Chicago, December 2009

The Windy City. The City that Works. The validity of each of Chicago’s epithets became evident to me as I visited a place that, in spite of the chilly wind coming from the lake bringing ambient temperatures to about 6ºF, continued to function completely normally. In my four-day visit I squeezed in a great variety—art, science, the ancient orient, Frank Lloyd Wright—all in a very visually appealing city. I was very sorry to leave.

On the street in Chicago.
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On the street in Chicago.
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On the street in Chicago.
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The main staircase at the entrance of the Art Institute of Chicago, complete with an enormous display of poinsettias for Christmas.
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At the Art Institute of Chicago: Gustave Caillebotte’s (1848–94) ‘Paris Street; Rainy Day’ (1877).
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At the Art Institute of Chicago: somewhere or nowhere to go. Georges Seurat (1859–91), ‘Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte’ (1884).
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Chairs on display at the Art Institute of Chicago.
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Gallery visitors in the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago, seven months after it opened (in May 2009).
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At the Art Insitute of Chicago: more gallery visitors with Georges Seurat’s (1859–91), ‘Un dimanche après-midi à l'Île de la Grande Jatte’ (1884).
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360º panorama of the reconstructed Chicago stock trading hall, housed at the Art Institute of Chicago. (Fifteen-photo stitch.)
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Gallery visitors at the Art Institute of Chicago with Edward Hopper’s (1882–1967) ‘Nighthawks’ (1942). This painting has fascinated me for a while—it seems completely mundane at first but before long you find that it leaves you with more questions than it answers: who are these people? Why is the man on his own? And why is there no door to get from the milk bar to the outside world?! I don’t mind admitting that my desire to see the painting in real life meant that I was sure to put Chicago on my itinerary at a very early stage of planning my North-American trip. I really became aware of Edward Hopper when I read Alain de Botton’s The Art of Travel (2002), especially chapter II, ‘On travelling places’. I’m definitely a fan of art galleries that allow visitors to take photographs. I find it very interesting to see and depict how other visitors interact with paintings and other pieces of art—if all you want to see is the artworks, you’d be better off getting a postcard, looking in a book, or finding a picture elsewhere on the Web. What we see here, though, is a common attitude of gallery-visitors: to the side, concentrating on the label more than on the painting itself. The label can sometimes act as a safety barrier, telling the visitor what to think rather than requiring him to form his own opinion about an artwork. I know that I certainly do this sometimes—on occasion I flit from label to label with barely a glance for the paintings!
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At the Art Insitute of Chicago: Ilya Bolotowsky (1907–81), ‘Grey Diamond’ (1955).

A photo of an artwork without anyone next to it.
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At the Art Insitute of Chicago: visitors with Grant Wood’s (1895–1941) ‘American Gothic’ (1930). I hadn’t previously taken in how prominent this is in American artistic consciousness—it is seen as an icon of 19th-century Americana. In ‘Bart gets an elephant’ (S05E17), we learn that the Simpsons had this painting in their home, at least until Bart inadvertently scrubbed it so hard that he revealed Grant Wood’s message underneath the paint, ‘If you can read this, you scrubbed too hard.’
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At the Art Insitute of Chicago: desk and chair by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) for the Johnson Wax Company of Racine, Wisconsin.
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At the Art Insitute of Chicago: El Greco’s (Domenikos Theotokopoulos, 1541–1614) ‘The Feast in the House of Simon’ (1608/14).
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This enormous Christmas tree greeted visitors to the Museum of Science and Industry at the top of the main escalators to the exhibits. Little White House ornaments are hanging from the tree, because the museum had an ‘Inside the White House’ exhibition at the time.
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Buildings in the enormous—and totally brilliant—model railway at the Museum of Science and Industry.
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More buildings and a street in the enormous model railway at the Museum of Science and Industry.
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One end of the model railway at the Museum of Science and Industry. I don’t think it is intended to be an accurate model of any town, city or location, even if the building on the left looks like the Space Needle in Seattle.
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One end of the model railway at the Museum of Science and Industry.
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Another side of the model railway at the Museum of Science and Industry.
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A collection of Christmas trees at the Museum of Science and Industry, each one supposedly decorated as it would be in different parts of the world. I don’t think I’ll spend time scouring the homes of Wales looking for a tree decorated with Welsh flags.
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Children (and parents) at a water exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry.
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A snowy street in Chicago.
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At the University of Chicago Oriental Institute’s museum: a collossal statue of Tutankhamun. At 17 feet four inches tall, this is the tallest ancient Egyptian statue in the western hemisphere. It weighs about six tons.
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A 360º panoramic view of snow falling on the streets of the campus of the University of Chicago. (Ten-photo stitch.)
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Snow falling at the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.
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Waiting for the ‘L’—the ELevated railway which serves Chicago.
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An R2D2 postbox outside the Museum of Science and Industry.
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Houses in the snow in Oak Park.
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A house in Oak Park decorated for Christmas.
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Frank Lloyd Wright’s family home in Oak Park. By a bizarre set of circumstances I was given a private tour of the house with just me, a tour guide, and a tour guide supervisor! Even in such informal circumstances, though, I still wasn’t allowed to take photographs inside.
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The streets of Oak Park in the snow. (Seven-photo stitch.)
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A Christmas decoration in Oak Park.
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Another house in Oak Park.
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Frank Lloyd Wright’s Hills-DeCaro House (1906, reconstructed 1977) in Oak Park.
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Panorama of the Chicago downtown skyline at night, looking across the edge of Lake Michigan. (Four-photo stitch.)

I was out taking these photso for about forty minutes. The temperature was 4ºF (minus 16.6ºC): during the day it had risen to a high of 7ºF (minus 14ºC). Fortunately I had procured some thermal underwear in the afternoon in anticipation of my evening standing on the icy shore of an icy lake.
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Clouds pass over the skyline of downtown Chicago, on the shore of Lake Michigan.
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