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The Art Institute of Chicago
(Art Institute Website)
111 South Michigan Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60603
312.443.3600
Expanded Galleries of American Art
with Loans from the Terra Foundation
for American Art Collection
Susan Weinrebe
April 13, 2005
For those of us who have ever wanted to time travel, the Art Institute’s grand new exhibition of American art spanning three centuries, is as close to teleportation as we’re likely to come.
Over 700 pieces of art, previously dispersed throughout the museum’s collection, have been shepherded together to make a coherent statement about creative American enterprise from 1750 to the 1950’s. Mingled with the Art Institute’s own pieces, are an additional 50 works on long-term loan from the Terra Foundation for American Arts.
This is a bold and boggling gathering of art that becomes comprehensible through common sense organization. Two levels of the Rice Building newly house the collection. Twenty-three galleries are organized in chronological order to lay out a panoply of decorative arts, painting, sculpture, and prints. Even so, there is too much to absorb in one visit, even if one wears sensible footgear and sits whenever possible!
A wink to this abundance is indicated by the placement of Samuel F. B. Morse’s massive, Gallery of the Louvre, in an anteroom. Morse depicted nearly forty well-known European paintings papering the walls of the chamber in which they are displayed. A gaggle of visitors, clearly installed for the long haul, are engaged in appreciating the works in various ways.
I began my own tour of the installation in an orderly fashion with the ground floor, working my around a naturally lit courtyard and progressing through the galleries radiating from this hub.
Accompanying virtually every piece on display is some of the best signage I’ve ever seen. In a “conversation” between a Colonial coverlet, highboy, portrait, and tea service, for instance, informational tidbits abounded about the artist, technique, political climate, the life and times of the period, and more.
Wasn’t it just these human details that always seemed to be left out of our history books in school? And wasn’t it these sorts of details our best teachers shared in order to bring humanity to the subject? The Expanded Galleries are not only a massive display of acquisition. Clearly, the Art Institute has seized this opportunity to educate and deepen the experience of its patrons. Thank you! Thank you!
What lies within the rooms upon rooms is a continuum of American art. Explorations of landscape (Hudson River School), American Impressionism, Regionalism, the Gilded Age, Arts and Crafts, Realism, Chicago’s Prairie School, Modernism, Abstract Expressionism, 20th Century Decorative Arts…. The breadth is, well, breathtaking!
Walls of Whistlers, (James McNeill Whistler) a hall of Homers (Winslow Homer), and a room of Remingtons (Frederic Remington) among others, could, by dint of their plenitude bludgeon a viewer into a stupor. But that was not the case. Instead, I felt tenderness. Like an individual sharing an absorbing interest, the Expanded American Galleries, taken one by one, are intimate enough to lay it all out for us to participate in the passion.
Look for those icons of art, so well absorbed into the vernacular of American life that they are frequently parodied. Among these, of course, are Grant Wood’s American Gothic and Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. Also, if you ever collected trading cards besides the Petty Girl variety, you probably had a few like The Jolly Flatboatmen by George Caleb Bingham, or William M. Harnett’s For Sunday’s Dinner, though probably none of Ivan Albright’s Picture of Dorian Gray! But don’t stop there!
Make a grand tour to take in the scope of the gathered work. Then come back with a plan. Sit in the courtyard and observe how changing light tints the marble sculpture throughout the day. Select a room and take in the progression of one artist’s subjects and technique. Spend time learning about synergy betwixt the arts as you discover how Isamu Noguchi’s forms influenced Chicago dancer, Ruth Page’s costuming. See a timeline of American life as a smorgasbord of artists did.
Help yourself to the richness displayed in the reinstalled Expanded American Galleries and come back for more and more and more. Create your own collection of icons. They are waiting here for you to discover.
George Wesley Bellows (American) Love of Winter, 1914 The Art Institute of Chicago, Friends of American Art Collection, 1914.1018 (E9458)
Samuel Finley Breese Morse (American) Gallery of the Louvre,1831-33 Terra Foundation for American Art, Daniel J. Terra Collection, T51, 1992 (G22948)
John Singer Sargent (American) The Fountain, Villa Torlonia, Frascati, Italy, 1907 The Art Institute of Chicago, Friends of American Art Collection, 1914.57 (E35081)
Georgia O'Keeffe (American) Black Cross, New Mexico, 1929 The Art Institute of Chicago, Art Institute Purchase Fund, 1943.95 (E9415)
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