Touring the Art Institute of Chicago

Yesterday we were in downtown Chicago for a visit to the Art Institute.  I haven't been there in years.  Chablis and I were really looking forward to going.  She had an assignment for school where she had to locate 10 out of 30 specific paintings.  Now, the biggest problem was that the museum doesn't open until 10:30 am and we had to be back at the train station by 2:30 pm to catch our train back home.  Between Chablis' school and work schedules, she has very little free time to run places like downtown.  But we were determined to do our best.

The Art Institute is HUGE!  It has 3 floors and hundreds of galleries.  Now, here was our problem - we walked in the doors, looked at her list of pictures and we had no idea how to go about finding them.  We grabbed a brochure that breaks down the sections into themes, like American, Modern, African, etc.  We scratched off the sections that we knew wouldn't apply to any of the paintings we needed.  Then we started wandering around the rooms.  BIG FAT ZERO!  After an hour we had only found 4 paintings and we were starting to panic.

We began asking the museum employees if they knew where specific paintings were and not one could tell us.  Finally we went to the information desk and explained our problem to the woman there, and she tried to help by looking up paintings in their data base.  But half of the paintings wouldn't even come up and when they did come up, all it said was if the painting was in the museum or loaned out.  I was more than a bit annoyed at that.  I mean, it's a database.  Wouldn't you think they could list which room a painting was in?

We started speed walking around the place, just scanning the names on the paintings and looking to see if they matched anything on her list.  It took us 3 1/2 hours but we actually, eventually, found all the paintings we needed.  Thank goodness! 

Anyway, I know nothing about art in general, other than a few of the more famous artists.  Monet is my absolute favorite....

I really like Picasso, especially his painting "The Old Guitarist."

And I love Georgia O'Keeffe....

I remember a copy of this hanging in the hallway where my kids went to grade school...

I also like Renoir.....

I couldn't find a plague for this sculpture, but it was my favorite one......

There were lots of sculptures and we didn't really get a chance to study them at all.  I just snapped pictures as we were breezing through!

The very last gallery we ran thru had a lot of really old stuff, from the 1500's through the 1800's.  I never imagined that I would like the works from that period so much.  Here are some of my favorites...

Chablis and I both want to go back there again one day soon when we have more time to stroll through the galleries and really study the paintings more closely.   We felt so disappointed in our day yesterday because we didn't get to enjoy it at all.   The whole experience was ruined because we had to locate specific paintings and had no way of knowing where to find them.  Seriously, they could benefit from some sort of an on-line database that allows you to locate specific paintings.

Overall tho, the Art Institute is wonderful and I think that if you can go and just wander around, that it would be a fantastic experience.

Millenium Park & The Art Institute of Chicago

Today Chablis and I had to go to downtown Chicago and visit the Art Institute for a project she is working on for school.  Driving into Chicago during rush hour is a nightmare, so we left at 8 am and hopped onto the Metra train to go downtown. 

We rode the train to the end of the line, which is at Ogilvie Transportation Center in Chicago.  From there we had to walk just over a mile to the Art Institute.  We crossed over the canal and zig-zagged around, as there was a lot of construction going on.

Since the museum didn't open until 10:30, we decided to stop at Millennium Park first. 

Millennium Park is on the lake front and it's huge and beautiful.  It has fountains....

The Jay Pritzker Pavillion....

                                                              where I incidentially also found a geocache.......

(it's hidden somewhere close to this bench)

And of course, the world famous bean!!!!

The bean is so cool looking and I never get tired of visiting it.  Look at how well you can see the buildings across the street, reflected in the bean.  Isn't that neat?

It's fun to walk around and take pictures of your reflection....

You can even walk underneath it and take a photo up into it....

That's Michigan Ave. behind Chablis.....

The Art Institute is on the next block south of the park, so we just walked over...

I can finally say I caught a Lion by the tail!

There are some beautiful gardens on both sides of the museum and they have fountains and sculptures all over the place.

I even did a little phooning in front of a wall of granite....

Across the street from the Art Institute is a really interesting building called the Metropolitan Tower.  At one time it was one of the tallest buildings in Chicago, with 30 floors.  However, the cool thing about this building is the bee hive shaped tower at the top of it. 

I would love to get inside that bee hive!  I bet the view of Chicago from up there is amazing.

Come back tomorrow and I'll show you some pictures from inside the Art Institute.