Things I Like - Chicago

The new Modern Wing of the Art Institute opened a couple weekends ago – to uniformly fabulous reviews. Not only are the exhibits world class, but the building itself is a modern work of art.

The $300 million Piano addition…turns the museum outward. It is a refined structure of openness and translucency, where glass becomes a permeable membrane between art and urban landscape…Now, masterpiece artworks are visible from the street, and the Chicago skyline becomes an artwork in its own right alongside Picasso, Matisse and Kandinsky inside the gallery spaces.
~ JSOnline

Perhaps not as important but almost as exciting is the opening of the Nichols Bridgeway – the pedestrian bridge that links the new wing directly to Millennium Park.

The bridge lifts you above the park, giving you a chance to look down on it. You see the Pritzker Pavilion's silvery, steel shells and Lurie Garden's big, green "shoulder hedge." From above Monroe, you can gaze out at the blue waters of Lake Michigan or through the skyscraper canyons of the Loop. At the end, you survey the sunken commuter railroad tracks that bisect the Art Institute. They are a vertiginous 50 feet below.
~ Chicago Tribune

All Tribune photos by E. Jason Wambsgans.
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