A program at the Art Institute uses art to help nursing students strengthen their observational and visual perception skills. "The Discerning Eye: Visual Observation Skills from the Art Museum to Patient Diagnosis" is a 90-minute presentation meant to be incorporated into the patient-analysis section of the nurse residency program at the University of Chicago. The program aims to increase students’ awareness and ability to filter visual stimuli, while helping to challenge the perception that......

There IS a lot going on this weekend. Marcus take music, Jacy take comedy, and I take art, O.K.? Here we go: Tonight, the Chicago Arts District is hosting their “2nd Fridays Gallery Night,” which includes monthly receptions at art galleries up and down Halsted Ave. in Pilsen. Over 35 galleries and artists’ studios will be opening their doors. Events map available for pickup at 1821 S Halsted. S. Halsted and 18th street, tonight, 6:00......

Pulled from our tips page: this Saturday is World Pillow Fight Day, and public pillow fights are being organized in cities from Beijing to Boise. Similar events have been covered by the –ists before; urban public pillow fights are not a new concept. The Chicago Pillow Fight Club will be hosting the local celebration of Pillow Fight Day, taking place Saturday at 2 p.m. in front of the Art Institute. Sometimes we wonder how similar......

At this point, most of us have graduated from decorating the walls of our humble abodes with the typical college posters of yesteryear. The dilemma then becomes a matter of how to display our personal sense of artistic style without succumbing to the availability of “artwork” sold at places like Bed Bath & Beyond, and without dropping vast amounts of money at the River North galleries or the summertime street art festivals. Enter David van......

The double whammy of the Mondays and cabin fever can drive the most stout constitutions deep into their comforters. Here are some things to inspire you to layer up and head out. Music: Ever want to learn about the process of songwriting? Then Old Town School of Folk instructor Charles Kim is then man to teach you. Every Monday Kim presents a series of free songwriting workshops; even better, no registration (or jacket) is required.......

This was a good year to be a large cultural institution. If cuts in state arts funding and unstable financial markets made a dent in Chicago’s largest museums, they sure weren’t letting on. The Art Institute remained one of the city’s prime attractions, attracting hordes of frugal visitors on free Thursday nights to piece together Richard Misrach’s disorienting beach photography and William Pope.L’s naïvely charming travelogue, or to enjoy Jeff Wall’s mind-bending photography — his......

Liar, liar, half-man half-goat sculpture on fire! Turns out the Art Institute's "Faun" sculpture is a big fat forgery. The sculpture is not in fact the work of French post-impressionist painter Paul Gauguin but is instead a fake, made by Shaun Greenhalgh, whose family has been running an international art forgery business from England for the last 17 years. The Art Institute bought the statue from a private dealer in 1997, and the dealer......

While many of you shuffle back and forth from stage to stage in Grant Park this weekend, we thought we'd take the opportunity to show you how it looked about 80 years ago. It's just a touch different today, isn't it? While the landscaping had yet to take its place in 1929, Buckingham Fountain and the general layout of the park are clear. The Art Institute is in place and looks exceptionally lonely, and while......

Well, we've been hearing about Looptopia for awhile. A big overnight festival held in the Loop, blah blah. We didn't think too much about it. We pretty much dismiss the Loop after 5 p.m. and give it up for lost on the weekends. Looptopia is obviously working hard to change all that. It's going on this Friday through early Saturday morning and since we're going to be down there, we decided to check out the......

After 81 years, the University of Illinois is getting rid of its Chief Illiniwek mascot. The Art Institute will be showing a traveling exhibit of famous impressionist and modern art by Cezanne, Van Gogh, Picasso and Gauguin, to name a few. Appropriately, because we just celebrated the Chinese New Year, there's a lot of Chicago/China news: Where there was once a junkyard, we may someday see a new hotel in Chinatown that shows its......

Chicago basically shuts down on Christmas Day and, with few exceptions, the artsy folk follow suit. It’s one of only three days all year The Art Institute’s in hibernation. Mondays are typically slow anyhow, so we’ll barely feel inconvenienced. On the 25th, family, worship, Chinese food and a movie, and/or that date with Shaq and Kobe take priority. But there are still a few places you can get your culture on, Chicago style: Zany hairstylists......

We like highlights, we like getting them, doing them and giving them. There’s a ton of cool stuff going on this week, check out the quick highlights, and let us know which author is going to get your attention. First off, it’s the closing night party for the Literary Gangs. They’ll finish up with a finale including Andy Ross and Jonathan Messinger. You can see the Literary Gangs on Tues., May 16th, 6:30PM, at the......

Last month, when a University of Chicago study revealed that Chicago’s museums were disproportionately attended by white, educated and affluent visitors, admission fees and visiting hours were among the reasons listed for the disparity. The Art Institute, with its longstanding voluntary donation policy, was one place where visitors could pay as little as $1, although few had the nerve. If the Art Institute gets its way, that won’t be an option anymore. The museum wants......

Your big Valentine’s Evening need not be threatened by a lack of ideas or lack of cash. You can impress that special someone tonight for absolutely free! Yes, that sounds like bad email spam but it’s true. Many of our favorite museums are free on Tuesdays. The Art Institute recently opened Girodet: Romantic Rebel in time for the mid-winter love fest. This retrospective brings together the highly emotional, at times erotic, work of a French......

Once in a while an event comes along that makes you question your preconceptions and reexamine the meaning of life, the universe, and the forbidden donut. That would be tonight's discussion, entitled “The Simpsons: Cultural Criticism and America’s Favorite TV Family,” at the Chicago Cultural Center. Faculty from Columbia College, The Art Institute of Chicago and Northwestern University will hold court on why the megahit show has made such an impact on our collective consciousness.......

It’s the art world version of a rock band stuck with a bad sound engineer or a gifted author languishing in B-list hell. Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec’s “Scene de Ballet,” an early painting that curators and critics previously designated a hazy minor work, was given a much-needed restoration by the Art Institute. And wouldn’t you know, the painting’s more beautiful and more important than the art world realized. As the story goes, twenty-year old Toulouse-Lautrec had......

Chicagoist knows you dig architecture. And we also know that, sometimes, one heavyweight architectural event just isn't enough to scratch your architectural itches. Lucky for you, Millennium Park will be double-fisting it this evening with two high-profile architectural goings on: the awarding of the 2005 Pritzker Prize and the unveiling of the plans for the Art Institute of Chicago's new wing. We've told you a couple times about the Pritzker Prize, the architectural world's......

Helmut Jahn is speaking at the Art Institute tonight as the guest of the Architecture & Design Society. Yeah, it's a steep $15, you cheap-o bastard, but it's worth it: the guy's a living legend. Jahn's work is all over town—IIT student housing, the United terminal at O'Hare, the Thompson Center, and a handful of other structures were all "archi-neer[ed]" by Jahn. Tofutti break. Jahn's lecture tonight is titled " Architecture and New Technologies," which......