Like many Chicagoans, I've been watching the construction of the Modern Wing of the Art Institute of Chicago for nearly four years, awaiting its opening. Unlike a majority of Chicagoans, I have been waiting for the opening so that I could stand on the third floor and look at the Lurie Garden. When the firm of Gustafson Guthrie Nichol Ltd originally designed the Lurie Garden, it tilted the Light and Dark Plates to the south for a better viewing from the Modern Wing. Renzo Piano also anticipated a symbiotic relationship between the two neighbors with a wall of glass that faces the Lurie Garden.
We took a members' preview tour on Thursday and went immediately to the third floor to see the garden. To my disappointment, a veil of two scrim shades hung inside the gallery windows, blurring a view of the garden. The scrims are used to protect the artwork from light damage, and today the sky was sunny and cloudless.
The best view I could find was from the patio in front of the museum restaurant, Terzo Piano.
Perhaps when the sun is lower in the sky and the day is cloudy, the museum staff will lift the scrims so that visitors can not only enjoy the artwork in the galleries, but also across Monroe Avenue.
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