Art Institute of Chicago
When I woke up Friday morning, the skies were gray and it was raining heavily. So much for my plan to walk around photographing skyscrapers. However, I couldn’t let the day become a complete waste, so I decided to visit the museum at the Art Institute of Chicago.
In a decision which would soon appear obviously unwise, I decided to walk the mile and a half down Michigan Avenue rather than catch a bus or hail a cab. While this would be a hike under any conditions, it quickly became a miserable one in the pouring rain. By the time I reached the museum, I was almost completely soaked from head to foot. Even my zipped-up Columbia jacket and three layers underneath provided only partial protection from the driving horizontal rain. Other bad decisions that morning included wearing jeans and Reeboks rather than quick-drying Dockers and waterproof Rockports.
Art Institute of Chicago
Admission to the museum is $10, though if you happen to show up on a Tuesday it is free. I checked my drenched backpack and jacket for $1 each. Since I wasn’t clear on their photography policy, I decided to leave my camera in the backpack. (As it turns out, still photography of the permanent collection is permitted, provided you do not use flash.)
The museum is best known for their extensive collection of Impressionist paintings, for which I have no appreciation. Fortunately, there were other areas of interest to me. I picked up a map at the front desk, because the museum sprawls through myriad wings filling various additions to the original Beaux Arts building. Even with the aid of the rather simplistic map, I was bewildered most of the time. The experience was all the more chaotic due to the large numbers of school children, from grade-schoolers to high-schoolers, touring the museum. Actually, most of them were well-behaved and under the care of a docent.
I started with the passable Chinese, Japanese, and Korean collections. While there were a few pieces of delicately decorated pottery that intrigued me, there was little else to catch my eye. Perhaps I was spoiled a couple years ago when the Khalili Collection Imperial Treasures of Japan was on display at the Portland Art Museum. It would be difficult to top that. The most interesting part of the Asian collection at the Art Institute, actually, is the Japanese screen gallery designed by Tadao Ando. You step through a door from the previous brightly-lit and somewhat cluttered gallery, and into a dim, somber, minimalist space. At the front of the room are sixteen square columns which you must navigate through. Along two walls of the room there are glass panels separating you from the currently displayed Japanese screen prints. Beyond the columns the rest of the room is empty. Because exposure to light is harmful to the screens, the museum constantly rotates their collection in and out of the room, keeping each on display for perhaps a week or two. I didn’t care much for the screens, but I was fascinated with how powerfully the room design affected people as they entered.
Near the Asian collection are the Contemporary works. In fact, you have to go through some of the Asian galleries to get there, unless you first go upstairs and then come back down a secondary stair. As I possibly have less appreciation for contemporary art than Impressionists, it took me all of three minutes to survey this gallery. Most of that time was spent eyeing Andy Warhol’s Mao, an eleven foot by fifteen foot silkscreen on canvas. To say it dominates the space would be an understatement.
My next stop was along the collection of arms and armor from the 15th through 19th centuries. Apparently this is one of the largest such collections in the country, though it didn’t seem that extensive to me. Along with a variety of helmets, suits of armor, and early firearms, there was an overabundance of pikes, halberds, battle axes, and the like.
Beyond the weaponry, the next gallery space showed off Marc Chagall’s American Windows, probably one of the best features of the museum. Three large stained glass windows, mostly in shades of blue, glow with light from the courtyard beyond.
I was getting a little hungry by then, so I breezed through the Indian and Southeast Asian galleries and followed the signs roundabout and down to the restaurant and cafe. I took one look at the mass of students bulging out of the cafe and turned my eyes to the restaurant. Noting the line of adults waiting to get into the restaurant, I decided that the undoubtedly overpriced food simply was not worth it.
I headed upstairs and returned through some galleries so I could go back down to the lower level (I really enjoyed navigating this place), entering first into a small collection of furniture. Although it was rather sparse, I did appreciate some pieces by Josef Hoffman and Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
A large space was devoted to very few photographs in the Photography gallery, all of them the sort of vague, abstract, manipulated imagery you would expect to see in an art museum.
Next to the Photography gallery, a long, narrow hallway that leads to nowhere was the display space for architectural renderings and sketches for various historic buildings, mostly in Chicago. This included sketches by Mies van der Rohe, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright. Oh, and a watercolor rendering of the Crate & Barrel headquarters, completed fairly recently, by Perkins & Will. Ummm, yeah. “One of these things is not like the other ones, one of these things is…”
I moved on to the Thorne gallery of Miniature Rooms. As the name suggests, these are miniature rooms; intricately-detailed scale models displayed safely behind glass. The gallery is organized by time period and location, and features mostly residential rooms from medieval Europe to 1930’s America. This was quite fascinating, actually, though the only visitors besides me were girls who love dollhouses, and women who once were girls who love dollhouses.
The second floor contains most of the paintings, including the Impressionist and Modern collections. I was only motivated to climb the grand staircase from the lower level to see the other Architecture gallery around the staircase atrium. Hanging from the walls are pieces of Chicago’s architectural history; gargoyles, friezes, grilles, windows, and other elements. Each is accompanied by a small label listing the building, date, and architect if known.
lunch
After about three hours in the museum, I’d seen about all I cared to see, so I retrieved my bag and jacket and headed outside. If you’re truly an art aficionado, you could easily spend a whole day there. The heavy rains had throttled back to something more manageable as I headed a couple blocks away for a late lunch at a place called Rhapsody. My guidebook described the menu selections as “New American”, whatever that means, but I just had a $7 Caesar salad so I didn’t really find out.
I returned to the Tremont (once again walking in the rain) to dry out and rest for a while. I put the complimentary hair dryer to use drying my shoes, hat, jeans, backpack, notebook, maps, guidebook…
The Tremont Hotel