the North Terminal through December, 2011.

St. Louis 

Plenty of site-specific art will be part of the $50 million in renovations taking place at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport's historic Terminal 1. Among the first commissioned pieces to be installed will be art glass screens with work by nine local artists featuring images that include eagles, soaring clouds, historic quilt patterns, local river paths and other images. Four art glass screens are being installed this month; five more screens will be installed this summer.

Find it: When installed, the art screens will be at Lambert-St. Louis International Airport's Terminal 1, on Concourses A and C.

Jacksonville 

The theme of flight figures into both the new permanent aerial sculpture and a temporary art installation at Florida's Jacksonville International Airport. The arcs in the site-specific Sky Bridges relate to the air-flight paths of takeoffs and landings, and to the many bridges in the Jacksonville area. The kites in Kites and Flights depict birds, insects, clouds, airplanes, balloons, rockets and other flying objects. Both projects are by Melanie Walker and George Peters.

Find it: Sky Bridges hangs from the ceiling of the airport's renovated connector bridge. Look for Kites and Flights in the Haskell Gallery in Jacksonville International Airport's courtyard through June 2011.

Portland, Ore. 

As part of a fresh series of exhibits highlighting work by Northwest artists, Oregon's Portland International Airport is currently showing Fractal Art by Sara McCormick, who uses mathematical formulas to create digital art replicating patterns of leaves, snowflakes, DNA and other objects found in nature.

Find it: McCormick's Fractal Art is on view at Portland International Airport's Concourse B through October 10, 2011.

Albany 

In early April, New York's Albany International Airport kicked off Keeping Time, an exhibition in which seven artists explore nostalgia with "an eye for its intimate, humorous and often bittersweet nature," says Sharon Bates, director of the airport's art and culture program. Included in the show are paintings, several large site-specific installations and collages made from old paint-by-number paintings.

Find it: Keeping Time is on display in the Albany airport's third-floor, pre-security gallery through September 5, 2011.

Phoenix 

Robert Brubaker's ceramic, anthropomorphic animals are featured in a current exhibit at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Although the local weather rarely calls for such warm clothing, the birds, ram, monkey and other animals featured in Big Coats are wrapped in ceramic versions of brightly colored, woolen Western-style blanket coats.

Find it: The eight ceramic animal sculptures in Big Coats are on display in Terminal 3 at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport through September 4, 2011.

Denver 

And at Denver International Airport be on the lookout, matey, for ten recently installed, life-size pirate mannequins. Entertaining and photogenic on their own, the pirates are there to help promote a new exhibition at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science. Real Pirates: the Untold Story of the Whydah from Slave Ship to Pirate Ship explores the classical age of piracy and includes swords, gold, jewelry and more than 200 other artifacts recovered from the first authenticated pirate ship discovered in U.S. waters

Find it: The life-size pirate mannequins at Denver International Airport are on the level 5 baggage claim and Level 6 ticketing areas through August, 2011.

Not traveling to or through these airports? We've put together a slide show of some of the artwork mentioned here. Many other airports around the country feature temporary and permanent artwork as well, so next time you face a long layover or flight delay, don't just sit there: Go exploring!

Read previous columns

Harriet Baskas writes about travel etiquette for MSNBC.com and is the author of the airport guidebook Stuck at the Airport and a blog of the same name.

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Winter survival strategies from the USA's snowiest airports

So far this season, storms have triggered the cancellation of thousands of flights and forced the temporary closing of many airports. That means there'll be plenty to talk about at this year's conference, as attendees try to take in tactics to make you less likely to get stuck at an airport next winter.

But when it comes to operations in unforgiving winter weather, not all airports are created equal. So we asked some past award winners at snow-savvy airports to share their snow-removal strategies.

Art. Not science.

"It's not a science. There's no book out there called Airport Snow Removal for Dummies," says Paul Hoback, maintenance director for the Pittsburgh International and Allegheny County airports. "It's more of an art."

"Experience helps," adds Hoback. "Our people have to know how to treat different types of precipitation and how to react to wind speed and wind direction so they don't push the snow off the runway and have it blow right back on. They also have to understand what different types of ice and snow might do when they hit the ground."

That knowledge, good planning and communication and the right equipment were all in place at Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) last February 5th when a storm dumped more than 20 inches of snow at the airport.

"The storm was too much for many airports in the Northeast," says Hoback, "And even we ended up closing for 17 hours. Our crews took that as a defeat but fought to get the airfield back open so that one or two airplanes with transplant organs aboard could land."

For its efforts during that storm, Pittsburgh airport won one of a coveted Balchen/Post Awards at last year's International Aviation Snow Symposium. Dulles International Airport, Chicago O'Hare and the Greater Rochester International Airport took home first-place awards as well.

Equipment helps

At Boston Logan International Airport, which won a Balchen/Post Award in 2009, airport spokesperson Richard Walsh says, "We consider snow a four letter word. We go out there and battle storms to the end."

Logan was closed for a just a few hours last Wednesday during a storm that dumped heavy snow on parts of New England. In Logan's corner during that storm: a snow plan, determination and eleven, 68-foot long Vammas snow machines, each a giant plow, sweeper and blower rolled-into-one. When working in unison, airport officials boast that the Vammas fleet can clear a 10,000 foot runway in less than 15 minutes.

Buffalo-Niagara International Airport, which hosts the annual aviation snow symposium, has won the Balchen/Post award multiple times. And although it gets an average of more than 8 feet of snow a year, it's been more than three years since BUF has had to close due to snow.

"At the first snowflake we'll send out a whole fleet of broom trucks to immediately begin brushing the pavement," says airfield superintendent Tom Dames. "When snow piles up, we also have monster truck snow blowers that churn up snow and spit it out into the fields away from the runway. It looks a lot like fireboats shooting out plumes of water; except these are huge plumes of snow."

Do-over in Denver

A few years back, Denver International Airport learned some important snow lessons the hard way.

In 2006, just days before Christmas, Denver got hit with a blizzard that dumped 22 inches of snow in a 24-hour period. "The airport was closed for 22 hours," says Mark Nagel, Denver Airport's Acting Deputy Manager of Aviation. "It took us that long to clean up and get a couple of runways and our ramps clear."

3,000 passengers spent their Christmas stranded at Denver airport that year. Nagel says "No one was too thrilled. We did kind of receive a black eye for that because it took us so long to recover."

The problem was too big to sweep under a pile of snow. Instead, a consultant was hired; a study was conducted and DIA learned that, when it came to snow, the airport was inefficient, unorganized, understaffed and armed with not enough equipment.

The fixes included retraining, reorganizing and reassessing snow removal priorities. And now, like other airports, DIA has a snow committee that meets year-round with airlines, the FAA and other airport stakeholders to make sure the snow control plan is realistic and up-to-date.

Denver International Airport has also invested millions of dollars in new equipment and switched from single-function to more modern multi-function machinery that can plow and sweep at the same time. "So instead of taking 45-minutes to an hour to clear a runway, we can now do it in less than 15 minutes" says Ron Morin, Denver Airport's Director of Aviation Field Maintenance.

And instead of having a single snow team, the Denver airport now has eight; each with a dedicated function. Team members were offered the chance to name their machines, but they asked instead to name their teams. Now, whenever it snows, you'll see the Snow Cats, the Marauders, the Taxi Way Tuxedoes, the Blizzard Busters, the Deice Men Cometh, the Ramp Rats and the Snow Dawgs taking care of business.

Advice from Anchorage and Mother Nature

Anchorage International Airport has won the Balchen/Post award four times and is always ready for snow. "Our snow season lasts from October through mid-April," says Airfield Maintenance manager Dan Frisby. "At other airports it will snow and then melt. Here, the snow can stick around all year long."

Frisby and assistant manager Zaramie Lindseth know the airport has been closed due to volcanic ash, a windstorm, the 1964 earthquake and, like other U.S. airports, for a few days after 9/11. But they can find no records that show the airport has ever been closed due to ice or snow.

In addition to having the right equipment, Frisby says it's important that airports maintain their equipment and not skimp on the cost of crews and supplies. "Some airports try and hold back on the chemicals. And it just bites you. You've got to go into attack mode when a storm starts and use the chemicals as they were designed."

No matter how well an airport prepares, though, sometimes snow happens and there's really nothing anyone can do.

"When Denver International Airport opened, it was touted as the all-weather airport," says DIA's Mark Nagel. "They said 'We'll never close.' But we've learned the hard way that you have to respect Mother Nature and balance safety with the goal of staying open."

Read previous columns

Harriet Baskas writes about travel etiquette for MSNBC.com and is the author of the airport guidebook 'Stuck at the Airport' and a blog of the same name.

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