Notes from the Midwest (pt. 1)

Our fearless leader, Dr. William U. Eiland—hereafter referred to as Bill—and I have just returned from a marathon road trip around the Midwestern United States, visiting museums and private collections, and meeting with colleagues about various projects. On any trip with Bill, one can count on long hours made enjoyable with outstanding art and wonderful people. This trip was no exception.

Bill’s journey actually began in Indianapolis two weeks ago this Saturday. He was there for a meeting of the American Association of Museum Directors (AAMD), where, in his leadership role, he works to hold other institutions to the high ethical standards expected of accredited museums. I arrived four days later for a visit to the Indianapolis Museum of Art (IMA), to study their works by Pierre Daura. The museum is rich in Daura’s Spanish Civil War images, and we are currently organizing a traveling exhibition on this period of his work. A standout was Daura’s pastel, My Brothers in Arms, 1939, which you can see here. The works on view at the IMA are also well worth the trip. Visitors to their permanent collection are first met with a monumental mural by Sol LeWitt, whose deductive paintings, drawings, and sculptures I’ve always adored. They’ve got a good video about it here. The IMA also has a remarkable collection of Neo-Impressionists/Pointillists, as well as this country’s best collection of works from the Nabis (followers of Gauguin) working at Pont-Aven, France around the turn of the twentieth century. One other note about Indianapolis: if you are a state or federal employee and traveling there for business, use www.FedRooms.Com for a discount at The Conrad, to get a luxury hotel room for the price of a dive motel. It may have been the first room I’ve stayed in with real clothes hangers!

The next morning, I met up with Bill and we headed up to Chicago. The people of Chicago are remarkably welcoming; the whole city seemed to greet our arrival by donning red and black and holding a tickertape parade…although I guess it could’ve had something to do with the Blackhawks winning the Stanley Cup. Our first order of business was to meet with the Terra Foundation. For those in the know, the name Terra is synonymous with the highest level of excellence in all projects. Working largely behind the scenes, they bring “American art to the world and the world to American art,” to quote their apt tagline. We had a pleasant and productive meeting, and we’re hopeful that we’ll be able to partner with them on future projects.

We followed our meeting with a trip to the venerable Art Institute of Chicago. When I was last there in February for the College Art Association’s annual meeting, I spent hours in their new modern wing, which was designed by Renzo Piano and houses almost a quarter of what I teach in my Modern European survey course. This time, we explored other areas of the museum -- a good thing since there’s always more to see than time allows. I had never visited the galleries housing the Thorne Miniature Rooms, and was thoroughly taken with the little windows into domestic settings of days past. Before we left, I insisted that we visit the Impressionism/Post-Impressionism galleries so that I could pay homage to Seurat’s A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, 1884, which I make a point of doing anytime I’m in Chicago. The first time I had the opportunity to see this painting was the summer after an elementary art teacher had explained Pointillism to my first grade class, and to this day I credit that enlivened, enlightening experience as a major factor in the development of my own desire to interpret art.

That evening we met up with Beau Ott, a private collector of mid-century American art who is helping us put together an exhibition of DeWain Valentine’s work, about which I’m particularly excited. I first heard about Beau when my advisor at the University of Texas at Austin, Linda Henderson, borrowed Ed Ruda’s Redball, 1965, from him for her exhibition Reimagining Space: The Park Place Gallery Group in 1960s New York, so I was anxious to meet him. Aside from an incredible collection, Beau is as nice a person as one is ever likely to meet, and studies American art from the 1950s-70s with a passion that is infectious.

On Friday, Bill and I started our day at the Chicago History Museum to see their outstanding textile and fashion collection. We also met their curator of costumes, Timothy Long, whose fashion sense—he looks like a model—is only surpassed by his scholarly acumen. We hope to borrow from them for an exhibition we’ve got in the works. From there, we went to the Thomas McCormick Gallery to acquire a Picasso etching, The Dream and Lie of Franco, 1937, which I’ve had my eye on since February for my aforementioned Spanish Civil War exhibition. Now that it’s a “done deal,” I can say that it was a great deal for this work. After that, Beau got us into a phenomenal private collection of Chicago Imagists (comprising groups like The Hairy Who, The Monster Roster, and other important, representational artists of late 1960-70s Chicago, whose wildly wonderful work I like to think of as "Surrealism for the '70s"). After that we visited the Block Museum at Northwestern University, where we saw their MFA show and an exhibition of European prints, The Brilliant Line: Following the Early Modern Engraver, 1480-1650.

The next day, the three of us headed north. Our first stop was the Racine Art Museum (RAM). We had planned to just “pop in,” but as luck would have it, RAM curatorial assistant Dave Zaleski had also popped in, and treated us to a tour of the galleries, library, and administrative offices. Their current exhibitions are all about insects, and some of the work was unsettling, to say the least, but it was nonetheless exquisite in its execution and installation. Given RAM’s focus on design and crafts, it should have been no surprise that we all also left their shop with much lighter wallets.

Our main destination of the day was the Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM). I hadn’t heard much about MAM, which is surprising given the quality of their collection and their building, which was designed by Santiago Calatrava and features massive, cantilevered wings which open and close twice daily, serving as a sunscreen. Their collection of Minimalist sculpture located on their first floor is world class, but their real treasure is the Mrs. Harry L. Bradley Collection of twentieth-century European and American art, which occupies their fourth floor. I could go on about it for pages, but will instead direct you to their site. So entranced with the collection were we that we chose the quickest lunch we could find, a hot dog cart just outside the museum. There I committed the culinary sin of putting ketchup on my dog, and had to promise Beau that I would never do that back in Chicago, lest I get us all beaten up or run out of town (for the record, mustard, relish, and sauerkraut are all acceptable in any combination . . . just no ketchup). We wound down our day in Milwaukee with a stop at a lovely fin de siècle-themed bistro. Beau and I tried absinthe (sans wormwood) for the first time, which I considered art historical research, given the preponderance of early twentieth-century European artists featuring the beverage in their art (Degas and Picasso, most famously). At least that’s my story, and I’m sticking to it (but in case you’re wondering, no, I didn’t put in for reimbursement on that one).

The second half of our road trip was every bit as exciting, so tune in next week for the second installment of this post, where I’ll recount our visits to one of the best, but least-known, outdoor contemporary sculpture collections in the country, along with more museums and astounding private collections.