Choose Your Own Adventure

When thinking of learning about art and culture in the midwest, it is hard to think that anywhere near the city could even begin to try and top the cultural Mecca of the midwest that is Chicago. While suburbian museums could never think of rivaling some of the cities top attractions like the Field Museum and the Art Institute, you would be surprised that the suburbs do still have many interesting museums to view.

Well maybe you weren’t surprised, but I certainly was.

My adventure began not with the front steps of a museum but in front of a Nutella and banana crepe at the Nutella Cafe. After a Chicago river architecture tour Monday morning, I had made my way to the cafe to eat some hazelnutty goodness while I searched for the final destination of my Chicago trip for my own adventure. After chowing down (amazing, by the way) I quickly pulled out my laptop to find directions to my next adventure.

A quick word of advice to any art tourist: never try to go to an art museum on a Monday. In summary, Gallery 400? Closed. Intuit? Closed. Oriental Museum? Closed. School of the Art Institute Gallery? Closed. Every single museum that was easily accessible to me was closed on Mondays. Thus I resigned to another few hours at the Art Institute (the horror I know) and my personal adventure would have to wait until Tuesday.

Which brought me to today, driving my way to a part of Elmhurst that I had never been in before. If I am being entirely honest, I have very few expectations of the Elmhurst Art Museum. Perhaps it was because of its unimaginative name or the fact that when I think of culture and art I don’t think of the white bread suburbia of Elmhurst, but I wasn’t all that excited.

Stepping through the New Views installation, I was slightly confused to see an entire exhibition dedicated to a single house. Upon further reading, however, I did find it interesting how in depth and thought out architecture really can be. Though the simple sketches of an overview of walls seem simple enough, the proposals were actually very thought out. One idea that I couldn’t get out of my head, however, was how strange life would’ve been if this home had actually become the prototype for other homes to be built.

My childhood home was actually a house that was in the Sears catalog for prefabricated houses. There are three other identical houses, except for paint color, within 10 square blocks of my house. If this glass house had been in the Sears catalog, so to speak, there could potentially thousands of them across America right now. However, unlike my house, they would’ve stuck out like a sore thumb. It was a very funny thought to me, well as funny as jokes about architecture can get.

Two of the installations I did very much enjoy however was the Skycube by David Wallace Haskins and the dot paintings by Peter Steeves. My favorite of the dot paintings was titled Sunset in the East. I enjoyed this painting the most part because of my new found interest in Islamic and Indian art after writing the blog post specifically about it but also because the painting reminded me of an Indian version of Starry Night, the famous Van Gogh painting.

Using rich purples and blues, with just a hint of pink to suggest the colors of a sunset, this very detailed painting was very entrancing. The wave-like patterns created the feeling of moving air while simultaneously reminding me of stars in the sky.

Lastly, my favorite view at the museum was outside looking at the Skycube. While the sculpture itself is a steel cube (and a feat of magic I think because I am unsure how it works), the culture encourages the viewer to become one with the sky in a way or at least look at it deeply. It's hard to explain but it is very beautiful being presented with the sky in a frame that almost suggests when you are looking at the sky you are looking at art. While I have always loved nature and the beauty of the sky, the cube encourages a contemplation and recommital to that love.

Though the Elmhurst Art Museum could never begin to compare to the Art Institute, I am glad that fate forced me into going to it today. The art that I saw challenged my somewhat snobby beliefs about suburb museums and it has encouraged me to see some more (when my mind is no longer blown by the Skycube).