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Free Weekday Admission At MSI Through The Month

CHICAGO (CBS) -- The frigid and often sloppy weather might leave you with a strong urge to stay home and watch bad cable TV movies.

But on weekdays for the rest of the month, you can watch old-time Charlie Chaplin movies on a big screen instead. And you can make your own tsunami, run in a giant hamster wheel, meet an animatronic talking donkey inside a train from the 1930s, and refresh your knowledge of chemistry, physics, biology and technology.

The Museum of Science and Industry is offering free general admission every weekday through the rest of January. Also, Tuesdays will be free in February, and on Valentine's Day, Monday Feb. 14.

If you haven't seen Muppet models and historic sketches of "Jim Henson's Fantastic World," you'd better hurry, because that exhibit closes on Sunday.

But there are plenty of exhibits to look forward to. Starting on Jan. 26, the museum's "Black Creativity 2011" exhibition opens. This year, it features a retrospective exhibition of the program's 40 years of celebrating the work of African-American artists and innovators.

And tickets go on sale next week for the latest "Body Worlds" exhibition, featuring the more than 200 plastinated real human bodies prepared by celebrity anatomist Gunther von Hagens. This latest exhibit, "Body Worlds & the Cycle of Life," will explore the human body living through time, in states of distress, disease and good health. Among the highlights are a look at conception and fetal life, and a display on the eyesight of artists Claude Monet and Edgar Degas, who suffered from eye disease, the museum says.

The two previous "Body Worlds" exhibitions, in 2005 and 2007, proved so popular that the museum kept them open for 24 hours toward the end of their runs.

Some of von Hagens' plastinated specimens are also on display permanently at the museum, as part of the "YOU! The Experience" exhibit.

Tickets for the new "Body Worlds" go on sale Jan. 24. The exhibit opens March 18.

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