Ummagumma

Note: This is the third part of my three-part travelogue about Chicago. The Art Institute of Chicago features a stellar collection of French Impressionism , other Impressionism , and post-Impressionism .  It is, perhaps, unmatched in the world and certainly unsurpassed though, of course, I haven’t seen the great collections in London and Paris . There are bountiful paintings by Renoir , Monet , Manet , Toulouse-Lautrec , Degas , Cezanne , Pissarro , Seurat , Caillebotte , Morisot , Cassatt , Whistler , Sargent , among others.  The Institute places the French front and center.  Through the main entrance you go up three short flights of superbly designed very wide stairs in an ample lobby featuring a wonderful female nude torso statue. The main entrance lobby.  I took this shot on Monday afternoon. Traffic was light and I waited to get this without visitors in the shot.  The glass doors in the shade of the upper right open into the French Impressionism exhib...

A very wide angle of the Art Institute of Chicago main entrance. Note:  This is the second part of my travelogue on the trip Jennifer and I made recently to Chicago. We went in to and out of the Art Institute of Chicago four times during our stay there.  We spent over 7 hours walking the Institute's extensive floors and spaces; several more hours discussing what we saw.  We trekked through the Southeast Asian exhibit three or four times as it was a transfer area from one large wing of the museum to the other.  I recalled seeing much of that collection's style when I was living in India . The temples there are covered in vast intricate engravings.  I pointed out the Cambodian section to Jennifer before we knew the art was, in fact, Cambodian.  I know my Southeast Asian art styles. But that certainly was not the great attraction for Jennifer and me.  Nor was ancient Roman and Egyptian art.  Nor was African, medieval, nor religious ar...