Art Museum in Chicago and an Exhibition

¶ … art museum in Chicago and an exhibition held in the University of Minnesota where I happened to stay for a week's vacation.

The Art museum of Chicago

I have always been interested in art. It transports me to a different place and calms me. Therefore, I decided to select the famous art museum of Chicago as one of my places to visit.

Being philosophically inclined, the exhibit that made the greatest impact on me and had me wandering around it various times was the marble statue of a group of figures -- naked men -- eyes closed, hands gently touching the shoulder of the one in front of them. There they stood in a closed circle, connected; yet disconnected as we are in real life. This was precisely reminiscent of our experience, and it reminded me of Liebniz's monads. Each of us exists singly in the world. Perceptions come in, register, and due to our experiences and past, we each see things in a different way. Longing to connect, the utmost we can do is place marble hands on another's shoulder. Ultimately, our eyes remain closed. We are windowless to the other's experience. Unfortunately, I forgot to note the name of the artist and attempting to track it down later ion the intent achieved no success. Nonetheless, over and again when I think of man's existence, I cannot but fail to remember the masterwork in the Chicago Museum of Art. It sums up our predicament precisely.

This Chicago Museum of Art is huge, and in order to make the most of my experience, I focused in on the impression and post-impressionism period that is one of my favorite eras. Cezanne's paintings call to me, as did Cailiebotte's 'Paris Street; Rainy Day." The style of their paintings, splattered, vague, catch a fleeting atmosphere or reality. One that is never fixed as we think it to be, but rather transient. Perhaps that is why I like Impressionist art as compared to earlier and more modern forms of paintings. These are invariably, almost always fixed. Yet life is by nature transient. The present has already passed, and it was this that impressionist painters sought to catch: the movement of the passing moments. The rain for instance on the cobbles of Cailiebotte's Paris street glisten, with the background buildings foggy and dim as they recede. Speckles of light intermixed with shade on the umbrellas and likewise on the road give off the atmosphere of a rainy, musty day. The faces of the pedestrians are obscured or unclear. The emphasis is clearly on the mood, and the mood comes across as crisp and fresh as the weather.

I love the Chicago Museum of Art it never fails to energize and stimulate me.

Minneapolis University: Exhibition

Shortly after I visited the Chicago Museum of Art, I saw a smaller exhibit in a place just as famous: the humongous University of Minneapolis, oen of the largest and most sprawling campuses in the world. The exhibit took up two rooms, was arranged by the students themselves and was laid out on the 6th floor of the library in a back corner. The demonstration was on the history of currency

Featuring a wide selection of notes and parchment as well as copper coins and coins that were so rusty and chipped they were almost indiscernible, one of the notes stated that it was found on the body of Abraham Lincoln at the time of his assassination. Another had a note that was retrieved from the Titanic. There were notes featuring famous American leaders during the Civil War, and currencies with imagery of slavery.

The exhibition visually demonstrated how the metal of the coin had to be extracted from its natural state often by mining before being turned into the required form.