A Brief Whirlwind in Chicago

After a laid-back time in Wisconsin, we spent 24 hours in Chicago, mainly with the intent of visiting the Art Institute. After a brief visit and partial tour at the Newberry Library, we checked into the Essex Inn near Grant Park for the night. After a recent renovation, the Essex has adopted a different art theme for each floor, which leads to some odd juxtapositions.


Down the street from the hotel as we walked to dinner, I spied this fine piece of hypocrisy masquerading as cleverness:


I love the Chicago Symphony's logo. It's probably the best use of musical notation I've ever seen in an identity:


The next morning, we took a swing through Millennium Park, a sculpture garden and performance area adjacent to Grant Park (the place where Obama spoke on election night). The last time I was in Chicago, spring 2004, Millenium was still under construction.


The Crown Fountain by artist Jaume Plensa was getting some interaction from a bunch of barefoot high school girls, despite an ambient temperature of maybe 40 degrees.


We were all pretty impressed with the Cloud Gate sculpture by Anish Kapoor. It's a huge, highly polished stainless steel jelly bean, offering wonderful convex reflections of the surrounding Chicago architecture on its outside...


...and interesting convex light reflections for those who look up into its underside.


Inside the Institute, there were many faces in the crowd, from this 3rd century Afghani Buddha to the dancing ladies of Toulouse-Lautrec to over a hundred portraits of famous people by photographer Yousuf Karsh, who created the iconic images of Churchill, Hemingway, Bogart and many others.

The Institute's current special exhibit is dedicated to the works of Edvard Munch, placed in context with other paintings from the same time. It was a nuanced show, dedicated to revealing that while Munch encouraged his public image as a melancholic, even demented artist, he was actually more grounded than that, and was actively trying to establish a Scandinavian aesthetic in the midst of French dominance during the Impressionist period. The Scream, the curators seemed to be saying, was only one aspect of Munch's work. (No photos were allowed in the special exhibit, hence no photos to represent all of this.)

However, once outside the exhibit and in the gift store, there was no chance of erasing the usual association of Munch and his most famous work: