POSTED BY Katie R., ON May 16, 2012, 0 COMMENTS

It’s hard to believe that it’s been three whole years since we first opened the doors to the Modern Wing. And quite a bit has happened/changed since that fateful day. . .

- We’ve welcomed more than 4.7 million visitors to the museum.

- We’ve opened 45 exhibitions just in that wing, including our inaugural exhibition Cy Twombly: The Natural World, Selected Works 2000–2007, which drew 442,436 visitors.

- And one of our esteemed ribbon cutters has gone from White House Chief of Staff to our fair city’s mayor!

How times have changed! Any thoughts on what might happen pre-May 16, 2015?

POSTED BY Guest Blogger, ON May 15, 2012, 0 COMMENTS

Whenever we open an exhibition as large and robust as Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective, we offer our Members exclusive access to the exhibition before it opens to the public.  Our members are our supporters, our family, and our best ambassadors—we count on them to spread the word when they love an exhibition as much as we do!  We were originally planning on offering just three days of previews for Lichtenstein, but due to an overwhelming member response, we added extra days, for a total of six days of exclusive member previews and four member-only lectures.

This week, members have entered the Lichtenstein galleries with stars (or in this case, dots) in their eyes as they were greeted by room after room of Roy Lichtenstein’s most iconic works.  Many of them also joined us for a member lecture given by exhibition curator, James Rondeau.  As one excited member said, “This is the best preview I have been to. The lecture by the curator gave me insight into the show and helped me understand the context of Lichtenstein’s work within the sphere of art history.”  Another member exclaimed, “This is one of those exhibitions that you want to come back to again and again—and I will!”

Our Member previews continue through Friday, May 18.  Busy this week?  Not a problem!  We will be repeating the lecture halfway through the exhibition on Wednesday, July 11 at 2:00 PM, and at the end of the exhibition on Thursday, August 23 at 6:00 PM.  Click the links above to make your reservations now!  Not a member?  Click here to join today!

—Annie S., Assistant Director of Member Experience

POSTED BY Carl K., ON May 14, 2012, 0 COMMENTS

The Art Institute is officially filled with dots in the bright Pop palette of artist Roy Lichtenstein. After years of preparation, over 160 works from around the world have been united in the largest exhibition dedicated to the Pop artist to date. Artworks from every part of Roy Lichtenstein’s long career are represented, from the iconic War and Romance series to masterful Chinese Landscapes, wild Late Nudes, and dynamic Explosions and Brushstrokes.

Curators on two continents and an army of dedicated staff have put together a groundbreaking exhibition that started its world tour right here in Chicago (next stops: Washington D.C., London, and Paris). The exhibition is open to members now through May 18 and opens to everyone on May 22.

POSTED BY Guest Blogger, ON May 10, 2012, 1 COMMENTS

The Art Institute’s amazing collection of Medieval to Impressionist paintings doesn’t move around very often. But in the intimate hallway around the main staircase off of Michigan Avenue, it’s a different story! There, rotations of prints intermingled with smaller paintings and sculpture change every 6 months to minimize light damage to these fragile artworks, and show off our holdings of over 50,000 prints. Like the paintings in the adjoining main galleries, the prints begin in fifteenth-century Germany in Gallery 202a (on the right of the room with Gustave Caillebotte’s Paris Street; Rainy Day), and wrap all the way around the building, ending in Paris again with Degas pastels in the 1890s in Gallery 226a, to the left of the Caillebotte.

Gallery 223a is home to all things Victorian of the 1850s.  The current installation may appear to include only paintings, but look closer! Two works, a portrait of Queen Victoria and a shipwreck scene (both above), are actually “printed paintings” made with a complicated printing process by George Baxter. This prolific British entrepreneur printed works to decorate everything, including needle boxes, snuff boxes, medals, Great Exposition souvenirs, and other memorabilia. Baxter invented an innovative color printing technique so that he could mass-produce commercial images that resembled oil paintings. This effort earned him the epithet “The Picture Printer.” His “Baxter Process” integrated several traditional printing techniques, combining an intaglio “key” plate that printed the main features of the design with numerous relief color woodblocks. Baxter’s subjects varied from still-life imagery and genre scenes to images depicting important contemporary events. In the portrait, Queen Victoria is seated in state with the Crown of India on a cushion beside her. This print was released just after India was added to the British Empire. Similarly, Baxter based his dramatic shipwreck tableau on the description given by the only English survivor of a shipwrecked tea-merchant ship, the Reliance. Of the 116 passengers, only seven survived. Baxter used about 8 color blocks for this print, and 12 for his portrait of Queen Victoria, in addition to the intaglio key, exemplifying the intricacy of his complicated procedure. Both works attest to his ability to fashion vibrant, captivating prints, as well as his interest in Great Britain’s triumphs and tragedies.

For a whirlwind tour of the rest of art history through prints, start in 202a for luminous engravings and woodcuts of saints and secular subjects from early Northern Europe. Continuing to your right, 204a always includes two or more of our set of fifteenth-century Italian memory cards with eerie allegorical images, which noble youths used to learn about the hierarchical world around them. 205a introduces the visual excess of the Italian and French Renaissance, and 207a highlights the broad wit of the Germans across the border, with their equal emphasis on eclectic humanism and bodily humor. 208a houses a lush group of landscapes by Rembrandt van Rijn and after Peter Paul Rubens, which will only be up through September. 209a and 212a include 17th-century Italian prints and paintings, and 213a includes more Northern Baroque and British into the 18th century, often studded with satires by William Hogarth. 216a mingles French Baroque and Rococo with an exuberance of ornament prints and ornate portrait pastels. 217a is a dark and somber corner displaying through Halloween our fantastic Irish grisaille of a little girl seemingly lost in the wood, a skeletal Piranesi and a very repentant Mary Magdalene mezzotint. 219a is always devoted to Francisco de Goya’s feverish imagination, with 225a replete with Honoré Daumier’s more lighthearted Parisian caricatures. That gallery will showcase a hilarious selection on misguided fashion to coincide with the upcoming Impressionism, Fashion and Modernity exhibition in July 2013. 220a includes early 19th century French and British prints, and 221a early German ones, now including a set of unusual pastoral scenes that suggest all is not always copacetic in arcadia.

Not all of the galleries change at once, so check back on every visit to see what’s new!

—Suzanne Karr Schmidt, Curatorial Fellow, Department of Prints and Drawings

Image Credits:

George Baxter. The Wreck of the ”Reliance”(November 12, 1842), 1843. Gift of Henry M. Huxley.

George Baxter. Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, India, etc., c. 1859. Gift of Henry M. Huxley.

Schelte Adams Bolswert. Landscape with the Great Ruins, c. 1614. Print Sales Miscellaneous Fund.

POSTED BY Joseph M., ON May 04, 2012, 0 COMMENTS

For Kith and Kin: The Folk Art Collection at the Art Institute of Chicago, written by American Art curators Judy Barter and Monica Obniski, highlights sixty illustrious and unique works from, as the title suggests, the Art Institute’s Folk Art collection. The pieces, many of which have never been published, are on permanent display in the newly reinstalled Folk Art gallery (Gallery 227).

Okay, now that you’re there (you’re reading this on your phone, right?), let’s talk about the collection. It varies hugely in terms of media—furniture, ceramics, painting, sculpture, architectural elements drawing, and a weather vane or two. It also stretches across time, from the late 1600s to the mid-twentieth century. As an introduction to the collection, I’d like to write about three of my favorite pieces.

First off, there’s John Haley Bellamy’s Eagle, c. 1900. This eagle reminds me of a t-shirt this one dude in my high school used to wear all the time. It said “Mamas like good boys; chicks dig bad boys.” I don’t think it actually used a semicolon, though. Either way, this eagle is a total bad boy. Spanning only a modest two-and-a-half feet, this is still an intimidating bird—I mean, he’s covered in gold leaf, first off. Next, he’s clutching a shield and has an American flag draped on his wings. His head is cocked to the left, probably looking off at some shenanigan that displeases him. This is one of many eagles Bellamy carved during his life. In fact, he made an entire business of it. He created jobs by manufacturing eagle sculptures. This guy would win the 2012 election in a heartbeat were he still alive.

Next, we have William Bonnell’s portrait of nine-year-old J. Ellis Bonham. This painting and its companion portraits of Ellis’s parents were produced on three consecutive days in March, 1825. They feel much newer, though, incorporating visual aspects and cues (the disproportion, the odd lighting, the anxious mood) we’ve come to recognize in more contemporary art. So, was Bonnell part of an extreme avant-garde, a century or more ahead of his time? Nope! He just wasn’t really all that great of a painter! I particularly love that you can pretty much predict the life arc of the young Bonham just by looking at this painting: he became a lawyer who loved to read and died of tuberculosis before reaching 40. Things were tough back then.

Finally, we wouldn’t be talking about folk art if I didn’t mention at least one unattributed work with an unknown date of creation. Female Bust, created some time between 1800 and 1830, came to the Art Institute from Chicago collector George F. Harding Jr. Though there is no specific evidence that this was designed as a figurehead for a ship, it’s easy to imagine this figure’s steely gaze bravely leading a ship through rough water. (Right?) Hiding your emotions is an important quality on the bounding main.

John Haley Bellamy. Eagle, 1870/1900. Bequest of Elizabeth R. Vaughan.

William C. Bonnell. J. Ellis Bonham, 1825. Estate of Edgar William and Bernice Chrysler Garbisch.

Artist unknown. Female Bust, 1800/30. George F. Harding Collection.