There is a special golden room in my heart for the Art Institute of Chicago. It is the first building that I remember loving besides my own little home. I loved it so much that at age 9, while my mother thought that I was off bike-riding on summer afternoons, I frequently hopped a bus riding downtown to the museum. I spent many a hot, clandestine day wandering the cool, marble corridors, totally in love with the architecture as well as the art it contained.

An article in the Chicago Tribune, October, 1890 said that after the Columbian Exposition, Chicago will be the "Paris of America". Chicago & its citizen’s wanted & deserved a museum equal to their ambition to build one of the world’s leading cities.

Over a hundred yeas later, AIC is possibly Chicago’s most popular tourist attraction. Constructed in 1893, the planners of the World’s Columbian Exposition hoped that the structure would become the final repository for the treasures exhibited in the Palace of Arts in Jackson Park’s main fairgrounds. Immediately evident is the Beaux-Arts styled pale grey stonework influence by that "White City", forever linking it to the most flamboyant of cultural events ever staged.

At the beginning, the museum’s collection was not of overwhelming quality, & contained plaster cast reproductions of art as was common in European museums in the nineteenth century. But in the 1920’s the luck of the Art Institute would begin to change dramatically.

Bertha Honoré Palmer, was a prominent socialite serving on the board of the Columbian exposition. She was also close friend of Mary Cassatt & became an ardent champion of Impressionism, collecting works by Monet, Renoir, Manet, Degas & many others. She donated fifty-two paintings from her collection in 1922. This group of art treasures, now known as the Potter Palmer Collection, named after her equally famous husband, is universally acknowledge as the foremost & largest installation of Impressionist paintings in the world outside of France.

ASIDE: Bertha Potter Palmer is the only American woman immortalized by August Rodin. The marble bust-sculpture of the American beauty can be appreciated at the Musée Rodin in Paris.

Following Mrs. Palmer's lead & NOT to be out done by a woman, Martin Ryerson, a millionaire and close friend of Monet, donated perhaps the most important collection of European & American paintings, prints, drawings, Asian art, and European decorative arts. Many more extraordinary bequests followed: Japanese Woodblock Prints by Kate & Clarence Buckingham (the brother & sister millionaires of Bucking Fountain Fame), countless ceramics, Chinese bronzes, Japanese & Chinese paintings were generously endowed to the museum by individuals establishing a dazzling Asian Arts collection.

The cherry on the sundae came in 1926 when Henry Clay Bartlett donated Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte . It is widely considered one of the greatest paintings of the nineteenth century & has been the best known painting in the museum’s collection to this day.

Background: Liz had just gotten back from a visit to Germany and had done almost all of her clothes shopping at H+M, which she described as Germany's answer to Old Navy. So for nostalgia's sake, she demanded that we find Chicago's local H+M.

We finally found it, located on the opposite street corner from the Hancock Tower. We had expected a small place, but we were a bit mistaken. It spans three floors, each floor being more massive than many full retail operations here in Indianapolis.

The first floor was all women's clothing, spanning a broad range of styles. Everything from suburban chic to alternative and punk stylings could be found on their racks. Liz was acting like a kid in a candy store, trying to choose between four different scarves (she eventually bought all of them since the were remarkably inexpensive), a plethora of shoulder bags and purses, and about six different color variations of the same pleather miniskirt with faux bondage belt and metal bindings. When we finally made it upstairs so I could do some shopping of my own, I realized I couldn't make fun of her anymore--I was acting just the same. I found all kinds of shirts, sweaters, scarves, hats, and coats that were just my style (believe it or not, they even had an entire wall of winter attire in nothing but shades of black, white, and grey, the only colors I really wear). Everything was remarkably priced as well! Examples: soft wool tartan print scarf in shades of grey for $8, German military style sweater for $24, black short sleeve dress shirt with johnny collar for $19, and a three-quarters length soft wool overcoat with silk lining for $78 (it would have cost two or three times that elsewhere).

Liz really hit it on the head when she likened H+M to Old Navy, except I'll add that they have better quality clothes, they're far less tacky (both the store AND the clothes), greater range of styles, and they're more affordable.

It really was an incredible find to run across this store. Unfortunately, it's the kind of place I want to go back to again and again, which means many more roadtrips! I'm glad the clothes aren't expensive, because the gas will be!

Manet's seascapes, ranging from 1864 to shortly before his death in 1883, are a little-studied subject of the artist who sometimes is referred to as the father of Impressionism. The links between Manet and his immediate predecessors and contemporaries such as Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, James McNeill Whistler, Gustave Gourbet, Eugene Delacroix, and others are examined.

To truly understand the exhibit, I suggest you get the audio tour for $6. There are several walls of the exhibit that have paintings from three artists, such as Monet, Manet, and Whistler, all on the same subject. The audio tour explains which of these painters painted it first, how the other two painters were influenced, and the differences between their styles are identified.

One interesting fact about the subjects Manet chose for his paintings, was that he occasionally painted modern events. In 1864 he created a painting about an American Civil War naval battle that took place off the coast of France, The Battle of the U.S.S "Kearsarge" and the C.S.S. "Alabama". He used his imagination, since he was not present at the battle, to create the scene. Within one month from the event happening, and not even history yet, the painting was on display for people to see.

Towards the end of the exhibit is a large room with paintings only on one curved wall. On this wall are nine paintings of waves from various artists. Works from Renoir, Monet, Manet, and others are included. The exhibit is very large and takes about an hour to go through. We went on a Saturday morning at 10am when the general museum opened, and it was very crowded.

Several products related to the exhibition are available in the gift shop, including postcards, a Manet and the Sea exhibition catalogue, ornaments and an umbrella with one of the paintings, and much more.

Special Viewing Hours
Monday, Wednesday, Thursday:10:30am-4:15pm
Tuesday: 10:30am-7:45pm
Friday: 9:30am-4:15pm
Saturday, Sunday: 9am-4:45pm
Closed: Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day

AUDIO TOUR
$5 for members and School of the Art Institute students
$6 for the public

OTHER VENUES:
Philadelphia Museum of Art
February 15-May 30, 2004

Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
June 18-September 26, 2004

The curator's notes on the wall explained that all aircraft (and anything else that moves against wind such as trucks, cars, trains, etc.) are all tested in a wind tunnel to ensure that the design is geared for high performance. To test, they make a scaled-down version of the aircraft and run all sorts of tests on it. This exhibit is comprised of several of these models.

A wide variety of aircraft and space shuttles throughout the past 100 years are on display. The Wright brothers first took off in flight on December 17, 1903, and this exhibit commemorates that event. Even the Wright Brothers used a wind tunnel to test their plane before they attempted to take flight.

Objects included in the exhibition are from NASA and its predecessor, NACA (the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics), which was founded in 1915. Created out of that agency at the beginning of the space race in 1958, NASA, according to the Art Instutite, "has a wealth of often un-exhibited and unpublished artifacts that not only document technological advances in flight over the past century but are also aesthetically striking."

No photographs of this special exhibit are permitted. Unfortunately, there are not postcards or items from this exhibit for sale in the gift shop either.

Dreaming in Pictures: The Photography of Lewis Carroll is on display at the Art Institute of Chicago from October 11, 2003 through January 11, 2004 and consists of over 75 vintage photographs. According to the Art Institute, these have been gathered from private, public, and corporate collections both here and abroad. There are also two kiosks with digital "albums" which allow the visitors to see the way his photographs were viewed, in an album. The kiosk is a touch screen and users can virtually turn the pages of his important albums.

Carroll practiced photography for 24 years. After the publication of the first Alice book in 1865, he had established financial security and freedom from academic responsibilities. Consequently, he was able to stop photographing people as a business. He began enhancing his creativity by creating scenes featuring children.

He really did a few neat things. The first wall of the exhibit displays portraits of a variety of children. He was hired by their families to take these pictures. Even these portraits are a bit unique. He posed them sitting on the couch or in a comfortable position in an oversized chair. They were never looking at him either. He captured them in a very natural way. He added objects for the children to hold such as dolls for the girls and guns or swords for the boys. One photo shows a folder holding his son on his knee and it appears he is handing his son a dueling pistol.

Later in the exhibit you find a wall full of photographed scenes. Children would dress up and be placed in scenes from popular songs or stories. One girl was dressed barefoot and in a torn dress and she posed as Cinderella. Another scene is of two sisters depicting the story of St. George and the dragon. Some songs and books of the day were also depicted.

No photographs of this special exhibit are permitted. Unfortunately, there are not postcards or items from this exhibit for sale in the gift shop either.