Forgotten Chicago, Museums
Art Institute of Chicago
What a wonderful world to get
lost in—this place of armor, hydra heads, Nighthawks,
Ivan Albright, Louis Sullivan, and miniature houses/interiors. When I first
came to Chicago in the early 80s you could get into the Art Institute with a
donation. I once paid 25¢, rather donated.
I have to admit I wasn’t
always an aficionado. Today I work for a gallery, helping to curate their
exhibits and write up descriptions. Back in 1982 I used to think what was the
difference looking at art in a book or up close in person. Then I turned a
corner.
It happened in Washington DC
at the Corcoran, I turned a corner and came across the
Moor, with his black bold face, flaring nostrils. I loved that picture.
And, because it was hard to find my way around, I kept turning that corner and
encountering the Moor. At lot of how I discover cool stuff is by getting lost.
When I came back to Chicago I
paid a visit to the Art Institute and it was as if I’d woke up; I was alive to
art in a way I hadn’t been before. I loved Paul Klee’s little girls—they made
me happy. There was a ceramic lotus flower in the Korean part of Asian Art that
I would visit like one would a favorite palm or orchid at the conservatory. I
was held spellbound by the trompe l'oeil in the basement—I memorized galleries
and could wind my way to them without a guide. When the Terra Foundation of
American Art donated many of its holdings to the Art Institute I fell in love
with a straw hat full of cherries. I fell into the simplicity of the image.
There are so many more that weren’t just images, but evoked feelings, memories,
flashing synapses in my brain. Most of all I loved to visit on rainy days,
spending all day wandering around, eating lunch at the café. Indulging myself
as if I were a tourist, a foreigner in town for a day. I loved to pretend I was
someone else: Georgia O’Keeffe in the desert with my skull and bones, my
whitewashed churches, black crosses. I wanted to soak in the liquid blue of the
Chagall windows, put myself inside one of those little Thorne Rooms. I’d stand
there peering inside wondering what it must be like to live in that space, peer
through the windows, open the door to another landscape. Even if it was all
make-believe.
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| Head of a Moor by Henri Regnault, 1870 - Corcoran Gallery of Art |
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