I'm
always fascinated to see how museums manage to combine art and architecture
spanning several different eras and styles, and I wondered if the Chicago
museum's new modern wing would live up to the glowing reports I'd read online.
I
managed to visit the museum during a free-admission Thursday evening earlier
this summer, just a couple of months after the expansion's grand opening in
late May. Even as the new wing's expansive three-story Griffin Court was packed
with people that evening, I could still experience it as the extension of neighboring
outdoor Millennium Park as architect Renzo Piano intended.
The
extension reminded me a bit of the expansion and addition of a modern wing at
the University of Michigan's Museum of Art (UMMA) that I wrote about here last
spring, where a modern addition to the museum's original Beaux Arts style
building nearly doubled UMMA's space to 90,000-plus square feet and opened to
ecstatic reviews from visitors and the local press.
The
Art Institute of Chicago is a much larger building. Its modern wing measures 264,000
square feet, and the expansion brings the art museum's total floor space to an
astounding one million square feet!
Visitors benefit by now being able to see about 15 percent of the museum's modern art (1945-present) collection, compared to only the only 10 percent of that collection the museum previously could display. Moving the 20th and 21st century art into the new wing also frees up space elsewhere previously housing the modern pieces for other parts of the collection.
The
big project had a big price tag. The new wing cost $300 million, with another
$110 million spent on other improvements like renovated galleries in the
original building.
The
hefty price tag, and an accompanying hike in Art Institute of Chicago admission
from $12 to $18, drew some criticism. Museum officials point out that special
exhibitions are now included in the price of regular admission, and several
public spaces within the museum remain open to visitors free of charge. They
also say that increased attendance and memberships generated the new wing
helped keep the number of staff layoffs lower than they probably would have
been without the museum's increased revenue.
I
liked the expansive feeling of the new wing, much as I admired the spacious new
areas at the UMMA. And, like many other modern art museums I've visited, I
ended up enthralled more by the architecture of the building than the art in
the galleries.
I
loved Chicago's modern wing features like floor to ceiling windows framing
great downtown views, blades covering the windows to reflect the most
destructive light from bearing down on the collection, and a suspended staircase
described by one journalist as "Meisian" (for the famous German-born
architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, who lived and worked in Chicago after
leaving Germany's Bauhaus school when Nazis closed it in the 1930s).
Galleries
on the three floors populating perimeter of the Griffin Court provide plenty of
space for work from different schools and eras of modern art, and the somewhat
sterile look of stark white walls serve to set nicely set off much of the
collection.
The
art? Well, I've often struggled to understand modern art.
We
even took an "understanding modern art" class at our local Birmingham
Bloomfield Art Center in an effort to wrap our minds around some of the
seemingly random and crazy things we saw in modern art galleries. The class
helped us understand a bit of the history and development behind modern art,
but I've got to admit that some pieces still have me scratching my head and
wondering about what I'm seeing.
I
liked what I saw of the modern wing during my visit to the Art Institute of
Chicago, though. It will be interesting to see if the public continues to
support the museum in increased numbers and revenue as the novelty of the new
spaces wear off.
© Dominique King 2009 All rights reserved
Nice post.
Posted by: The Earth Traveler | January 22, 2010 at 03:43 AM