The Art Institute of Chicago

Today's blog post has little to do with books or reading, but I enjoyed visiting the Art Institute of Chicago today so much that I want to write about it. At the end of a professional conference, I took time to spend a couple of hours at this marvelous museum. I first went there with my friend Mary during our college years, and have been there a handful of times since, but not recently. This time, as always, I made straight for the Impressionist rooms; the collection is large and quite wonderful. Then on to the photography exhibit, focusing on the work of Margaret Bourke-White, Walker Evans, and Berenice Abbott; Abbott on changing New York, Bourke-White on the South during the Depression, and Evans' iconic photographs published in James Agee's book "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" were highlights. I am always especially drawn to the faces... Then a stop in the Asian art section, especially to visit the sculptures from South India, where I lived and went to school as a child; these are immensely evocative for me. After a few other stops in this vast museum, I ended with a tour of the Thorne Miniature Rooms, in which rooms from European and American history are portrayed on a very small scale. And there I found my connection to books, justifying this blog entry: at least three of the rooms were libraries!