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Audience members view a show in the planetarium. Photo by Jennifer Vacca

On June 29, the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum in Centerport will observe the 45th anniversary of the opening of its planetarium, now known as the Charles and Helen Reichert Planetarium.

The anniversary coincides with the final stage of the planetarium’s technological update — the installation of a cutting-edge SkyLase laser light show system with entertainment programs, from Audio Visual Imagineering Inc. (AVI). The planetarium’s advanced GeminiStar III system — which includes a Konica Minolta Infinium-L star projector, full-dome video and surround-sound — offers audiences a spectacular, immersive experience.

Suffolk County built the $1 million planetarium in 1971 as a way to increase visitorship and to produce operating income to supplement the museum’s original $2 million trust fund. The planetarium enhanced the museum’s ability to carry out the science education aspect of its mission and honored William K. Vanderbilt II’s love of science and astronomy — and his use of celestial navigation when he traveled the world’s oceans in the early twentieth century.

In 1987, after welcoming more than 2.2 million visitors, the Vanderbilt refurbished the planetarium, acoustically redesigned its newly renamed Sky Theatre, and equipped it with the latest audio equipment. The planetarium classroom received a makeover, too, with the addition of a then-advanced VCR (video cassette recorder) and video laser-disk equipment

Above, the entrance to the Charles and Helen Reichart Planetarium. Photo by Jennifer Vacca
Above, the entrance to the Charles and Helen Reichart Planetarium. Photo by Jennifer Vacca

Then in 2013,  following an extensive $4 million makeover and technological update, the Vanderbilt Planetarium became one of the finest and most advanced in the United States and the largest astronomical facility on Long Island. Suffolk County provided $3.9 million of the financing for the planetarium renovation. Private donations totaling $160,000 financed building enhancements: new theater seating; an improved heating, ventilation and air-conditioning system; a lobby face-lift and a new gift shop. Following the reopening, the planetarium received the most generous gift in the museum’s history. Charles and Helen Reichert pledged $1.7 million over 20 years to support the planetarium, its programs and its future. In their honor, the facility was named The Charles and Helen Reichert Planetarium.

Lance Reinheimer, executive director, said, “We are especially grateful to the Reichert family, Suffolk County and private donors for their extraordinary support of the Museum, its education programs, and its enduring value to Long Island.”

The Charles and Helen Reichert Planetarium, located on the grounds of the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum, 180 Little Neck Road, Centerport, offers daytime shows on Tuesday at 2 p.m. and Saturdays and Sundays at noon, 1, 2, 3 and 4 p.m. Evening shows are held on Fridays and Saturdays at 8, 9 and 10 p.m. Year-round viewing of the night sky (weather permitting), is held on Friday evenings from 9 to 10 p.m. (free with show ticket; $3 without show ticket). For more information, call 631-854-5579 or visit www.vanderbiltmuseum.org.

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Visitors at the Vanderbilt Museum navigate through one of the new custom-built kiosks. Photo courtesy of the Vanderbilt Museum

When visitors want to know about the intriguing wild-animal dioramas at the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum, they can now travel to the Arctic, the Kalahari, India and Central America with the tip of a finger.

Details, narration and images on the screens of the museum’s new, electronic Stoll Wing kiosks teach visitors about the animals, where they live and  what they eat — and show video images of them in their native habitats. The kiosks were custom built for the museum by Ninjaneer Studios of Winter Springs, Florida.

Just installed, the kiosks are part of the ongoing Stoll Wing restoration and modernization, made possible by recent gifts from Lynnda Speer through the Roy M. Speer Foundation that total $200,000. The gifts endow the future of the Stoll Wing animals and dioramas. Lynnda Speer is the granddaughter of museum trustee and benefactor Charles H. Stoll (1887-1988) of Long Island, a noted explorer, naturalist and big-game hunter.

Stoll financed the eight strikingly detailed dioramas that feature wild game he and his wife Merle brought back from around the world between 1922 and 1969.

“We wanted to attract a wider audience of visitors, including younger people who expect to interact with technology when they go to a museum,” said Chris Brown, a partner at Ninjaneer Studios.

“Here, it’s an interaction with history. We try to identify where technology can be used in an existing museum exhibit. Our goal is not to compromise, but to enhance what’s there and to make it engaging to all visitors,” he said.

Ninjaneer’s Heather Knott said they designed the kiosks specifically to fit the subject matter and the physical space: “This solution was customized for the Vanderbilt. We designed the technology to complement and to be unobtrusive.”

The kiosks have an intriguing feature. “Stoll’s family provided us with vintage on-location movie footage he and his wife shot on their safaris, when they collected these animals,” Brown said. “The film had been digitized and we were able to remaster some of it,” he said.

Knott said they create turn-key solutions. “Once the programs, video and narration were loaded into the kiosks and the system was tested, we turned it over to the Vanderbilt to operate,” she said. “Soon, visitors will be able to access the information on their mobile devices, and the museum will be able to manage the system online.”

The Stolls collected the exhibited animals in Africa, Alaska, the American West, the Arctic, British Honduras (now Belize), Canada, India and Nova Scotia. Specimens range from a blue wildebeest, polar bear, walrus and Cape buffalo, to a kudu, ostrich, jaguar, Bengal tiger and leopard.

Opened to the public in 1970, the Stoll Wing complements the natural history collections, Marine Museum and habitat animal dioramas built by William K. Vanderbilt II — all key elements of the museum’s education programs. Stoll was also a lawyer and Nassau County judge who financed and led the famous 1928 Stoll-McCracken Siberian Arctic Expedition, under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural History. He served as a Vanderbilt trustee and board president (1967-1975).

The Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum is located at 180 Little Neck Road in Centerport. The musuem and mansion are open on Tuesdays, Saturdays and Sundays from noon to 4 p.m. through April 12. For more information, call 631-854-5579 or visit www.vanderbiltmuseum.org.

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Tours of decorated mansion held through Dec. 30

From left, Karen Mills-Lynch, Phyllis Kelly and Mary DiFronzo of the Three Village Garden Club trim the tree in the Vanderbilt Mansion library. Photo from Vanderbilt Museum

Interior designers and garden clubs deck the halls of the Vanderbilt Mansion in Centerport each year, and hundreds of visitors see the delightful results beginning the day after Thanksgiving.

The 24-room Spanish Revival house — listed on the National Register of Historic Places — is enhanced with garland, holly, 10 elegantly ornamented trees, poinsettias, brightly wrapped packages, greens and pine cones from the Vanderbilt estate and an enchanting atmosphere of early- and mid-twentieth century holiday cheer.

Lance Reinheimer, executive director of the museum, said, “We’re grateful to these imaginative decorators, who generously donate their time and talent to create an atmosphere of charming holiday grandeur and sophisticated living. They bring magic to this historic house.”

Participating this year were the Dix Hills, Centerport, Honey Hills, Nathan Hale and Three Village garden clubs; Harbor Homestead & Co. Design; and the master gardeners of the Cornell University Cooperative Extension. All have participated in the project for many years.

Artists and garden specialists from the Three Village Garden Club (representing Old Field, Setauket and Stony Brook) decorated the spacious, paneled Vanderbilt library and its tree. Beneath the tree are faux gifts wrapped with bright papers, foils and ribbons. Ornate, two-foot, stylized silver trees adorn the fireplace.

“We trimmed the tree with gold and copper ornament balls and with strands of clear, multi-faceted stones to reflect the light from the small white bulbs,” said Joann Canino of the Three Village Garden Club. “The white poinsettias used as ornaments suggest doves, a symbol of peace. We also placed white poinsettias with silver bows on the mantel of the library’s large fireplace.

“The Vanderbilt Mansion is an architectural celebration. It’s one of those grand houses that has a warm, family feeling. Our club is pleased to be part of dressing it up for the holidays. It’s great fun.”

Mary Schlotter and daughter Krishtia McCord, both of Centerport, decorated the bedroom of William K. Vanderbilt II, and the Moroccan Court next to the Vanderbilt library. They operate the Harbor Homestead & Co. design firm.

For the past several years, Schlotter also has been among the designers invited to decorate The White House for the holidays, the Fourth of July and Halloween.

“Mr. Vanderbilt loved peacocks and had them on the estate,” Schlotter said. “The bedroom color scheme is inspired by the colors in peacock feathers — deep teal, cobalt blue, apple green, plum and gold. We wanted it to look like a sophisticated man’s room,” Schlotter said.

Schlotter and McCord added wreaths of teal-blue feathers to the top of the French doors that open onto the bedroom porch with a view of Northport Bay. “Acorns are a feature of the Vanderbilt family crest, and we used acorn ornaments with the greenery that decorates the fireplace mantel. Ivy vines sprayed with gold paint and woven through the garland trim the doorways.”

In the Moroccan Court, with its rare Spanish and Portuguese tiles, they decorated the built-in tiled bench with throw pillows. The colors of the pillows match those in the antique tiles, each of which is a miniature folk painting. Decorations include a café setting with a small round table and two chairs; a basket of fruits and nuts; silver candles in ornate, antique bronze candlesticks; up-lighted palm trees; a candle-lit silver lantern next to the small fountain set into the floor; and gauzy, transparent fabric hung in front of the tall, arched windows.

Christine Lagana and her friends from the Dix Hills Garden Club decorated the Portuguese Sitting Room. “The tone was set by the deep blue in the rug and the sculpture of a knight on horseback, which has the same colors as the rug,” Lagana said, “and by the medieval theme of the 1494 fireplace surround, which features carved faces of crusaders.

“We added gold ribbon and pine cones to the garland, and small turquoise and cobalt ornament balls on the tree. One group of large ornaments displays a replica of the Vanderbilt family crest inside clear-glass globes.” Acorn-shaped ornaments echo the acorns in the family crest, which is painted on the fireplace hood in the dining room.”

Guided tours of the decorated mansion will be held through Dec. 30. During the day, tours are given Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday (including Dec. 28 and 30) at 12:30, 1, 2, 3 and 4 p.m. Visitors pay the general admission fee plus $5 per person for a tour.

The popular Twilight Tours of the mansion will be given Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 26 and 27, from 7 to 9 p.m. Admission is $10 for adults, $9 for students and seniors (62 and older) and $5 for children 12 and under. Hot chocolate and cookies are included. This event is a treat for visitors, and the only time of the year the Vanderbilt family’s private living quarters can be seen at night.

The Suffolk County Vanderbilt Mansion is located at 180 Little Neck Road, Centerport. For more information, call 631-854-5579 or visit www.vanderbiltmuseum.org.

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Stephanie Gress has made a mark on the Vanderbilt Museum. Photo from Gress

By Victoria Espinoza

Stephanie Gress has made a mark on the Vanderbilt Museum. Photo from Gress
Stephanie Gress has made a mark on the Vanderbilt Museum. Photo from Gress

One employee at the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum was a fan of the spot long before she started working there and improving many of the exhibits.

Stephanie Gress, director of the curatorial department, frequented the Vanderbilt as a kid growing up in St. James, and even went there on her second date with her future husband to see the Pink Floyd laser show at the museum’s planetarium.

“A lot of people have a fond memory from here,” Gress said in a phone interview. “My niece actually had her wedding here as well.”

Gress has been upgrading exhibits at the Vanderbilt for nearly 15 years. She said some of the collections in the museum were more than 100 years old when she stepped in and needed refurbishing, and she was able to find funding to make the renovations possible.

The first exhibit Gress focused on, the Habitat Gallery, had been closed to the public since 1996, but she reopened it in 2001. She received a Save America’s Treasures grant — through the National Park Service — to make the renovations possible, including cleaning and restoring taxidermied animals displayed inside the dioramas.

“There was a whole generation of people on Long Island who hadn’t seen the exhibit,” Gress said.

For two years, Gress has also been working on a project at the Hall of Fishes that involves working with dry and wet fish specimens. She said some of the fish are a century old, and they have to be treated with extreme care because they are so fragile.

Adult glasseye snappers, collected on Cocos Island, Costa Rica, in 1928. Photo from Vanderbilt Museum
Adult glasseye snappers, collected on Cocos Island, Costa Rica, in 1928. Photo from Vanderbilt Museum

William K. Vanderbilt II, the museum’s founder, caught all of the fish himself, according to Gress, and some were the first of their kind ever caught, so “he had the fun task of naming them.”

She said she feels lucky to have found the money to finance these projects because that can be difficult, but is crucial to keep the displays in the museum in their best shape.

Gress likes many aspects of her job.

“I enjoy seeing the reactions of the kids and parents that come here,” Gress said. “There is nothing else like this on Long Island. You can’t see another polar bear or whale shark around here.”

She said aims to continue Vanderbilt’s intention when he created the museum, — to bring pieces of other countries and cultures to Long Island.

“You can choose to visit the planetarium, see the museum or even just take a picnic on the grounds.”

Gress wrote a book this year, “Eagle’s Nest: The William K. Vanderbilt II Estate,” which has details about why the museum founder built his estate in Centerport and “how the place changed over the years, based on changes in his life, and how we use it today,” she said when the book was being released over the summer.

In terms of future projects, Gress said in an interview this week that there is always something to work on, and she expects to soon digitize the collections online to bring them to people who can’t make the trip to the museum.

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Adult glasseye snappers, collected on Cocos Island, Costa Rica, in 1928. Photo from Vanderbilt Museum

The Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum in Centerport is home to the largest privately assembled collection of sea specimens from the preatomic era.

Now, thanks to a $135,000 grant from The Robert D. L. Gardiner Foundation, the museum is beginning to perform crucial conservation measures on many of those rare specimens. The foundation gave the Vanderbilt  Museum the two-year grant in January. In July, the curatorial staff began working on some of the more than 1,000 wet (preserved in fluid) specimens exhibited on the second floor of the Marine Museum. An additional 600 are on display in the mansion’s Memorial Wing.

Adult glasseye snappers, collected on Cocos Island, Costa Rica, in 1928. Photo from Vanderbilt Museum
Adult glasseye snappers, collected on Cocos Island, Costa Rica, in 1928. Photo from Vanderbilt Museum

Among the marine life William K. Vanderbilt II found on oceanic collecting expeditions during the early 20th century were 67 new discoveries.  Stephanie Gress, the museum’s director of curatorial services, said the finds — not previously identified — are called “type specimens.” Most of the 40 ocean fish and 27 marine invertebrates have been on loan to the American Museum of Natural History since the 1990s.

Gress said the Gardiner grant is invaluable to the future of the marine collection, as many of the specimens have not been touched since the last major conservation-restoration project in the 1990s. The project is “very time- and labor-intensive,” she said.

“Cracked seals on the specimen jars and containers let in air, which evaporates some of the preservative fluid,” she said. “That exposes fish and other creatures to possible deterioration. Air leaks also make it easy for infections and mold to develop on the specimens.”

Gress said she and her colleagues prepared a manual with step-by-step procedures and careful protocols for working with the specimens. Conservation includes opening the containers, cleaning them, gently treating infected specimens, replacing the fluid (alcohol and water), resealing the containers with fabric tape and melted beeswax and affixing new labels.

Vanderbilt had the museum’s seamless specimen jars and containers custom-made in Germany nearly a century ago, and they are irreplaceable, Gress said.

An intriguing project detail is the creative reuse of the original calligraphy from the 1930s specimen labels. “We took samples of each hand-calligraphed letter to create the alphabet for a typeface for the new labels we’re making,” Gress said. “With the original calligraphy as a model, curatorial assistant Kirsten Amundsen fashioned a nearly identical typeface by using existing, computerized calligraphy pen strokes in accurate proportions,” she added.

The marine collection was the first aspect of what became Vanderbilt’s larger natural history museum. He built the single-story building he called The Hall of Fishes in 1922 and opened it on a limited basis to the public. By the late 1920s, after more oceanic expeditions, his marine collection outgrew its original space. He added a second floor by 1930.

The two largest marine specimens are a 32-foot whale shark — the world’s largest example of fish taxidermy — and a manta ray with a 16.5-foot wingspan. The shark, caught in 1935 and restored in 2008 with a federal Save America’s Treasures grant, is the centerpiece of the habitat animal-dioramas gallery. The ray, which Vanderbilt called the Sea Devil, was caught in 1916 and recast in the late 1990s. It is exhibited prominently on the first floor of the Marine Museum.

“The Vanderbilt [Museum] is the only Long Island destination with a world-class planetarium and natural history collections that rival those at major urban museums,” said Lance Reinheimer, executive director. “In addition to thousands of rare marine specimens, the Vanderbilt collections range from an Egyptian mummy and 18 wild-animal dioramas to ethnographic artifacts from Africa and the South Pacific, fine and decorative arts and centuries-old furnishings.”

Nearly a century after Vanderbilt found those 67 new type specimens, his museum still receives inquiries about some of them. “A marine biology doctoral student contacted me recently about a particular invertebrate, whose common name is the Elegant Coral Crab,” Gress said. “I told him he’d have to call the American Museum of Natural History,” where Vanderbilt’s type specimens are housed.

“Mr. Vanderbilt is credited with the discovery and identification of the first of each of those species,” Gress said. The type specimens were published in editions of the Bulletin of the Vanderbilt Marine Museum, prepared between 1928 and 1938 by scientists Lee Boone and Nicholas Borodin. “Mr. Vanderbilt and his associates had the fun task of naming the new specimens,” she said. “Some were named for his wife, himself or his scientific team.”

Vanderbilt added marine specimens to the second-floor gallery chronologically, she said. When the restoration is complete, the specimens will be put back into the tall display cases in taxonomic order, in which like specimens are exhibited together. In the Invertebrate Room of the museum’s Memorial Wing, wet specimens are arranged by complexity of the organism.

The Vanderbilt marine collection of 13,190 specimens, housed in the Marine Museum, Habitat and Memorial Wing, includes wet and dry specimens and dry marine invertebrates (shells and corals).

For more information, call 631-854-5579 or visit www.vanderbiltmuseum.org.

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The Un-Living History cast, front row, from left, Jim Ryan, Carmen Collins, Rick Outcault and Ellen Mason. Back row, from left, Florence Lucker, Peter Reganato, Vincent Ilardi and Mary McKell. Photo from Vanderbilt Museum

A terrifying, hooded figure sits in Mr. Vanderbilt’s bathtub. A skeleton stands behind an armchair in one of the elegant bedrooms. An eerie woman in a black robe with pasty-white skin and a frightful stare sits on a divan in Mrs. Vanderbilt’s bedroom. Near the fireplace in the grand, paneled library stands a tall mummy.

These are just a few of the ghostly, life-size props that will welcome you to Halloween at the Vanderbilt Mansion.

Saturdays and Sundays, Oct. 24 and 25 and Oct. 31 and Nov. 1, are Haunted Weekends at the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum, 180 Little Neck Road, Centerport. Festivities will include hourly Un-Living History Tours of the mansion beginning at noon, with the last tour starting at 4 p.m.   

Tours are interwoven with Vanderbilt family history and include ghost stories told by mansion guides dressed for the occasion. Visitors may meet Delia O’Rourke, the Irish cook, dressed in her bloody apron and carrying a meat cleaver, or one of the Vanderbilt family guests, aviator-industrialist Howard Hughes, dressed in the dirty, bloody clothing from his plane crash. Visitors also might run into the Phantom of the Opera or the occasional witch.

The Vanderbilt Mansion has a few ghost stories of its own — experienced by staff members from years ago. Those tales include hearing the laughter of young girls in the nursery wing of the mansion, in the evening after hours, and the nighttime sighting of the ghostly figure of a young boy in knickers and a cap running across the mansion lawn.

Recommended for children ages 8 and up. Tickets, sold at the gate, are $7 adults, $6 students and seniors, and $3 children ages 12 and under general admission plus $5 per person for a guided mansion tour. For more information, call 631-854-5579 or visit www.vanderbiltmuseum.org.

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The dashboard of a 1937 Chrysler. Photo by Howard Kroplick

Walter P. Chrysler’s, custom-built, one-of-a-kind, 1937 Chrysler Imperial C-15 LeBaron Town Car – after an exquisite restoration that led to a major international award – will return to the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum, 180 Little Neck Road, Centerport where it will be exhibited at a classic car show.

The Chrysler was a 1959 gift to the museum from collector Harry Gilbert of Huntington, New York. The car, since it was not part of the Vanderbilt family’s original collections and holdings, was de-accessioned from the museum collection decades ago.

The museum held an auction in January 2012 and the car was purchased by Howard Kroplick of East Hills, an author, historian and collector of vintage cars. With the proceeds, the museum established an endowment for the care and maintenance of the Vanderbilt archives, collections and exhibitions.

Kroplick first showed the unrestored Chrysler in June 2012, at the Greenwich Concours d’Elegance in Connecticut, where it won the People’s Choice award for the “ultimate barn find.” He began restoring the car in November 2013. Most of the work was performed by Steve Babinsky, who runs Automotive Restorations in Lebanon, New Jersey.

After a comprehensive, 17-month restoration, Kroplick entered the Chrysler in the world’s pre-eminent classic car show, the 2014 Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance held in Monterey, California. “Only 281 of the 750 cars that applied were accepted,” he said. The Chrysler won the First in Class award in the American Classic Closed category. One month later, Gwynne McDevitt, granddaughter of Walter P. Chrysler, and her son, Frank Rhodes Jr., sat in the car at the Radnor Hunt Concours d’Elegance in Malvern, Pennsylvania.

The masterpiece of Art Deco automotive design with coachwork by LeBaron is made of hand-worked aluminum. No factory-produced body panels were used. Details includes leather interior, upholstered seats, and custom console cabinetry. The 6,300-pound, seven-passenger limousine is 19 feet long and has a 130-horsepower, eight-cylinder in-line engine, and a three-speed manual transmission. When Kroplick bought the car, the odometer read 25,501 miles.

Originally, Kroplick said, he hoped to preserve the car as is. “After I bought the Chrysler, it started right away,” he said. “But when we opened it up, we found that the wooden frame, made of ash, was in bad condition. That’s when I decided to do a complete restoration. That ash frame was one of the project’s biggest challenges.”

The dashboard gauge faces were in good condition and required no work, he said. The snap-on black-canvas cover for the chauffeur’s compartment was replaced. The light-gray, camel-hair wool upholstery also was replaced in the chauffeur’s and passenger compartments.

The passenger-area console cabinetry, made of solid tiger maple, also needed restoration. The console includes a storage space and two glass-fronted cosmetic compartments. Below the console are two pull-down jump seats, and the passenger seats have upholstered foot rests. Kroplick said the clock, mounted in the center of the console, worked from the day he bought the car.

Kroplick said the car is believed to be the first to be equipped with spring-loaded, power-assisted rear windows and door locks, which are operated with cables. “The cables needed reworking so both windows and locks would work with a flip of the front passenger door handle,” he said.

The bumpers, door handles, dashboard knobs, horn ring and hood ornament were re-chromed in Ohio. The finishing touch was five coats of gleaming, hand-rubbed black lacquer. “The experts won’t share trade secrets on how they achieve that stunning mirror finish,” Kroplick said.

The Pebble Beach Concours is more than just an exhibition of classic cars. “One of part of the judging is that the cars should be roadworthy,” Kroplick said. “As part of the Tour d’Elegance, many of the entrants were driven 85 miles, along the famous 17-mile drive and on the Pacific Coast Highway.” Although the restoration had been completed just days before the event, he said the Chrysler finished the tour without a problem.

The rare automobile – built for Chrysler’s wife Della – will be the centerpiece of the annual Jaguar Concours d’Elegance and All Marque Concours Sanitaire, a show of classic automobiles presented at the Vanderbilt by the Jaguar Drivers Club of Long Island and the MG Car Club-Long Island Centre on Sept. 13 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Rain date will be Sept. 20.

In the Concours portion, Jaguars in the Championship, Driven and Special Division classes are be judged under Jaguar Club of North America Concours rules, which emphasize excellence of appearance. The Concours Sanitaire portion is open to vehicles of all years, makes, models and countries of origin. Cars are judged solely on appearance, cleanliness and general condition, not originality.

More than 100 cars will be on display on the Vanderbilt Estate grounds overlooking scenic Northport Bay. Included will be vintage and new Jaguar and MG models and a wide range of international and domestic spots cars and sedans.

Proceeds from a raffle will benefit the CAPS (Child Abuse Prevention Services), one of Long Island’s leading organizations dedicated to preventing bullying and child abuse.

Visitors pay only the museum’s general admission fee (adults $7, students with ID and seniors 62 and older $6, children 12 and under $3) – there is no additional charge for car show. Museum members enter the show free. For more information, call 631-854-5579 or visit www.vanderbiltmuseum.org.

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Photo from SCPD

It was like a scene out of “Mission: Impossible” — four guys damage a vacant building at the Vanderbilt Museum and then flee to a waiting boat and get away.

The Suffolk County Police Department said it is on the hunt for the suspects, who allegedly damaged a door and roof panel on a building at the Centerport museum on Little Neck Road on Friday afternoon.

Police said after a witness noticed the vandals, the men fled in a red boat that had been parked on the adjacent beach.

Officers from the SCPD’s 2nd Precinct Crime Section and Suffolk County Crime Stoppers are asking for the public’s help to identify and locate the men, who are wanted for criminal mischief. Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers anonymously at 800-220-TIPS. There is a cash reward of up to $5,000 for information that leads to an arrest.

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William Belanske sketches while waiting with his luggage to embark on a journey with William K. Vanderbilt II. Photo from Vanderbilt Museum archives

William E. Belanske already had an enviable job as an artist and taxidermist for the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) when he got a call from William K. Vanderbilt II.

The year was 1926 and Vanderbilt was preparing for an expedition on his yacht Ara to collect animal and marine life. The voyage would take him to one of the most scientifically diverse and remote places on earth — the Galápagos Islands, on the Equator off the coast of Ecuador. He needed an artist to record the live specimens he would bring back to his private museum in Centerport. To Belanske, it was the opportunity of a lifetime.

The Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum, which marked the 65th anniversary of its official opening on July 6, has created a new exhibit honoring Belanske’s work.

On display in the Memorial Wing of the museum, the installation features a recreation of Belanske’s studio on the Vanderbilt Estate and includes some of the detailed paintings of the numerous marine specimens Vanderbilt collected from the oceans of the world. Large illustrated panels detail Belanske’s work, on the expeditions and at the museum.

Kirsten Amundsen and Brandon Williams of the curatorial staff came up with the exhibit concept and design.

“The ship’s artist, Mr. William E. Belanske, has been with me since 1926,” Vanderbilt wrote in 1932. “He makes accurate paintings of rare fish. With every scale carefully drawn, every shade, every nuance of color exactly portrayed, his reproductions are true, lifelike, and of value to science.”

In 1927, following the Ara expedition, Vanderbilt requested Belanske’s services full time at his museum, and Belanske chose to resign from the AMNH. He served as Vanderbilt’s curator and lived in a cottage on the estate from 1928 to 1945. His work included taking part in around-the-world cruises on the Ara in 1928-1929 and on the Alva in 1931-1932.

Notably, Belanske collaborated with the renowned painter Henry Hobart Nichols (also of the AMNH) to create the Vanderbilt Habitat in 1930, nine stunning dioramas that depict animal life from several continents. The centerpiece of the room is a 32-foot whale shark, the world’s largest taxidermied fish, caught off Fire Island in 1935.

Stephanie Gress, director of curatorial affairs for the Vanderbilt Museum, said, “On the Ara, they placed fish in holding tanks with saltwater to keep them alive. Belanske would paint the catches immediately in order to record the colors accurately.”

Before color photography, Gress said, the beauty and vibrant hues of the collected marine specimens could only be captured with an artist’s hand. Belanske’s perfect color images of the specimens were displayed in the Marine Museum next to the faded, fluid-preserved specimens.

When he returned to his studio, the artist began the time-consuming task of creating his final images. He used his notes, measurements and rough sketches to create fully accurate, detailed fish prints worthy of scientific publication, she said.

The Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum is located at 180 Little Neck Road, Centerport. Through Sept. 6, the museum will be open Tuesday through Saturday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. For more information, call 631-854-5579 or visit www.vanderbiltmuseum.org.

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Rosamund and Willie Vanderbilt aboard their 264-foot yacht Alva during a 1931 cruise around the world. Photo from Vanderbilt Museum archives

The Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum will celebrate the 65th anniversary of its official opening on July 6.

William K. Vanderbilt II — great-grandson of Cornelius Vanderbilt, the railroad and shipping magnate — died in 1944.  His wife Rosamund continued to live in the Vanderbilt Mansion in Centerport until her death in 1947.

He realized the potential for his sprawling estate to become a museum for what he called “the use, education and enjoyment of the general public.” That wish prompted him to leave his estate, and a trust fund to finance its operation, to Suffolk County. The county opened the museum to the public on July 6, 1950.

The anniversary coincides with Arcadia Publishing’s release of “Eagle’s Nest: The William K. Vanderbilt II Estate” by Stephanie Gress, director of curatorial services for the museum. The book is available on the Arcadia Publishing, Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites, in the Vanderbilt Museum Gift Shop and at local bookstores.

Today, the Vanderbilt estate and museum are an important part of Long Island history. It is a destination for regional visitors interested in natural history, the life of the oceans, armchair journeys through space, and the history of the privileged life on the Gold Coast from the Jazz Age through World War II.

The Vanderbilt’s Charles and Helen Reichert Planetarium is another magnet for visitors. The museum decided to add a planetarium in the late 1960s. Trustees knew a planetarium would enhance the museum’s ability to carry out the science education aspect of its mission and to honor Vanderbilt’s love of science and astronomy and his interest in celestial navigation.

A planetarium also would augment the original Vanderbilt trust fund and help to ensure financial sustainability. The planetarium was opened to the public on June 28, 1971.

Vanderbilt — known to family and friends as Willie K. — loved the sea and the natural world. In his global oceanic travels, he collected fish and other marine life, birds, invertebrates and cultural artifacts for the personal museum he planned to build on his Long Island estate.

Willie Vanderbilt exhibited thousands of the marine specimens he had gathered ­— one of the world’s most extensive, privately assembled collections from the preatomic era ­— in his own marine museum, the Hall of Fishes, which he opened to the public in 1922. Wings of the mansion contain galleries of his natural-history and cultural-artifact collections, including the Habitat with its nine wild-animal and marine-life dioramas and eight more in the adjacent Stoll Wing, all created by artisans from the American Museum of Natural History.

The 43-acre waterfront museum complex counts among its extensive collections (which total more than 30,000 objects) the mansion, curator’s cottage, a seaplane hangar and boathouse, centuries-old household furnishings, rare decorative and fine art, the archives and photographic record of Vanderbilt’s circumnavigations of the globe and published books of his travels. The estate, mansion and museum are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum is located at 180 Little Neck Road in Centerport. For more information, call 631-854-5579 or visit www.vanderbiltmuseum.org.

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