Home » Archives » July 2005 » The Midwest’s Great Art Museums- Toledo, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Chicago
[Previous entry: "Searching for a way out"] [Next entry: "Who Needs Art?"]
07/20/2005: "The Midwest’s Great Art Museums- Toledo, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Chicago" by Sue Spaid
I’ve been fantasizing this circuit for some time, but this was the first possible year, since the Lake Express opened last year, when the Walker Art Center was still closed for renovation. Sandy Eichert, my travel companion, discovered the brand new Arab American National Museum by chance, on-line! Completing this tour in 4 days and 4 nights required us to leave Cincinnati Tuesday night and return Saturday night!Wednesday
About ten years ago, I clipped an article about the Toledo Museum of Art’s new Frank Gehry addition. For some reason, it took six years of living in Ohio before I finally saw this building, which is actually the University of Toledo’s School of Art, adjacent the Toledo Museum of Art, not the museum itself. In any case, there are many reasons to visit this grand regional museum, whose collection is astounding for a city Toledo’s size. The room with Greek, Egyptian and Assyrian antiquities is fabulous. The contemporary collection, which includes an early Christian Marclay video, an Op art room, a Juan Munoz sculpture and plenty of photo-realist paintings, is truly remarkable. And the café is pretty fabulous too! I’m totally looking forward to the upcoming Glass Pavilion, which will house their fabulous glass collection, originally purchased with Libbey Glass money.
Within an hour of leaving this museum, we arrived at the Detroit Institute of Art, whose purple carpet seemed more typical of a film premiere than a museum entry. Like many museums these days, the DIA is currently undergoing construction, so only a fraction of its collection is on display. Nonetheless, the four-wall Diego Rivera murals are stunning, bringing you one step closer to Detroit’s heyday as a car manufacturing headquarters. About a dozen rooms feature works from the world’s regions- Africa, India, China, Japan, North America, etc. The DIA’s rather haphazard Spirituality and Art assembled art from all eras and genres, despite the work’s original context. We left DIA in the pouring rain, only to find a melted parking ticket plastered to the windshield. We’ve have wanted to visit the Arab community in Dearborn for years, so we headed straight to the spanking new Arab American National Museum. While the building interior is quite striking with its marble and tiled interior, it has a long way to go before becoming a museum. One small gallery featured an uneven exhibition of contemporary Arab American art, which overflowed into the space outside the restrooms. We read a lot about the great number of Arab-Americans and their particular contributions in the realm of science, sports, entertainment, medicine… I already knew about Casey Kassam, Danny Thomas and Shakira, but there are dozens more like Heart Surgeon Michael DeBakey. If you know anything about Arab Nationalism, this place could become the American Museum of Arab Nationalism, which I mean more as a tease than a jab. We met a guy who gave us terrible directions to his favorite restaurant, but we found an alternative shawarma stand with delicious food, surrounded by an authentic ambience.
We still had a three-hour drive ahead of us to meet the Lake Michigan ferry, so we drove like banshees across the state. While waiting to board the boat, Sandy heard someone yell “Man overboard,” twice. I leaned out the window and offered my life-guarding services (even though it was pitch dark and I didn’t have a suit, let alone a rescue tube) . I was super-relieved that it was only a mandatory coast-guard drill! Toledo Museum of Art- http://www.toledomuseum.org
Detroit Institute of Art- http://www.dia.org
Arab American National Musuem- http://www.theaanm.org
Lake Express Ferries- http://www.lake-express.com
Thursday
The next morning we scoured one of our favorite museums, the Milwaukee Art Museum, which I visit several times a year (see November 28, 2004 blog). We thought we could zoom through it in two hours, but ended up spending three, wishing that we had still more time to sample cuisine in their charming café, which overlooks the lake. After viewing “Cut: Film as Found Object,” we spent some time exploring MAM’s fabulous contemporary collection, which includes works by last decade artists Laura Owens and Cornelia Parker. “Cut” was rather curt. I kept thinking of the dozens of better (and more influential) examples this exhibition, which focused exclusively on the artistic project of sampling to produce something wholly original, could have included. It’s always great to revisit works by Kevin and Jennifer McCoy, who truly are outstanding artists. I was most pleased to see Christian Marclay’s infamous video that exquisitely samples musical scenes from scores of flicks. That’s the kind of art I’d install in a hospice, which is of course, the highest compliment! We spent another hour in “The Arts and Crafts Movement,” whose galleries were arranged by nation (UK, DE, FR, AU, BE, HU, US and Scandinavia) enabled one to contrast handmade furniture flourishing across borders. Much to my confusion, the curators included objects that might be considered prairie style, werkstatte, jugendstijl or even art nouveau in another context. Before jumping in the car, we jogged through “Made in Japan: Postwar Prints,” which included several works from the Cincinnati Art Museum’s amazing collection of Japanese prints.
We high-tailed it to Minneapolis, where the Walker Art Center stays open until 9pm on Thursdays. The Walker was super packed, not only because its massive Herzog and de Meuron addition just opened, but because Thursdays are free. The new building is spectacular, mostly because it combines classical galleries with crazy-ass angular hallways and public spaces. As with Herzog and de Meuron’s Tokyo Prada store (see November 3, 2004 blog), one feels sealed inside a fantastical crystalline cave. The old Walker buildings still have domestically-scaled spaces, while the addition features more monumental spaces. Their installing quartets of contemporary artists like Matthew Barney and Sherrie Levine, as well as abstract painters like Ellsworth Kelly and Joan Mitchell, positions their collection beautifully. By positing “alternatives” to the big lie of mid-century modernism centered in New York City, the Walker does what MOMA never has and never will. Based on research gleaned for past Walker exhibitions, the curators chaotically presents mid-century Japanese works, Fluxus kits and ephemera, loads of Arte Povera, Jasper Johns’ Duchampian props from Merce Cunngingham dance performances alongside American AbEx and pop art. The most stunning object in their whole collection is the actual tray-like tub, still stained with Yves Klein International Blue paint, in which Klein dragged his “live paintbrushes” to create his anthropometries. We also enjoyed chatting via keyboard with the Dolphin Oracle II (Richard Shelton and Piotr Szyhalski) and relaxing afterwards in the wonderful Wolfgang Puck’s 20.21 Restaurant and Bar, whose seating extends onto an outdoor veranda. We almost bought out the well-stocked Walker Shop… Shop with care!Friday
Since the Walker failed to feature that era’s “west coast” art, the Weissman Art Museum, a Frank Gehry-designed building situated a few miles away on the University of Minnesota “east” campus, picked up the slack. “West! Frank Gehry and the Artists of Venice Beach, 1962-1978” included dozens of wonderful works by too many artists like DeWain Valentine, Billy Al Bengston, Peter Alexander, Charles Arnoldi and John Altoon, who are too little known beyond Los Angeles. Gehry’s assembling this a cast of artists who influenced his architecture complements the Walker’s bold pose. We returned to the Walker to check out the by now, overcrowded (more sculpture than field) Minneapolis Sculpture Garden.
We then headed on to Madison whose micro-breweries are world renowned. We visited four remarkable bars (the Bar, Great Dane Brewery, Opus and Essen Haus) We tasted tons of beers, yet somehow spent only $18. Clearly, I must sampled far more than I purchased… we tried earth porter, pepper beer, cherry ale… You name it, it was all super delicious… Great Dane Brewery was by far my favorite (re: original brews).
Sue's favorite dinner.... Swedish Meatballs at IKEA.Milwaukee Art Museum- www.mam.org
Walker Art Center - www.walkerart.org
Minneapolis Sculpture Center- www.walkerart.org or www.minneapolisparks.org
Weissman Art Museum- www.weissman.umn.edu
Saturday
Less than ten miles outside of Chicago, we passed IKEA. Sandy had never been to one and I’d only been twice (Stockholm and Burbank), so we decided to stop. En route to the Stockholm store, artists told me that the IKEA founder’s favorite building was the Guggenheim museum, so he designed his stores to flow in one continuous spiral, forcing shoppers to pass through every department. There must be IKEAs somewhere that don’t follow this pattern, but the Chicago IKEA is not the exception. I love eating IKEA’s Swedish meatballs for lunch. Hilariously, Sandy felt that IKEA seemed so foreign that she just poked at the meal she wanted, rather than request it in English. I usually drink water, but you can’t beat $.60 fountain sodas. After traipsing along the spiraling path for nearly two hours, we finally continued on to Chicago. We managed to find street parking, but we didn’t arrive at the MCA until about 4:20pm. Fortunately, we had both already seen Dan Flavin’s remarkable survey at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth (see May 2, 2005 blog). This survey was definitely the best MCA installation that I’ve ever seen. Some of the works looked even better than they did in Ft. Worth. The other treat was a three-channel Aernout Mik video that invited viewers to piece clues together to figure out how buses had overturned. The pace was perfect. The camera panned the scene, opting to focus on various aspects of the story, giving you just enough information to feel like you were one of the investigators. The exhibition next door, “Tourism,” was half missing (supposedly already at its next London venue). Even so, the exhibition’s approach to Tourism was a bit flat footed, as if everywhere artists go amounts to some touristic activity.
Heading down Michigan Avenue toward the boats docked on the river, we wanted to catch an architectural cruise. Since the tours were over, we kept walking until we passed the House of Blues and decided that this might be an interesting place to eat. Fortunately, the food was super delicious. We left around 10pm and got home at 4am…
