We were gone last week and spent most of the week in Kenosha, Wisconsin…and more about that next time. The last day of the trip though, we headed into Chicago in order to see the new modern wing on the Art Institute, designed by Renzo Piano and built since our last trip…and a timely trip it was. We met there, R’s first public lecture was in the Art Institute, we were married there and our anniversary is coming this week…
and the new museum is BEAUTIFUL. I was pretty excited to see old favorites and new discoveries and I think I better show you…Here’s an early Jackson Pollock from 1941…
Willem DeKooning…
and this juicy detail of the bottom of DeKooning’s “Excavation” of 1950…
Brice Marden…
A painter I don’t know named Lari Pittman who particularly liked incorporating design, illustration, lettering, whatever…
and a detail…(for nicandsloy)
…and a couple of familiar Arthur Dove’s…
and check these Hartley skies…
Gerhard Richter…(where blissfully there was a bench!)
and Agnes Martin, in front of which I was reminded that everything relates to everything else…
and then this famous Hockney portrait of the Weismans…
which is gorgeously painted and has a totem pole I never noticed before…
we took the footbridge across to Millenium Park, stopping for a view east up Monroe Street to the Lake…
…did NOT climb on the sculpture, you’ll be relieved to know…
took the requisite photo in the Bean…
checked the fountain action…
and met up with Mary for a lively meal catching up and talking about old times, Chicago politics, trees, buildings, families…and on…
and after dinner we jumped in her car for an impromptu architectural tour…reminding ourselves how much we like Chicago…
Bye for now…(P.S. when I was a kid the Prudential Building in the center was the tallest building in the city…eek was it THAT long ago?)
