constant narrator

This weekend M and I flew up to Chicago to visit my brother and his partner and hang out. Friday was spent being lazy in the morning and then we had a quick tour of Northwestern’s Evanston campus and the Fisk building that houses the Medill journalism program. In a way it reminded me of the old home of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop on the top floor of the EPB - surprisingly plain and drab considering it’s thought of as one of the most prestigious programs of its kind in the country. The building was large and seemed well-used, and there is another campus and main news bureau downtown as well, so I didn’t get a full look at everything.

Afterwards we headed downtown on the train and met my brother for a tour of the Pritzker Military Library, where he’s event coordinator. From there we grabbed some quick Thai food and then walked to the new Frank Gehry-designed ampitheatre, and, what luck! there was an orchestra warming up for an evening concert. Since the theatre isn’t much of a bowl shape they made up for it by building this cool lattice over the field that has speakers at strategic points. The sound was amazing. I would love to get a layperson’s explanation of all of the aural/distance/time calculations that went into the speakers and their placement and the sound delivery delay.

From the ampitheatre we headed to “Cloudgate” aka “The Bean” which is quite possibly the coolest piece of public art I have ever seen. We walked past the spitting-people fountain and to the Art Institute, which was free since it was a Friday night. I got to show M and A my favorite Renoir painting, Seascape. We also made it through the Impressionists to the large Joseph Cornell collection, which was much better to see in person than in books. I also stumbled onto a couple of Clifford Still paintings, which made me happy and made me miss SFMOMA and their grand collection of his pieces.

Chicago was really showing me the ol’ artistic leg on Friday and made me really long to live in a big city with so much civic art happening.