Donald Young Gallery

The Donald Young Gallery is located on Michigan Avenue inside the Santa Fe building. With a prime location probably comes a prime real estate cost, and so the gallery is forced to take advantage of all its space. It has a small front room set up like a more traditional gallery, but the rest of the works are packed in a small hallway, around the reception desk, and inside two offices.
The artworks outside the main space are positioned in places that make the viewing experience awkward. To view Rodney Graham’s A Glass of Beer and Vancouver Sun, one has to hang around the reception desk while people are working there. Some works located in the offices are difficult to spot, like bear figurines on the desks, and Bruce Nauman’s work on a computer screen; other works don’t recieve their proper space like Chromatic Modernism and photographs from the Glass House Series. In a business sense, displaying work in an office allows potential buyers to see works in a less formal space. However, the choice to use the offices seems to have more to do with space, rather than curation.
In the front room, works are displayed in a more traditional fashion (white walls and pedestals). The contrast between how works are arranged on the south and north sides of the room is distracting. The south side houses four sculptures arranged by color and size. At the center is Rosemarie Trockel’s Abuse of Beauty, to its left is Martin Puyer’s Facedown and to its right are Joshua Mosley’s George Brown and Freidrich Hayek. Mosley and Puyer’s works face in towards Abuse of Beauty. Mosley’s works are placed next to each other and both given white pedestals. This gives the works a sense of unity, and together they are a comparable size to the other two works. The north side of the gallery is not as neatly arranged, and the disparity between the two sides of the room is distracting. It needed to be one way or the other, both was just weird.
The current show is not worth going to see. However, the next exhibition in September will be of Dan Flavin’s work. It is a little surprising to hear his work will be on show, and it will be interesting to see what kind of space solutions the gallery comes up with. While they may have been able to get away with work in offices during the current group show, it will be near impossible with his work.

Cy Twombly: The Natural World

The Cy Twombly exhibit, The Natural World, at the Art Institute divides his floral inspired works from 2000 to 2007 into a few clumps of work meant to represent the overall body of his later years. Located in the newly opened Modern Wing, the exhibit seems to be very self-conscious. Somehow, the curators have made the normally assured and unregulated work of Twombly seem tame and aseptic. His works on paper are tied down by frames, and every sculpture has a pedestal. All but one of the rooms had his works arranged perfectly symmetrical by form and color. On one door leading into the galleries, it denotes that the patron should enter the other doors so they can experience the exhibit the way it was meant to be seen: from lighter colored works on paper and sculptures at the beginning, through progressively larger and darker paintings at the end. The curation seemed so strict and opaque, it undermined the intuitive nature of the work itself. Twombly's work continues to stretch the ways we taxonimize art with combinations like photographs of sculptures and paintings/drawings, both on paper, and the continued incorporation of language. Despite the presentation, Twombly's newer works prove that after all these years, he still has not gone soft.

A New Home for Old Friends: The AIC Modern Wing

The Art Institute Modern Wing, which opened in May of this year, is still attracting masses a few months later. The wing brings a sense of pride to Chicagoans and has become a destination for tourists. It is the defibrillator the Art Institute needed. While the museum has always boasted an impressive collection, the works now in the Modern Wing never really had a proper home. They always seemed sparse, tucked away, or just oddly placed. However, now they all have one home that gives them proper due.
The Modern Wing was designed by architect Renzo Piano, whom is probably best known for his work on the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. Piano used as many opportunities as possible to highlight the relationship between the museum and the city. The Nichols Bridgeway connects the museum to Millennium Park, and offers brilliant views as the patron passes over Monroe Street. The Bluhm Family Terrace offers a special view of the city from within the museum, but there are plenty of skyline glimpses available from within the galleries as well. Even when viewer enters the wing from the main body of the museum, they get a North facing view of the skyline from within Griffin Court. The frequent views of the city, which one does not find often in museums, are a constant reminder of the symbiotic relationship between museum and city.
Griffin Court, the atrium of the wing, can be entered from the North by way of Nichols Bridgeway and South through the museum. The center is opens to all three stories, and the specially designed skylight floods the wing with natural light. Piano's use of glass, open spaces, and stark white walls make the Modern Wing feel breezy and light, a welcomed contrast to the stoicism and gravity of the museum's main body Neo-Classical architecture. The only aspect of the wing that breaks the mood is the obligatory donor names plastered everywhere; but hey, you gotta make money somehow.
The deceptively slim looking atrium, leads to a surprising amount of gallery space. Just off Griffin Court on the first floor are the Abbott Galleries and the Carolyn and Matthew Bucksbaum Gallery. The Abbott Galleries, located to the West, will house different exhibitions. This is where the Cy Twombly works from 2000 to 2007 are being shown. On the East side, the Bucksbaum Gallery now houses the museum's photography collection. The Contemporary and Architecture and Design galleries are located respectively on the East and West side of the second floor. Both collections have had some recent additions, but the most surprising were the acquisitions for the Contemporary collection. Along side old favorites from the likes of Eva Hesse and Gerhard Richter are recently purchased works by Jeff Koons, Robert Gober, Charles Ray, and Bruce Nauman. The museum has really made an effort to build up their Contemporary Collection, as well as bring out pieces patrons have not seen in a while. Upstairs, the third floor houses the Modern European Collection, containing works by Picasso, Matisse, Dali and others.
A hefty collection is to be expected, but the sheer amount, quality, and diversity of work the museum has on show, combined with the architecture itself, is absolutely breathtaking. The Modern Wing far exceeded my expectations. I would highly recommend it for visitors to the city, and would expect Chicagoans to check it out to welcome the newest member of the city.