CHICAGO - ART and ARCHITECTURE

Chicago is one of the most beautiful cities in the world.  I was extremely fortunate to attend Northwestern University in Evanston, and many weekends I took the El into the city to enjoy its artsy offerings.  My favorite place was the Art Institute, of course, and I became a member so I could use the library to study.  I also frequented the Merchandise Mart to study the furniture for my Interior Design major.  This past July, my husband and I re-visited the city.  We go every year to Lake Forest to visit family, but we had not stayed in the city for many years.  This year we did.  WHAT A TREAT!!!!

The picture above is at the entrance to the new Millenium Park.  It opened in 2004, after 5+ years of planning and building.  In the center of the photo is the new Crown Fountain, designed by Plensa.  This wonderful 50' double water column is a magnet for children:

This closeup shows the kids playing in the fountain.  This was 10 am Sunday morning.  By 5 pm, it was 90 degrees outside and there were hundreds of happy children (and adults!) splashing in the water.  Also visible in the closeup is an image on the back fountain.  This is a changing picture on the glass brick, using LED technology.

Right across the street from Millenium Park is the Art Institute.  We sat outside in the sculpture garden until the Museum opened.  There is a red Calder piece in the center of the photo, and a Henry Moore in the right foreground.  I was absolutely ELATED to be back at my favorite museum.

From inside the new Modern Wing of the Art Institute (designed by Renzo Piano), you can see, through the solar screens, another part of Millenium Park:  the Pritzker Pavilion, designed by Frank Gehry.  Giacometti's Three Men is in the foregound.

Here's an outside view of the Pritzker Pavilion, embedded in skyscapers.  I was very tempted to go wild with my camera, shooting all sorts of beautiful juxtapositions, but I had made myself a promise:  I will just ENJOY the day, and not get carried away trying to create art.  There is plenty of art to SEE.  I filled my soul with it!!

Also in Millenium Park is this wonderful creation: the Cloud Gate Sculpture.  It's a 3 story reflective steel structure composed of 168 stainless steel plates welded together, and its highly polished exterior has no visible seams.  Cloud Gate was created by Anish Kapoor, and was inspired by liquid mercury.  The sculpture's surface reflects and distorts the city's skyline and the curved, mirror-like surface provides striking reflections of visitors, the city skyline and the sky. Visitors are able to walk around and under Cloud Gate.

Inside the Art Institute, I didn't take many pictures.  We had only one day for all this, and I wanted to visit many more areas than I could possibly fit in!  The above painting is an early Picasso, in which he experimented with adding sand to the canvas. 

This is one of my all time favorites by Picasso.  It has a new location in the Piano Modern Wing, in a small anteroom before you enter the large, high ceilinged galleries.  It is a small intimate space which invites you to view the picture as if it were in your own home.  Nothing I can say can describe the wonder of being within a few feet of this magnificent painting!

This beautiful piece is quite large.  I can't remember the artist's name, but he is a regular in the modern scene.

My last photo inside the Art I. is this lovely Monet.  The Art I. has one of the most complete collections of Monet's works spanning his whole career. They are all wonderful, but this one captivated me:  I felt like I really was looking out a window at this beautiful French landscape.  I could see, hear, smell and feel this place!

In addition to the new Modern Wing, we explored many other sights in my favorite museum that day, including Chagall's America Windows (made famous by Ferris B.'s Day Off!), the Chicago Stock Exchange Trading Room, Indian Art of the Americas, the Paperweight collection, American Decorative Arts from 1920-1970 (mid-century modern), European Decorative Arts,  and the miniature Thorne Rooms (which are so important to me that I will post a separate entry just for them!).

Where did we stay in the city?  In the Palmer House, which has been taken over by Hilton and restored to its initial grandeur....A truly magnificent hotel, worth a stop on your tourist agenda.  When I was in college, I used to go downtown and spend an hour or 2 in the Palmer House just for fun.  Sometimes I would study there.  Then when I was in the jewelry business, we rented a room during the Chicago Gift Show to display our work.  In those days, the Palmer House was part of the Gift Show circuit:  vendors with valuable displays showed in the PH, because we could stay with our work.  The above photo was our view from the 19th floor.

And what's this?  It's a long story!  Our room was an enlarged room, which had once been 2 rooms.  So we had one large room with 2 bathrooms.  (That was fun - we each had our own bathroom.)  I was fascinated by the thought that this portion of the hotel was originally built in 1925.  So I was wondering what the fixtures would have been at that time, and how many times things had been updated in the last 85 years.  I discovered in my bathroom that the water pipes to the sink were on the side wall, rather than right below the sink.  You can see that the cold water service actually sticks out further than the new marble facing.  So that means that the sink used to be on that wall.  I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out what the original layout had been.  Only a designer or an architect would be so obsessed!!

For more pictures and info on Millenium Park and the Palmer House, see wikipedia.  Stay tuned for my next post on the Thorne Rooms!