Chicago - Art Institute

After the Willis Tower, Elliott and I decided to head over and visit the Art Institute of Chicago. We took the L train, getting our moneys worth out of our CTA pass. The closest station to the Willis Tower is the Quincy Street Station, which is a historic and adorable little station along The Loop. It was built in 1897, and is one of the oldest surviving stations on the line. It felt like stepping back in time, especially since it also includes a few reproductions of vintage advertisements.



We then made our way to the Art Institute, which was founded in 1879 and is now one of the largest art museums in the country. It contains a stunning collection of art, including pieces by some of the world's most renowned artists. We walked through the Grand Staircase, which had this sculpture on display. It is titled House-cat Telling Owner It Is Time For Dinner. 


Actually it is Samson and the Lion, and dates back to the 1600s.

I was there with Elliott, who like all four year old boys is completely obsessed with cars and trucks. He grew increasingly annoyed and disappointed while we went through various galleries, since the artwork there had no cars at all. And I agree, it is a little rude for the artists in the "Arts of Europe: Medieval and Renaissance" galleries to not have any paintings with a fire truck or race car in it. But luckily he did like seeing Georges Seurat's painting A Sunday on La Grande Jatte — 1884, since it did at least include a boat in the water.



The Art Institute contains over 300,000 works of art, representing over 5,000 years of artistic expression. There are works there by Monet, van Gogh and Picasso. And it is really thrilling to be able to walk up and closely examine a painting by Vincent van Gogh and see the individual brush strokes in vivid detail. But of course it was a little crowded while we were there, and there was always a steady line of people at the famous paintings waiting to take selfies with the work or to just take a quick picture with their cellphone and then hurry off to the next painting. I scoffed at the hordes of people - how can one truly appreciate art when you are just seeing it through the screen of your phone? I rolled my eyes and then, of course, took a picture with my cell phone so I could post a picture of it to my Instagram Stories.





And this is the Modern Art wing, where there was a long line of people there to see an exhibit of work by Frida Kahlo.



At this point we had just about reached the amount of time you could expect a four year old to tolerate being in a crowded art museum. But there was one last place I wanted to see before we left - the Photography gallery. The gallery is located on the Lower Level of the museum, so we took the elevator down to the bottom floor. There was a sign in the gallery noting that the museum has over 20,000 pieces of photography in its collection, and there were pieces by Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier-Bresson on display. But it felt like the photography gallery was hidden away, stuck down in the basement like it was next to the cleaning supply closet. Photography is, arguably, the most important art-form of the 20th century. So it was a little disheartening that photography was not given a more prominent spot. But this isn't the only museum to do this, I've noticed photography almost be like an afterthought at other art museums (like Crystal Bridges in Bentonville or the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City). That being said, if the Art Institute or any other art museum is reading this, I'd be more than happy to let them purchase any of my photographs for display (it'd be much cheaper than buying a banana taped to a wall!).

We headed out, and walked out into the crowd of people on the sidewalk (Elliott was pleased to finally see a lot of cars in the traffic on Michigan Avenue).