I LOVE Adult Tours!

I've recently realized how much I enjoy giving adult tours. Between last Thursday and this Tuesday I gave three:

Thursday: Modern Hightlights Tour
This was the first tour that I was allowed to give by myself though I was scheduled to give the tour with senior lecturer, Annie Morse. I pitched the theme of Modern and Contemporary Portraiture and I planned on doing two pieces, Picasso's "Mother and Child" and Hockney's "American Collectors." Annie decided to contribute a visit to Felix Gonzalez-Torres's "Untitled (Portrait of Ross)" for the final piece.

A few hours before the tour Annie called me to ask if I'd like to talk about the Gonzalez-Torres and just do the whole tour myself. My first thought: "OMG, WHAT!?! I can't do that!"...what I said to Annie, "Well, I'm brushing up on the other pieces right now, but I think I can handle it...can I tell you in a couple hours?" An couple hours later I felt sufficiently well versed on my other two pieces to tackle the FGT, which I had talked about before. Long story short: I did it! I tackled an adult tour by myself for the very first time!


Friday: Matisse in Nice Tour with Jen
Jen and I signed up for the Matisse in Nice tour without really knowing what he did in Nice and why we would have a tour specifically about that time. After a lot of studying we knew so much, not only about Matisse's Nice period, but about his entire career that we thought we should try to include every Matisse displayed in the 3rd floor....which we did. (Note to future interns: don't do more that 5 or 6 pieces on an hour long tour) Though we had a very successful tour, we later realized that we probably should have edited our selections down from almost 10 to half of that.

Tuesday: Highlights of the Museum Tour with Jen
Jen and I have spent most of our internship researching and touring later highlights of the museum from Post Impressionism to the present. We both love Contemporary Art and so it was a bit of a challenge to expand our oeuvre to include the earlier masterpieces in the museum's collection when it came time to plan our highlights tour.


Again, we were a bit ambitious and not only did we plan to do 7 pieces in an hour long tour, we also planned to take our group through 3 different wings of the museum. (Another note to future interns: take the distance of your pieces into account when planning the timing of your tour). We were fine for the first few pieces: Manet's "The Races at Longchamp" and Van Gogh's "The Bedroom," but we became a bit pressed for time and rushed by the time we got to Wood's "American Gothic" and Matisse's "Daisies." All in all, I think the tour went well and even though we didn't really have a theme to connect all of the pieces, by the time I got to our final piece, Hockney's "American Collectors" I realized how all of the pieces we looked at did have some sort of influence, whether direct or indirect, on our final piece.

The Art of The Self Portrait

A famous motif that artists from all times return to over and over again is the self-portrait. Inspired by the many self-portraits I've come into contact with over the years as well as the gallery containing the Thomas Struth photographs of people in museum spaces, I embarked on a project photographing myself in various galleries that I grew to know and love over the course of working here at AIC this summer. Enjoy!

Thomas Struth
Art Institute of Chicago II
1990
Chromogenic Print, Mounted to Acrylic

"Inked" AIC...

UPDATE: Mary D. and Maya got AIC tattoos!

Well, not really... We did just find out that the gift shop sells temporary ones though. We're partial to the Van Gogh and Mary Cassatt images. Check it out!

Captain Obvious

We were able to meet with John Molini of Packing this week and he was one of the coolest and most down to Earth individuals we have come across in our Museum Practices Seminars. A perfect way to end our trek through the inner workings of the Museum! Just sayin'.

Why Should We Care?

So, my partner in crime Sandy stumbled across this gem on the Art Institute’s YouTube channel:




Kudos to the geniuses who decided to have the “two sisters” dress up as the Renoir. Instant classic.


Needless to say, we haven’t been able to get the song out of heads, particularly the hook warning visitors to “expect the unexpected” at the Art Institute. Sure, it’s a cheesy jingle from the 80’s, but the statement rings no less true now then it did then, both for visitors and educators.

I had my first and only Roads Scholars tour this past week and despite my planning, there was nothing I could have done to prepare me for what was in store. I did the tour alongside Terah Walkup (she is AWESOME by the way, just in case you didn’t already know) covering European Modernism & Contemporary Art. We surveyed Surrealism, Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism, and Contemporary, all in a brief hour and a half that went as quickly as it came. I tackled Surrealism with Magritte’s On the Threshold of Liberty, 1937 and Pop Art with Lichtenstein’s George Washington.

Rene Magritte, On the Threshold of Liberty 1937

Roy Lichtenstein, George Washington 1962

The Road Scholars program members visited the AIC for three days participating in gallery walks, talks, and related gallery programs. They differ from most visiting groups in that the majority of them are not casual museum goers and have formulated views and theories on art. This makes the resulting tours more challenging and the ensuing conversations more in-depth than those you normally get on a Highlights Tour on a Thursday night.

I started off with the Magritte and Surrealism and everything was going exactly as planned (a sure sign that something is about to go wrong) when a woman cut me off to inform me that not only did she not like nor care about the piece but that she didn’t know why anyone else should care either. I expected that type of comment and question further along our tour during Minimalism or Pop Art (based off of past groups reaction to those movements) but certainly not that early on in our tour.

I wanted to answer her question with my personal opinion, but I figured it would be better to let her colleagues and fellow Road Scholars tackle it for her. Why exactly should we care about this work? The result was a series of colorful, intelligent, and honest responses from people not necessarily defending the work, but suggesting that one need not like a work of art to appreciate what it represents from an art-historical perspective. Some commented on the technical and aesthetic qualities of the work while others on the content and its significance. After it all, she may still not have liked Magritte’s work, but her nods and smile hinted at a newfound way of looking and appreciating art. I’d consider that a small victory for art!