40. THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO

Chicago, Illinois

4/8/2010

Walking back through the Magnificent Mile, over the river and past Millennium Park again we reached the imposing Art Institute of Chicago – one of the largest art collections in the world. By now you should know that when I hear “large” and “art collections” I get nervous, but this place puts the Detroit Institute of the Arts to shame.

Cheapskate that I am, I used the Art Institute as the “anchor” for planning the whole trip. Admission is $18 a person – unless you are smart and go on Thursday night from 5:00pm – 8:00pm. Then it’s free! So, naturally, I planned our first night in Chicago to be on a Thursday. That’s $36 more for baby formula! Hooray!

We had one slice of pizza left from dinner, but they wouldn’t let us take it into the museum, so we had to anger the pizza gods by throwing it away. Then we entered the labyrinth. At one point, Laura asked a museum employee where the nearest bathroom was. The woman replied, “I think to get to the closest one from here you need to go down two floors at these stairs. Then you need to walk straight through a bunch of the exhibit rooms and I think you’ll find a bathroom there.” Really? Try saying something like that to a pregnant woman and see how long you live.

I really do try at these museums, and I do my homework. I always try to find out what the most impressive pieces are since I can make sure we try to see them. The paintings in question here are A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, Nighthawks, and American Gothic – all tragically parodied to the point that the incredible originals are almost impossible to take seriously. Nevertheless, I want to see them. Should be simple, right? I have a map. Great. All the rooms are numbered. Great. Except the numbers don’t seen to have any real logic behind them. Not so great.

Ok. Let’s look for A Sunday Afternoon. According to the map, it should be right here. In fact, I have frustratingly returned to this room a couple of times. Oh! Now I see. Someone built a giant column blocking a small passageway that leads to the painting. That’s not the painting’s fault though. It is an amazing masterpiece of pointillism. It does need to be experience in reality, since reproductions lose the whole point – pardon the pun. Of course, Laura claims that this is a copy, anyway.

Now, onto Nighthawks and American Gothic. Apparently they are in rooms directly connected to each other. Good. How do we get to them. Ah ha! They are on the second floor. Logical would tell us that we need to take the stairs to the second floor and then we would have access to the entire second floor. But logic does not live in the Art Institute of Chicago. Let’s wander around on the second floor for awhile, before realizing we can’t get to the paintings on the second floor we actually want to see. We must now go down to the first floor, travel to the other end of the building (and notably through a gift shop) before reaching another staircase that leads us up to the other side of the second floor. No! Not that staircase. If you take that one the whole mess will start again. We must take the staircase directly behind that staircase. Yes. They are just a few feet from each other. Goody. Ok. We’ve made it. There it is. Nighthawks. The real one, Laura. (And certainly not that bizarre reproduction with Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. Whose idea was that anyway?) Ok. Move on. American Gothic, in all it’s splendor. We did it! We did it! We all survived to see it. Something else weird about the Art Institute – they let you take pictures of the artwork, which is usually taboo. So we took a picture to commemorate our great victory. You’re not allowed to smile while taking a picture with American Gothic. I watched people. Nobody did. Everyone wants to look like the grumpy farmer guy.

I leave with a final warning to all you art museum architects out there: We really do want to see this artwork. Why do you make it so hard? I think I see what you’re doing. You think that you need to trick us into wandering around so we’ll look at the rest of the art too, don’t you? You don’t need to do that. We’ll look. We promise. But we get so frustrated looking for the famous pieces that we don’t enjoy anything. Oh yeah. And how about putting in some more bathrooms for my wife?

P.S. FROM LAURA:

Art museums are fairly uninteresting, and when you have to waddle three flights of stairs just to find the restrooms—only to discover that the women’s restrooms are actually on the OTHER side of the large stairway---they become even more uninteresting and actually slightly hellish. (Now why can’t I use the men’s?) Anyone who has been pregnant knows that though you have been to the restroom exactly ten minutes ago, you may suddenly and very urgently need to go again. So while I’m pregnant I judge a place also by its restrooms, and this place gets a huge thumbs-down in my opinion. Oh, and what did I think about the art? Canon. Extra Glossy. All the real ones are in Paris.