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Extended Interviews: Art Institute of Chicago
Posted by Arts Desk , June 11, 2009

The new modern wing of the Art Institute of Chicago was intended to expand one of the nation's leading museums and provide space for its collection of modern and contemporary art. Architect Renzo Piano also conceived it as an addition in a deeper sense to a city rich in architectural tradition.

The original Beaux Art-style building, which opened in 1893, is itself a historic landmark, its famous lions a longtime city icon. The new addition, by far the largest in the museum's history, was 10 years in the planning and building, at a cost of nearly $300 million, almost all from private donations.

Below are three extended interviews with architect Renzo Piano, Chicago Art Institute director James Cuno and Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin.

You can also view a slide show of the Modern Wing and samples from its collection by clicking here. And additional reports on the new Modern Wing produced by local PBS station partner WTTW's Chicago Tonight are available here.

We'll post Thursday's NewsHour segment in Art Beat soon.

 

 

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Comments

  • Posted:
    06/11/09 at
    08:38 PM
    NORBERTO : ADMISSIONS TO MUSEUMS NEED TO BE FREE, NO MATTER WHAT! LET'S THINK OF IDEAS HERE...CORPORATE SPONSORS, ECT...?
  • Posted:
    06/17/09 at
    05:53 PM
    J C : I was glad to hear Blair Kamin's comments connect Piano's architecture to Millennium Park and the Lurie Garden. Many photographs of the Modern Wing include foregrounds of the beautiful plantings from the garden. Sometime ago, in a Trib magazine article about the Modern Wing, I was impressed with Piano when he expressed his desire to change the orginal South side expansion plans to the North side solely to take advantage of the incredible views our City's park and garden had to offer. Thanks go the Lurie Family, Garden Staff and Volunteers that make the garden art beyond the architecture so spectacular.
  • Posted:
    06/17/09 at
    09:22 PM
    Rich Boyce : As Blair Kamin describes the Modern Wing from the Lurie Garden in Millennium Park, he is right on when he explains that the Modern Wing doesn't knock your socks off like the exploded Coke can of a Frank Gehry building. Actually, that building, the Pritzker Pavilion, is about 300 yards north of the Modern Wing at the north end of Millennium Park. Imagine another Gehry building in place of Lorenzo Piano's Modern Wing. It would be a disaster. Instead, the Modern Wing blends extremely well with the existing Art Institute and Millennium Park on the outside, yet also provides a dramatic internal environment for the modern art collection of the Art Institute. This is a huge win for the Art Institute and the city of Chicago!
  • Posted:
    06/17/09 at
    09:23 PM
    Philip : The Modern Wing and the museum in its entirety is magnificent. I come now to learn about the world and understand that there was and sometimes is, a living, breathing human behind each work. Wow! It is a place of peace were you can shut out the world and still be a part of it. Thanks.
  • Posted:
    06/18/09 at
    12:58 PM
    AGRay : Thank you, Jeffrey Brown, for three intriguing interviews. Kamin is exactly right about light being a key design element of the new Modern Wing. I've visited the museum twice so far, once when rain was pouring outside and once when it was brilliantly sunny. My experience of the art was quite different (and I think I preferred the rainy day, when the shades were lifted and the cityscape was displayed as an artwork in itself). The building was lovely, and my experience of constant connection to the outdoors--through light, through glimpses of the surrounding city--echoed the connections in the artworks with political and social themes of the modern era: the upheaval of war, the ravages of the AIDS epidemic, the struggles for equality, the resilience of the creative human spirit.
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