Page 19 - (DK Eyewitness) Top 10 Travel Guides - Chicago

The Art Institute of Chicago ❮❮ 17

collection. Exhibits from both
continents are arranged by region
and culture: ceremonial and ritual
objects are particularly intriguing.
Architecture
5
Given the city’s strong
architectural heritage and focus,
it is not surprising that Chicago’s Art
Institute boasts an architecture and
design department, one of only a few
in the US. Sketches and drawings
are accessible by appointment, and One of Thorne’s miniature rooms
changing public displays feature
models, drawings, and architectural period recreations, combining
pieces, such as a stained-glass features copied from a variety of
window by Frank Lloyd Wright. sites or based on illustrations and
other records of period furniture.
Modern and
6 Photography
Contemporary Art
This important collection represents 8
Spanning the history of the
the significant art movements in medium, from its origins in 1839 to
Europe and the US from 1950 to the the present, this eminent collection
present day, including a strong body was started by Georgia O’Keeffe in
of Surrealist works, and paintings by 1949 with the donation of works by
Picasso, Matisse, and Kandinsky, as Alfred Stieglitz. Many modern
well as showing how American masters, including Julien Levy,
artists, such as Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Weston, Paul Strand, and
interpreted European Modernism. Eugène Atget, are represented.
Thorne Miniature
Asian Art
7 9
Rooms
This sizeable collection
Narcissa Ward Thorne, a Chicago covers 5,000 years and features
art patron, combined her love of Chinese ceramics and jades,
miniatures with her interest in Japanese screens, and Southeast
interiors and decorative arts to Asian sculpture. The museum’s
create the 68 rooms in this unique assemblage of Japanese woodblock
Lilliputian installation. Some of the prints, such as Courtesan (c.1705–
1 inch:1 foot scale rooms 1715) by Kaigetsudo Dohan, is one
are replicas of specific 6 6 of the most impressive outside
historic interiors, Japan. Look out, too, for the rare
while others are early 14th-century scroll painting,
Legends of the Yuzu Nembutsu Sect.
Museum
Arms and Armor
Floorplan 0
The Harding Collection of
2 Arms and Armor is one of the largest
9 5 in America. On permanent display
0 are over 200 items related to the
art of war, including weapons, and
complete and partial suits of
armor for men – as well as horses.
The items displayed originate from
8 Europe, the United States, and
9 the Middle East, and date from the
3 5 7 4 1 15th through the 19th centuries.

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