A Day in the Park with Renzo: Chicago’s Latest Modern Masterpiece

Chicago in the spring is an invigorating place to be, and a stunning new addition to the Art Institute provides an added incentive to spend a weekend in the city. The Institute has been around for 130 years and its original Beaux Arts building on Michigan Avenue has been extended six times. Now, it’s been given a new face, looking north to Millennium Park, the exuberant Pritzker Pavilion of Frank Gehry, and a backdrop of high rises. The Modern Wing is a soaring, light-filled complex of galleries designed by Renzo Piano, who has won acclaim for the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco, the Nasher Sculpture Collection in Dallas, and the Morgan Library in New York. Piano, who comes from a family of builders in the Italian city of Genoa, is a master craftsman with a deep love of art, and his new galleries showcase the Institute’s collection of modern masterpieces. Many are on display for the first time, and they reveal the hidden strengths of an institution that is best-known for Seurat’s A Sunday on La Grande Jatte, a vast pointilliste canvas that inspired Sondheim’s Sunday in the Park with George.

Piano’s building is a work of art in itself, from the louvered canopy lofted high on slender steel columns to shade the walls of glass, to the axial lobby of Griffin Court, with its cable-rigged skylight. When you’ve feasted your eyes on the art (and an exemplary display of contemporary design) you can enjoy the view from the third-floor sculpture terrace and take a slender footbridge that cascades down into Millennium Park. There you can catch the reflections in Anish Kapoor’s polished steel sculpture, cross Gehry’s footbridge to the shore of Lake Michigan, or linger for an outdoor concert on the lawn of the Pritzker Pavilion. The Art Institute is located at Monroe and Michigan Avenues and is open daily.

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Michael Webb

Michael grew up in London and now lives in a classic modern apartment in Los Angeles. His twin passions are architecture and travel, and he indulges both as often as he can, exploring every continent in search of material and inspiration. His travel memoir, Moving Around: a Lifetime of Wandering (ORO Books, October) recalls memorable experiences of people and places over seven decades. Michael is the author of 28 other books, most recently Architects' Houses. He has written on travel and design for The New York Times, Travel & Leisure, Virtuoso Life, Monocle, Architectural Digest and other publications
around the world.

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