Laura Washington: The Art Institute is slowly getting back to normal
In this space three years ago, I excoriated the famed museum for a myriad of reasons. The iconic felines that guard the museum's entrance shared my unhappiness.
We were dismayed by the state of Chicago's premiere art palace, for everything from closing its doors for two days a week to shutting down its restaurants and food services, and firing the docents who provided tours and hosted thousands of visitors so diligently for so many years. It seemed that our venerable art museum had reached its nadir.
Back then, the whole city was struggling to escape the pandemic. For Chicago, its economy, artistic ecosystem and cultural ethos, this was a major concern.
The lions roared, and disapprobation was their message.
The Art Institute, Chicago's most celebrated cultural institution, sits on the city's front porch. Yet, it was not there when it was needed most, leaving an unwelcome vacuum in the heart of the city. The Art Institute is on Chicago's 'ultimate bucket list,' according to Choose Chicago.
'Explore the Art Institute of Chicago to admire one of the largest collections of Impressionist art outside the Louvre and the stunning modern art wing,' declares the Choose Chicago website.
Now it's back, and the lions and I are happy, less cranky, as things are getting back to normal.
Witness the museum's hours. The feebleness of those hours was shocking. It is now open on Wednesdays and is operating six days a week. That's a big step. Few other world-class museums would dare to be closed two days a week.
The museum still needs to get back to seven days, but hopefully, that's a work in progress.
Downtown needs all the juice it can get. This development brings a shadow of a smile to the lions. They may not be ready to roar, but they are up for an enigmatic Mona Lisa smile.
And guess what? Now, you can meet a friend and catch a lunch at the Art Institute. The cafe has finally reopened. The outdoor fountain where my beloved mother and I dined for so many summer afternoons is back. This serene and classic Chicago spot has been restored.
The sound of the water tinkling on the fountain's bronze statues makes my heart flutter. Something I lost has been found.
The museum's restaurant, however, is a work in progress. It's lame. Overpriced. Impersonal. Corporate. I'll leave it at that.
The new members lounge is two steps forward, one step back. The old space was always too crowded, too small. Often you would arrive to relax but there was nowhere to sit. The new space, which replaced the shuttered Terzo Piano restaurant on the third floor of the Modern Wing, is bright and spacious. There's no problem finding a table. The view is lovely. The Michigan Avenue curtain wall is visible to the west with Grant Park to the east.
I have another beef — the lounge has the character of a Marriott Extended Stay lobby breakfast space. Just add a microwave.
There are brighter spots. My top pick shows the museum is back in full swing. Or should I say full repose? The museum's Ando Gallery beckons us with silence and thoughtfully curated Japanese and Korean objects of distinction. The gallery, populated with 16 pillars, is a serene space of inspiration and reflection. You can feel the good vibe throughout the building. It would be the perfect place to hold yoga and meditation classes. Now, there's an idea!
Another piece of uncanny interest is this summer's offering, Raqib Shaw's elaborate allegorical painting, 'Paradise Lost.' Shaw is a painter born in Calcutta and raised in Kashmir. The exhibit of the painting opened June 7. His 100-foot-wide, 21-panel piece is literally the work of a lifetime. It illuminates the picaresque stories of an artist's journey into the maze of his imagination.
In the words of the artist, it is 'my journey from youth to decrepitude and death and beyond.'
The lions will tell you. There's no pussyfooting around. The Art Institute is back.
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Chicago Tribune
2 days ago
- Chicago Tribune
Review: ‘City in a Garden' spans decades of local LGBTQ art and activism at the MCA
This summer in Chicago, three of the city's most prominent art spaces are presenting major exhibitions with LGBTQ themes. One is scholarly: 'The First Homosexuals,' featuring hundreds of artworks that explore the creation of homosexuality as an identity between the years 1869 and 1939, at Wrightwood 659. One is historical: 'Gustave Caillebotte: Painting Men,' a blockbuster touring retrospective on the Impressionist master, disappointingly retitled by the Art Institute as 'Painting His World.' One brings it all up to date and back home: the MCA's 'City in a Garden: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago,' a messy, exuberant gathering of painting, sculpture, photography, film and ephemera stretching from the 1980s to the present day. Art exhibitions do not happen overnight. They take years of planning, especially when they involve deep research and international loans. A confluence of such shows on a related subject is a rare occurrence, worth paying attention to as evidence of profound cultural shifts. In Chicago right now, the evidence points to the importance and durability of LGBTQ rights and realities, despite aggressive conservative political agendas. Much of what makes 'City in a Garden' so contemporary is the wide embrace of the word 'queer' taken by curator Jack Schneider, who organized the exhibit with Korina Hernandez. Once an insult applied to gays and lesbians, the term was reclaimed starting in the '80s and has since expanded beyond same-sex sexuality to include any sexual orientation or gender identity not corresponding to heterosexual norms — but also, more broadly, to a general refusal of categorization and mainstreaming. So 'City in a Garden' is only partly a survey of art made by artists who identify as gay, lesbian or transgender; it is also, more experimentally, a consideration of artworks that are themselves queer in one way or another. Sometimes the relevance is clear, like a quartet of photos taken by Doug Ischar in 1985 of men tanning and embracing on the Belmont Rocks, a gay beach scene the artist documented as much as belonged to. Diana Solis, Patric McCoy and Luis Medina also photographed their own communities and spaces. But sometimes the criteria for inclusion are murkier, as in Catherine Opie's opalescent views of Lake Michigan, one for each season, hung with their horizons in line. Opie rose to prominence for her formal studio portraits of California's queer communities, but she is also a serious landscape photographer, and the curators ask interesting questions by putting that work here. Does Opie reveal something radical about the lake through the way she frames it, as an ever-changing entity of constant fluidity? Could Lake Michigan be queer? Throughout the show, tension recurs between fabulousness and death. It probably could not be otherwise, given that the show's timeline begins amid the AIDS crisis; too many of the artists, and those they pictured, did not survive that era, or they did but died years later from complications related to living with HIV/AIDS. Roger Brown's 1983 disco painting of a skeleton in a naughty leather cap embodies both extremes. Chiffon Thomas' silicone cast of a torso — blackened with charcoal dust, pounded with nails and braced with rebar — exists somewhere painful but consensual between S&M culture and transition surgery. Even Nick Cave's gorgeous 'Soundsuit' from 2008, a sculpture that outfits its wearer in a head-to-toe bodysuit of crochet doilies, includes an upper-body cage abloom in tin flowers. That might not be death, but it's a whole lot of difficulty and claustrophobia masked by beauty. Likewise Guanyu Xu's takeover of his parents' Beijing dining room from the 2018 photography series 'Temporary Censored Home': though living in Chicago as a gay man, Xu had not come out to his parents and could only fully inhabit their apartment when they were out and he fleetingly filled a room with images of his foreign life and work. Some of the most exciting artworks here are strange, hybrid things. Faysal Altunbozar's bird feeders-cum-dildos offer hilarious tribute to one of Chicago's most scenic cruising spots, the Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary. Mary Stoppert's puzzling sculpture of a spiked hand emerging from a white calla lily, all expertly carved from a single block of wood, teases delightfully. It is unclear what exactly Jeanne Dunning has photographed in 'The Pink,' a 6-foot-tall photograph of a glistening, oozy red substance that nauseates with its subcutaneous fleshiness but might be just grapefruit segments. William J. O'Brien clutters a table with his own weight in mementoes and his unabashedly bright, ugly ceramics in a speculative self-portrait arguably more accurate than a typical likeness. At the heart of the exhibition are local collectives. Some used artsy tactics for political action, others political tools for art making. From 1993-95, the group Haha maintained a storefront in Rogers Park that grew hydroponic greens and herbs for HIV/AIDS patients, providing free biweekly meals and events. In 2004, the Pilot TV collective came together in a Bridgeport three-flat over four intense days to temporarily create a cooperative 'transfeminist' television studio, producing 35 talk shows, cooking classes, dramas and more. Most crucial of all was ACT/UP Chicago, part of a national grassroots network whose members worked tirelessly, creatively and at great risk to bring attention to the AIDS crisis as it was being fatally ignored by the U.S. government. A sprawling, glam newspaper collage by Hunter Reynolds commemorates the chapter's work, as does a display case full of ephemera, the highlight of which is a T-shirt showing a woman with her face buried in another woman's crotch under the words 'Power Breakfast.' Designed by Mary Patten and Jeanne Kracher, it was a fundraising bestseller. Imaging the future of trans healthcare — and plastering it across the MCA'City in a Garden' ends on a dreamy but utterly knowing note. How could it not, given the extraordinary advances in queer rights and protections achieved since the Reagan era and the enormous threats currently posed by the Trump administration? Four cheery architectural renderings from Edie Fake's 'Memory Palace' series fictionalize bold storefronts for real organizations from Chicago's LGBTQ past that, like the abortion counseling service Jane, necessarily existed mostly underground. In many places in the U.S. today, they have to all over again. The final artwork is Paul Heyer's shimmery painting of a cowboy, larger than life, gently crouching to scoop water from the ground. It would be simply romantic except for five huge white circles that sit atop the image and threaten to obliterate it. That must never happen, and with shows like 'City in a Garden' to help remember and envision, it surely won't.
Yahoo
10-07-2025
- Yahoo
Here Are 19 Very, Very, Very Common Historical Facts That We All Assumed Were True, But Are Actually Just Myths
Aztecs didn't call themselves Aztecs; they called themselves Mexica. The term "Aztec" was later popularized by European scholars in the 18th century, derived from Aztlán, the mythical homeland of the Mexica people. Antoinette's real name was Maria Antonia Josepha Johanna. She was, of course, Austrian, but her name was Frenchified when she married the then-future King Louis XVI of France. Mona Lisa didn't become a famous painting until 114 years ago. In fact, it was relatively obscure for centuries. Its rise to global fame began in 1911, when it was stolen from the Louvre by an Italian handyman named Vincenzo Peruggia, who believed the painting belonged in Italy. The heist made international headlines and turned the painting into a sensation. When it was eventually recovered two years later, massive crowds came to see it. Bonaparte wasn't actually short; he was about 5'6" or 5'7" (by modern standards), which was an average height for a man of that time. The reason we think he is short is that British caricatures and propaganda portrayed him as comically small to undermine his power. term "computer" actually predates the machine — it originally referred to a person who performed repetitive calculations by hand. These human computers were often employed to do complex math for science, engineering, and navigation long before electronic computers existed. The word only shifted to describe computer machines in the 1950s. were female gladiators in Ancient Rome — known as gladiatrices. Though far less common than their male counterparts, they did the exact same things. They were eventually banned, likely because their presence challenged traditional Roman gender roles. Rome and Ancient Greece were actually full of color, and not the plain white marble and stone we often imagine today. Temples, homes, and public buildings were often painted in bright colors, decorated with murals, mosaics, and intricate patterns, while white marble statues were originally covered in vivid paints. Of course, over time, the paint wore away. During the Renaissance, when artists and architects rediscovered Roman ruins, they mistook the faded marble for the intended aesthetic. The myth was further cemented by Johann Joachim Winckelmann, an influential 18th-century German art historian, who believed that the pure white look of ancient statues and architecture reflected a higher aesthetic ideal and was the pinnacle of classical beauty. He refused to accept any evidence that contradicted his belief. Salem "witches" weren't burned at the stake. They were hanged or beheaded, but their bodies were burned after the fact to make sure they didn't cast spells after death. Being burned at the stake for being a witch was actually something they did in Europe from the late 1400s through the 1700s, which is a reason we associate that with the Salem Witch Trials. van Beethoven wasn't completely deaf when he composed many of his most famous works. His hearing declined gradually over time. In his early career, he could still hear well enough to perform and conduct, and even as his hearing worsened, he continued to compose with the help of muscle memory, vibration, and written notation. The common myth we all heard was that he couldn't hear at all by the time he wrote his final symphony, Symphony No. 9. However, that isn't true — he still could hear faintly. Library of Alexandria didn't burn down in a single catastrophic event. The reality is that its destruction was a gradual process that happened over centuries. 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A color television set cost about $1,000 in 1954, which is over $11,900 today if adjusted for inflation. Additionally, there weren't many color TV shows or specials broadcast since they were very expensive to produce. the 1980s, the Roswell UFO crash was basically an unknown event. While it was huge news in 1947, when it happened, it quickly got forgotten after the United States Air Force issued an almost immediate retraction that they had not recovered a crashed UFO in Roswell, New Mexico, and that it had been debris from a downed weather balloon. It wasn't until a 1980 book, The Roswell Incident, that the story was revived with claims of a government cover-up and alien bodies. The Roswell Incident not only further delved into the story, but it also claimed that they interviewed witnesses to the event and how the government worked at covering it up. Also, in 1980, the National Enquirer published an interview with someone who had allegedly picked up the debris from the crash. lastly, the United States didn't have an official national anthem until 1931 — more than 150 years after gaining independence. It wasn't until Congress passed a resolution and Herbert Hoover signed it into law that "The Star-Spangled Banner" became the official anthem. Before that, there was no single song that represented the nation.
Hypebeast
10-07-2025
- Hypebeast
Jean Jullien's New NANZUKA Show Tends to the Inner Child in Us All
Summary In just a few days, French artistJean Jullienwill openJUJU's Castleat Shanghai'sNANZUKA ART INSTITUTE, marking his first solo exhibition in China. Equal parts art show and 'dungeon crawl,' as Jullien describes, the showcase features over 80 new paintings, sculptures, objects and large-scale installations, immersing viewers in the artist's whimsical inner worlds. Staged in a pastel-hued maze, visitors are cast as players in an imaginary quest, starting their journey by selecting one of four original characters to play as before embarking on the depths ofJUJU's Castle— a place born from Jullien's childhood memories and lifelong love of fantasy. Created during his stay in Tokyo, the featured paintings draw heavily from his life in the Japanese capital: scenes of busy roads and buildings that kiss the sky, the neon-lit screens ofgesenracing games and epic clashes between nights and samurai. 'Here it seems to me that fantasy has found myriad ways to invade reality, enhancing it, making it more dreamlike,' noted Jullien. 'This enchanted everyday seems like the perfect resistance to modern life.' As with all of Jullien's work, the show blends sincerity, nostalgia and joy with a profound concept of tranquility and escapism. The idea behind the castle emerged from sifting through his uncle's captain of hand-painted RPG miniatures as a kid, enchanted by the magic-wielding, dragon-slaying adventures they'd play out on-screen – a mental refuge he's held onto ever since. 'Years later, as the world seems more and more dire, I've decided to visit Juju's castle once more, and open its doors to the public.' Theexhibitionwill open on July 12 and will remain on view through October 26. NANZUKA ART INSTITUTE3F, Tower #1, HuaMu Time EditonNo.1, Lane 99, South Yanggao RoadPudong New Area, Shanghai
