Midwest Tour

We went to the graduations of two granddaughters, which were a week apart one in Grand Rapids, Michigan and the other in Columbus, Ohio. Rather than go home in between we visited Chicago which is what I wrote about the Art Institute last week.

Aside from the Art Institute, we saw two excellent plays. The Steppenwolf Theater Company has a tradition of developing dramas on family themes and this latest, “Purpose”, by Brandon Jacobs-Jenskins, deals with two generations of a successful black family. It was extremely well written, acted, and directed but I found it depressing. The next night we saw the comedy “Judgement Day“ at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on the Navy Pier with Jason Alexander. It was hilarious and surely bound for Broadway.

I also went to see the Money Museum at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. You have to go through a metal detector at the entrance. I teased the guard asking whether we could take some of the exhibits with us. His response was “If we could, I wouldn’t be here!”

A different Guard at the Federal Reserve

This small museum presents the history of money in this country, the Federal Budget and what a million dollars physically looks like.

Free souvenir from the from the Federal Reserve

In Grand Rapids, our art experience was at the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park. Lots of works, some with names one knows well but not always the best examples. Mr. Meijer clearly liked to buy a lot but quality was not his first thought. We did, however, enjoy a George Rickey and Louise Nevelson.

After our stop in Chicago, we were on to Columbus where the Art Museum is small and has a limited collection of older art. Each room was installed according to themes of social commentary, with labels that tried to squeeze out some current societal meaning from each work. I thought that seemed gratuitous but there were still some really good works of art. Here are just three paintings that grabbed me. The François Boucher's “Earth: Vertumnus and Pomona” (1749), Edward Hopper's “Morning Sun” (1952), and Paul Cadmus's “Herring Massacre”. (1940)

Columbus also boasts of a 32-room bookstore with 500,000 volumes. Amusing but nowhere to sit and hard to stand looking at a book for more than 30 seconds. Some rooms are so tiny that only one person could squeeze into a room at a time, but see the line to get in!

The Residence Inn in Columbus (don’t stay there) is in a converted bank. Unfortunately, the hotel is badly kept up but it was amusing that the breakfast buffet was in the bank’s vault.

The graduation ceremonies that were the reason for our trip were very different. At Grand Valley State was what you would expect with each student getting their name called as they walked across the stage to be given their diploma. At Ohio State it was quite another story; 12,000 graduates in a stadium with a capacity of 102,000. While they did call up by name those with Master’ Doctorates’ and Honorees, the 9,000 undergraduates just filed in line down from the bleachers to the stadium field to be handed diplomas from the black boxes on red and white covered tables. Our granddaughter told us that at their rehearsal they were told that if they were in the wrong place in line they would get someone else’s diploma! The first image is of the procession including the thousands of students and the second photo on the right shows the tables with the boxes of diplomas.

Happily at neither graduation were there any serious demonstrations.

                                                            

Some Of My Favorites At The AIC

I haven’t been back to the AIC aka The Art Institute of Chicago since I exhibited at an art fair on Chicago’s Navy pier many years ago. In the museum, I started to speak with a stranger who turned out to be a professor of music from Minnesota. He said, “It is not like the Metropolitan Museum but it is nice to have it here”. Well, there are blockbusters in the collection that certainly rival and surpass works at the Met.

Not sure why but as we came up the grand staircase on the wall was a Frank Lloyd Wright stained glass triptych (1912) from the Conley Playhouse in Riverside Illinois. I found it arresting, maybe because it was somewhat incongruous but still worked as abstract art in the classically built 1879 AIC.

Of course, the Museum is famous for its major Impressionist Collection and they have the great Caillebotte of the “Paris Street on a Rainy Day” (1877) and “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” by George Seurat (1884).

Edouard Manet’s “Boy with Pitcher”, painted between 1862 and 1872 makes me thirsty. If you look closely you can see the water spilling out of the pitcher and into the boy's mouth. He has the technique down pat! In fact, x-rays showed that it had been cut from a larger canvas that Manet was not happy with. I am kind of glad he did!

A painting I have always loved ever since I saw the illustration in a primer on art history and needless to say the original is 10 times more exciting is Giovanni di Paolo’s Saint John the Baptist Entering the Wilderness (1455-1460). It has such an ethereal feeling as if you were floating with him.

In another panel from the series, “The Head of Saint John the Baptist Brought before Herod”. one might say of John the Baptist that god allowed him to be vanquished. Do note that the head (middle-right) is in a domed dish and the dome is lifted off and served up to Herod. (bottom center).

I love dragons and there are two in the collection that are particularly magical. The first being a striking interpretation of Saint George and the Dragon, 1434/35, is by the Spanish artist Bernal Martorelli. The young handsome Saint George on his white steed slaying the fanciful dragon who is ready to swallow his destined sword. Thereby saving the richly clothed Princess standing near by from being sacrificed to the dragon.

A similar subject but not nearly as lively is a wood sculpture of “St. Michael and the Devil” carved between 1475 and 1500 by an unknown Spanish artist. The Archangel Michael seems to be dancing on Satan’s back, dagger in hand ready to strike.

Just one more and quite a different kind of sculpture, a bronze of Bireno and Olympia (1640/50) by Ferdinand Tacca. Olympia is being abandoned by her husband Bireno and swoons back onto her bed. The sensuousness of the subject is heightened by the brown-gold patina. (Image of Tacca)

We spent about 5 hours in the museum and these are just a few of the major works of art in the collection that I responded to.