The Great Illinois Trip of 2009, "Part III: The AIC"

Now that the summer dust has begun to settle on the new job I can finally get back to some blogging!!!

So, picking up where we left off in the story of the Great Illinois Trip of 2009, we come to our day at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Though I love the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, our friendly upper-Midwestern collection, I must say, the Art Insitute of Chicago was pretty amazing -- even without the new modern wing having opened.

For me it was a time to encounter many old favorites or icons for the first time in person, including:




(detail)


Nighthawks, Edward Hopper


American Gothic, Grant Wood


The Child's Bath, Mary Cassatt


But even more fun was to discover some new works to delight in, like:


African Triptych

The Indestructibles, Philip Evergood

Clown with Dream, Walt Kuhn

Strange Worlds, Todros Gellar

The Black Place, Georgia O'Keefe


There was also a very nice exhibit of Yousef Karsh photographs. If you don't know Karsh, click here and you will recognize many of his iconographic photographs of famous people from Einstein to Bogart to Che Guevera.

The kids are always troopers in a museum and do, I think, get a lot out of our trips ... up to a point.

So there was a lot of this:




But also some of this:




And fortunately a few rooms like these:




The observation of the day, however, came from the youngest speaking member of the household on this painting:

Bordighera, Monet

We had finished the Chronicles of Narnia, oh, a month or two before the trip. And Nora called his one her favorite because it reminded her of the New Narnia at the end of The Last Battle.

Bravo, Baby Girl! "Further up and further in!" I love it.

Some of the best memories from Chicago have to be the trips back to Roscoe Village. No exception here. After the museum, we strolled down to Millennium Park and were captivated by the Cloud Gate.

Here is the entrance to the park:



Here is the Cloud Gate sculpture:



And here is a little slideshow:


Finally ... three more shots I really liked from the train ride and walk back to Roscoe:



3 comments:

Eyes_Wide_Open said...

I'm glad you're back to blogging. I've missed you. LOVE all the pictures of the family.

Grams said...

Hey! Let's do this again! We had soooo much fun!

Jen said...

Ok. How about Montreal next time?