Tag Archives: art museums

Our Art Institute of Chicago Tour, Gallery 5: Ye Olde Tyme America

June 8, 2019 By in Misc. Media, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Lincoln statue!

Daniel Chester French, Abraham Lincoln, 1912. French has previously graced our travels with Beneficence in Muncie, IN; the Wendell Phillips memorial in Boston’s Public Garden; and a roadside attraction called the Lincoln Memorial in DC.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: as part of my 47th birthday celebration, my wife Anne and I drove from Indianapolis up to the Art Institute of Chicago and spent four hours with our eyes wide, jaws dropped, curiosities aroused, and cameras and phones at the ready. We barely saw half the museum and will have to return someday for more.

The exhibit hall one level below “Modern American Art” is labeled “American Art Before 1900”. It’s not entirely accurate, as we saw works that clearly disregarded the numerical boundaries (including a few of the Sargent paintings). The groupings did work in terms of like-minded sensibilities, which is my way of saying the “Modern” section engaged me more than the other, lower floor did. A few pieces caught our eyes — Anne’s more than mine, to an extent.

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Our Art Institute of Chicago Tour, Gallery 4: Two Americans Abroad

June 7, 2019 By in Misc. Media, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
On a Balcony!

Before folks spent six hours a day scrolling through their social media feeds, they had morning newspapers to bore or disgust them.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: as part of my 47th birthday celebration, my wife Anne and I drove from Indianapolis up to the Art Institute of Chicago and spent four hours with our eyes wide, jaws dropped, memories of past images awakened, and cameras and phones at the ready. We barely saw half the museum and will have to return someday for more.

As we walked along the many halls and galleries, Anne spotted two names in particular she’d encountered before. Among the many books she’s read by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David McCullough was one called The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, which explored the uncommon subject of the wave of 19th-century personalities with family ties to the relatively new country of America, who later spent a significant part of their lives in Europe, and who not only saw their lives changed, but who also brought those changes back home with them.

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Our Art Institute of Chicago Tour, Gallery 3: Georgia on Her Mind

June 6, 2019 By in Misc. Media, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Blue and Green Music!

Blue and Green Music, 1921. An early attempt, capturing the qualities of sound in pure visuals.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: as part of my 47th birthday celebration, my wife Anne and I drove from Indianapolis up to the Art Institute of Chicago and spent four hours with our eyes wide, jaws dropped, imaginations stimulated, and cameras and phones at the ready. We barely saw half the museum and will have to return someday for more.

The museum had an above-average selection of works by Georgia O’Keeffe, logical given her status as a past student. With her unique modernist vision typically comprising stylized nature in bold contrasts, O’Keeffe holds the distinction of being the only artist with a print adorning the walls of our house (Red Hills and Pedernal. 1936). Anne picked it up on one of our past road trips, and seems to gravitate to her works whenever we run across them in our travels.

Between the two of us, we didn’t set out to capture all their O’Keeffe, but we ended up with enough to give her an entry of her own, presented in chronological order for value-added trivia fun.

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Our Art Institute of Chicago Tour, Gallery 2: The Old Modern Americans

June 5, 2019 By in Misc. Media, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
America Gothic Farmer!

Never has a simple farmer gazed so deeply into my soul.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover: as part of my 47th birthday celebration, my wife Anne and I drove from Indianapolis up to the Art Institute of Chicago and spent four hours with our eyes wide, jaws dropped, and cameras and phones at the ready (my camera battery actually ran out). We barely saw half the museum and will have to return someday for more.

Upon entering and paying, we headed directly toward the collective galleries of “Modern American Art 1900-1950” because they hold two of the Institute’s biggest names in classic paintings and, to be candid, I’m a sucker for art celebrities.

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Our Art Institute of Chicago Tour, Gallery 1: The Grounds Alone

June 3, 2019 By in Misc. Media, Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Right Lion!

Sculptor Edward Kerneys named this lion “stands in an attitude of defiance”. I just call him Right Lion.

Previously on Midlife Crisis Crossover:**

It’s that time again! This week I turned 47 without entering true Midlife Crisis mode yet, and managed not to whine about it. Much. Not out loud, anyway. The more I stare at our recent convention photos, the more gray hairs I see taunting me and trying to convince me I am, in fact, an old adult and not a mature teenager.

For the past several years my wife and I have made a tradition of going somewhere new for each of our birthdays. One-day road trips and events such as last year’s Garfield Quest give me the gift of new experiences and distracts me from the physical decay at hand. As it happens, we’ll spending my birthday weekend helping a relative move, which means we’ve had to postpone my official birthday outing till next weekend. I’m grown-up enough to handle delayed gratification, and am at peace with the notion of serving others this weekend instead of indulging myself…

…and then we were released from service. The following weekend, after a brief overnighter at Fair Oaks Farms, we returned to Chicago for our third time this year after memorable trips for C2E2 and Star Wars Celebration Chicago. (It was our fifth total within the past twelve months. Frankly, we’re growing a little tired of that three-hour drive and are fairly certain 2019 won’t lure us back there yet again. Probably. We think.)

In my defense, this trip was all but preordained months ago. Continue reading →

Our 2018 Road Trip, Part 12: Not Just Another New York Art Museum

September 19, 2018 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment
Number 2 1949!

Jackson Pollock’s “Number 2, 1949”, daring me to fit it into a single shot without walking backward into someone behind me.

Longtime MCC readers know Anne is the history buff in our family, while I’m more like a history Biff. In planning such a history-heavy vacation, Anne was concerned I’d get bored quickly for lack of attractions that speak to any of my interests. Anne dug into the upstate New York research with no small amount of persistence and was proud to find a stop that would resonate with my tastes and connect with a previous experience. In essence she found us a de facto sequel to our 2016 tour of Manhattan’s Guggenheim Museum — same state, some of the same art movements, and the same classiness a mere 240 miles from NYC.

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Our 2010 Road Trip, Part 13: Streets of Philadelphia

April 16, 2018 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Art Museum + Horseman!

The Philadelphia Museum of Art looked fabulous from a distance on a trolley that wasn’t stopping.

Some of our road trips simply needed more days that what we allotted. We thought we’d learned that lesson on our 2005 drive to San Antonio, when we spent more time in the car than we did on foot in Texas, because their state is like a separate continent compared to home. Our trip to Philadelphia encountered similar issues but for a different reason. We’d found so many interesting sights to see near Philly that we barely left any time for the city itself. We’re considering making up some of that lost time in this summer’s vacation. At the time, though, we did what we could with the moments we had.

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Our 2011 Road Trip #18: A Day at the Met

August 1, 2016 By in Travel Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment
Chinese Tapestry!

After spending some time resting and admiring this Chinese mural, a trio of young European girls asked me to take their photo for them. One tourist to another, it was the least I could do.

[The very special miniseries continues! See Part One for the official intro and context.]

After the Sony Wonder Tech Lab, we returned to the subway, rode to 86th Street, and walked due west to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Seeing this entire ZIP-code-sized labyrinth of a museum would take months and require camping gear. In gracious deference to the member of our party with the shortest attention span, we kept a narrow focus on the Asian sections. On our next NYC trip someday before I die, it’ll be my turn to see what I want.

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Running an Art Museum for Fun and Profit, Part II: When It’s Time to Slash and Burn

March 5, 2013 By in Indiana, Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Indianapolis Museum of Art

Most of this decorative frippery could be dismantled and sold as scrap metal. (photo credit: Valerie Everett via photopin cc)

Last weekend’s suggestion-box entry regarding possible economic improvement measures at the Indianapolis Museum of Art wasn’t intended as the launch of a new MCC series, merely a one-off, tongue-in-cheek response to other online reactions. Then again, I wasn’t expecting to see the IMA recapture the headlines this soon.

On Monday local news sources confirmed that our city’s largest art museum has eliminated twenty-nine employees (11% of the total staff) as part of their ongoing efforts to stem the losses from previous years’ shortfalls, and as part of new director/CEO Charles Venable’s plan to minimize budgetary dependence on the museum’s endowment fund, which weathered considerable battle damage during the 2008 recession. I don’t envy the position in which Venable and his survivors now find themselves, though I’m a little bitter that they didn’t even try any of my awesome ideas before swinging the axe of doom.

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Tips for Running an Art Museum for Fun and Profit

March 2, 2013 By in Indiana, Misc. Media Tags: , , , , , , , , , 5 Comments

Indianapolis Museum of Art

The Indianapolis Museum of Art, which would make an awesome small-vehicle stunt-racing track. (Photo credit: Serge Melki via photopin cc)

In an era when taxpayers are overprotective of their disposable income and unappreciative of any art beyond the confines of their smartphone apps, I don’t envy the complicated role of the museum curator. Your purpose in society is to sort through millennia of art history, negotiate the opportunities to host the cream of the crop, settle for what’s available, and present the results to an audience that hopefully finds it all enlightening and engaging enough to leave behind some dollars on their way out. Best-case scenario: their donations and gift shop purchases are just enough to fund the next exhibit, cover the staff’s wages, and maybe even buy yourself a new tie.

Sadly, not all museums are enjoying the best of times today. Here in my hometown, our very own Indianapolis Museum of Art has struggled to recover after $89 million evaporated from their endowment in the 2008 recession. A recent Indianapolis Star interview with its new director, Charles Venable, revealed a few ideas the museum hopes to implement in order to recover lost ground, some of which have raised eyebrows of local patrons: a Matisse exhibit with a sizable surcharge (admission to IMA is normally free); late-night cocktail parties; and possibly an exotic car show. A few cost-cutting measures have already been taken, but financial stability can’t be achieved merely by clicking your heels three times and repeating the mantra, “Do more with less! Do more with less! Do more with less!” That way lies not wish fulfillment, but bankruptcy.

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