On Monday arvo I cruised over to the very impressive sounding Art Institute of Chicago. Unfortunately I only had about 2.5 hours to see it because I needed to be at Sears Tower for sunset. So for that visit I concentrated on the American art collection and left the rest for another day. On the way to the American art section there was a crazy medieval armour display. The suits looked like they weighed 30kg.

I had expectations for the American art collection and unfortunately they weren't met. A lot of the pieces were furniture owned by rich people and portraits of the rich people from the 18th and 19th century. The furniture was tolerable, and I could see for example how the form of a couch drew attention to the fine pattern on of its upholstery (designed by a French immigrant). But the portraits were unpalatable. I can't really explain why. Perhaps because this was Martin Luther King Jr Day and we the museum visitors, all white, were looking at the portaits of rich white old dead people... While the gallery was attended by a gang of security guards, all black, who appeared to be very bored and slightly resentful of their guests.

So how does it compare to the Perth Art Gallery? Well I think it's a lot bigger. There were no classic Aussie landscape pictures. But there were nice paintings of water reflections, etc, in the Impressionist style. Perth Art Gallery has a decent area for indigenous painting (not just line & dot pictures either). But here there were only a few little drawings of Indian chiefs amongst the "Wild West" gallery. The rest were violent exhibits depicting the frontier battles. There were some really exciting bronze statues of American horsemen fighting the Indians. Back in Perth there are quite a few installation art pieces. In the contemporary American art section here there are none. However I haven't yet visited the entire museum.

This pianoforte was made in 1812. Poor bastards... it looks like a terrible instrument to play!