At the Modern Wing

06/24/2009 10:00 PM

DANIEL TUCKER

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Photos by FRANK PINC/Staff Photographer



Art Department
Seen from the Nichols Bridgeway, the pedestrian bridge that connects Millennium Park to the Art Institute’s new Modern Wing, the hard lines of Loop skyscrapers and the organic shapes of the park unite as if they had always been together. The view — the facades of Michigan Avenue’s older buildings, kids running around, the lake to the east — is incredible.

At the museum end of the bridge, a new restaurant offers a taste of what is to come: museum as entertainment venue. A place where to throw a party, a view people would pay thousands to enjoy while sipping drinks and hors d’oeuvres cleverly named after Millennium Park sculptures.

It is a formula museums have used for years to survive: by day, culture for the people. By night, playground for the elite. One gets the sense that the whole $283 million wing was designed with the latter as the priority. The private sector has an influential role in Chicago, from the schools to the parking meters so it is no surprise to find a similar dynamic in the art world.

The Art Institute of Chicago’s new Modern Wing makes a specific claim. It states that the 20th century and the concerns that preoccupied us and specifically artists during it — debates about authorship, abstraction, depicting “the other” and purity — are over. By dedicating this new wing to the history of Modernism and filling it to the brim with art, the Art Institute is drawing a line in the sand and symbolically ending an era of artistic experimentation.

While a few critics have claimed this was already true with the advent of Postmodernism, for the Art Institute, Postmodernism was just another interrelated set of questions and ideas produced by the 20th century that can be folded into its historical narrative. Yet the older sections of the museum give the claims made in the Modern Wing a complex meaning. One commonly cited tenant of Modernism is its rejection of tradition. At the Art Institute, however, you cannot escape tradition. For it is in the gallery next door, down the hall or up the stairs.



The Art Institute certainly isn’t the first museum in the country or even the world to take this stance. But there is significance to doing it now and doing it here. The museum is now the second largest in the U.S. We are almost ten years into the 21st century, and in the microcosm that is the art world, closing the book in the 1900s is bold.

Practically speaking, there are three sections to the new Modern Wing, designed by Italian architect Renzo Piano. The middle part is hollowed out, hosting a grand hallway and passage which breaks up densely packed galleries stacked three stories high on either side. The new wing is filled with light, with white walls and high ceilings. Gone are the hints of claustrophobia common in older sections of the museum.

The museum offers visitors several ways to meander through it. Head upstairs to the third floor to follow the art collection chronologically, or start on the first floor, as I did on a recent visit, with the special exhibitions area. The debut exhibition is collection of recent works by Edwin “Cy” Twombly (Coincidentally the largest collection of his work is in another museum designed by Renzo Piano, the Menil Collection in Houston. Perhaps the two share a cosmic connection because they both call Italy home).

Twombly is in his 80s, well above the median age of the fashion-conscious contemporary art world, and is still creating art. The exhibition features photographs, sculptures and works on paper but most impressive are his huge 8' by 12' (and even larger) paintings on wood. The themes vary and he is the kind of artist who makes gestures with immense significance, whether those meanings are obvious or not. The work currently on display centers on natural themes, but the influences and references are as varied as his birth-state of Virginia, Japanese haiku poems and the geography of Oman. His wide brush strokes are often hard and intentionally drip, altering the representation of a flower or a letter shape into a melting disaster zone.

Across the hall, on the east side of the first floor, are small galleries dedicated to showing contemporary art. Directly above these spaces are the strangely sequenced art history lessons.

On the second floor, above the Twombly exhibit, is space dedicated to design and architecture. Across from there is a gallery of work from 1945-1960 that includes Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Alexander Calder and Mark Rothko among others. Next door you travel through a mostly American and European take on “Contemporary after 1960” showing Warhol, Carl Andre, Gerhart Richter, Eva Hesse, Richard Sarah, Bruce Nauman and Chicagoan Jim Nutt and Kerry James Marshall.

Finally, the third floor galleries step back into early Modern art (preceding World War II), with artists like Klee, Picabia, Matise, Picasso, and Kandinsky illustrating the histories of Expressionism, Cubism, Constructivism, Dada, Futurism, De Stijl and Surrealism.

Unfortunately, despite the addition of the Modern Wing, I did not get the feeling there is additional exhibition space for the collections it features — perhaps a reflection of the museum-as-party-room orientation guiding the expansion.

Most of what I saw during my visit was the same work I saw as a student in original Art Institute’s south galleries nearly ten years ago.

The museum claims the ticket sales are up due to the new wing, yet last week they let 22 workers go. Museum president James Cuno has discussed the possibility of making the entire museum free to reporters, but for the time being the Art Institute has gone the route of its big sister, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and raised prices to $18 for a general admission ticket. Museums, like their patrons and their employees, are in tumultuous times. It is exciting that ours was able to gain some new ground before the economy hit the fan.


The Nichols Bridgeway is not the only way to get into the Modern Wing, but it is certainly the most spectacular. The main entrance on Michigan Avenue and an additional entrance under the bridgeway on Monroe are both publicly accessible. Go free on Thursday and Friday nights all summer long from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Tours of highlights of the Modern Wing happen nearly every day. Visit www.artic.edu/aic for additional details.

This article has been changed from the original to note that the Twombly paintings are 8' by 12' in size.


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