Illinois Is Getting Fatter
Kuma's Pats Itself On Back With Block Party
Mayor Blames Violent Holiday Weekend On Booze, Heat
Chicagoan Involved In Mount Rushmore Ruckus
Last week, while at a certain Olympic bid fundraiser at Pritzker, we noticed a strange building in the south skyline. We soon realized that we were looking at the Art Institute’s new Modern Wing, and were surprised at how … done it looked. Which is a good thing, since the Art Institute announced last Thursday that its 264,000 square-foot addition to the museum will be opened to the public on May 16th, 2009.
The new addition will house the museum’s 20th century collections of “modern art, contemporary art, photography, and architecture,” and will expand the total exhibiting space by a third. The Modern Wing will also contain floor-to-ceiling windows, adapted with technology to protect the artwork:
The windows will be equipped with translucent UV-filtering scrims -- shadelike shields strong enough to protect the pieces but thin enough to give museum-goers a hazy but discernable reading of Millennium Park's soaring Pritzker Pavilion. At night, the screens can be adjusted to reveal the sparkle of the lakefront skyscrapers.
The Nichols Bridgeway, a bridge connecting the Modern Wing with Millennium Park, will also open on May 16th. The Art Institute will not charge an admission fee from May 16-22 as a commemoration to the grand opening. [Trib, S-T, image via]
add to digg
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
email this
add to facebook
add to del.icio.us
Not to be dumb or whatever, but what is the difference between "modern" and "contemporary" art?
Also: The Art Institute is amazing. I love it there.
jenny-
from wikipedia
"Modern art is a general term used for most of the artistic work reckoned anywhere from the early 17th century until the present time.[1] (Recent art production is often called Contemporary art or Postmodern art). Modern art refers to the new approach to art which placed emphasis on representing emotions, themes, and various abstractions. Artists experimented with new ways of seeing, with fresh ideas about the nature of materials and functions of art, often moving further toward abstraction."
good question, since some might scratch their heads when they see Picasso in the new wing ;)
Is it me, or does this wing look like a 21st century state of the art middle finger to the MCA?
Contemporary art comes from dead people and makes you say: "Wow, that painting looks like shit. They just splashed paint everywhere and named it after their spouse. Must have been ahead of their time."
Modern art comes from living people and makes you say: "Wow, that painting is shit. They smeared their own feces all over the canvas and bought a house with it. Must be a genius."