The Art Institute`s new Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice Building is a handsome addition that opens with a spectacular Gauguin exhibition and otherwise shows considerable promise as a facility for displaying art.
At a cost of $23 million, the institute built a wing that increases gallery space by one-third, thereby surpassing the square footage of the Los Angeles County Museum while approaching that of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
But how the Art Institute works with the space is another matter, for each of the three floors has a distinctly different character, and in no case have particular strengths and weaknesses been established.
Viewers on opening day will see a series of experiments, with curators using their galleries to fulfill different goals or wishes-and proclaiming them all to the community at once.
So the issue here is less Thomas Beeby`s building than how well the staff has adapted to it-and, at this early stage, there are problems.
The reinstallation of the European galleries last year proved a success in large measure because it was so simple. A high number of works were in areas of the institute`s greatest strength, and the task was mainly to juxtapose and present them with maximum sensitivity.
This time, however, most of the pieces are not those that made the institute famous. And, perhaps in consequence, each department shows an extra measure of self-assertion that is mightily apparent in the ways they treat their galleries.
Last March, the department of 20th-Century painting and sculpture announced it would install a survey of the permanent collection from 1900 through the 1960s. This was to be on the top floor of the new building, in galleries encircling the two-story sculpture garden.
But the department`s curator, Charles Stuckey, had started at the institute only six months before, and as he became familiar with the collection, he contracted his survey to emphasize the museum`s lesser-known strengths in Abstract Expressionism and large-scale American art of the 1960s. Stuckey also went outside the museum, filling lacunae with first-rate works from private collections. Thus his installation is an ideal view of how institute holdings from the `40s through the `70s might develop, based, of course, on the generosity of the collectors he is courting.
Now, this is the kind of gesture the art community loves, but Stuckey made it at the expense of early modern works the institute already owns. Some of these he will mount in the old building after next Sunday, when the traveling exhibition of Dutch and Flemish paintings closes, but viewers still will miss the modernist pieces here, as the absence of works done before 1930 gives a less vivid impression of the century`s diversity.
Stuckey`s emphasis additionally draws attention to one of the less happy features of the building, the loggia that permits viewers a look across the Illinois Central Gulf tracks to the old museum and Michigan Avenue skyline.
Much can be said about how it shows the parallel architectural development of capitalism and culture, but more to the point are the installation problems it causes.
A majority of viewers will reach the third floor from stairs at the north end, expecting a chronology to begin in galleries immediately east or west. However, either of these starting points would have put some of the largest works in the gallery that precedes the loggia, which does not have walls wide enough to accommodate them.
Given Stuckey`s emphasis, the only solution was to have viewers walk the entire length of the floor to the south end, where they begin with a room devoted to works by Ivan Albright before entering a chronology that forces them to backtrack.
This might be acceptable if it at least followed a pattern common to the other floors, but from department to department each point of entry into a chronology is different.
The ceiling height of the topmost galleries is different, as well, being 21 1/2 feet to only 11 feet in the first- and second-floor spaces. This is logical, given that the departments of European decorative arts and American art would exhibit works of much smaller scale than contemporary paintings.
Still, the constriction of space registers on a viewer so acutely that both the first- and second-floor galleries feel as if they are underground.
In the American rooms, the feeling derives in part from an open sculpture court leading to galleries whose interior views curator Milo Naeve has blocked with walls and platforms presenting some of the collection`s choicest objects. These mini-installations nicely introduce the works of each period but also force viewers around them into enclosed spaces that continue to zigzag.
The depth of most of the galleries is 26 1/2 feet, exactly that of the 20th-Century rooms above. But the older American works are greater in number and kind, requiring varied modes of display that call for protective measures more cumbersome than stanchions or moldings simply attached to the floor.
Then, too, Naeve shows a preference for high color, painting sections of each gallery in some of the brightest tints seen at the institute since his installation for last year`s John Singer Sargent exhibition. There are, of course, historical precedents that make this less a matter of taste, but one is justified in thinking something amiss when a color overwhelms an entire group of paintings, as it does to the Whistlers here.
In any event, some of the colors sour everything in their immediate vicinity while others spill over from one gallery to the next, contributing to a sense of being buried alive in a decorator`s salon. A pity, since Naeve isolates and presents a great many works-from furniture to folk art-with exceptional sensitivity.
Here and on the floor above, the sculpture court dictates a circular movement from period to period. But as no such court is in the downstairs space for European decorative arts, curators Lynn Springer Roberts and Ian Dunlop have a room-within-a-room that functions as an orientation hub.
Unfortunately, viewers require much more help in finding the literally thousands of decorative pieces the museum displays in three separate areas, only two of which are continuous.
Works from medieval times through the mid-17th Century are in the old building, shown in cases along the corridor known as Gunsaulus Hall. Then, nearly 1,000 pieces from 1650 to 1900 are downstairs in the new wing, followed by 20th-Century works in the section of the old building that overlooks the west end of the McKinlock Court Garden Restaurant.
Those able to follow the chronology are not always likely to find it pleasant, given the radical differences of the spaces. But should one make it through to the end, the 20th-Century gallery does open up, giving relief from the claustrophobia again caused by many small objects-including splendid selections from the textile department-displayed elaborately under 11-foot ceilings. It makes one uneasy to think that this is only 20 percent of the entire collection.
Very different from all these galleries is the third floor space for special exhibitions, Regenstein Hall. It essentially is a 19,000-square-foot cube designed with two central rectangles for storage of the crates from its temporary shows.
One exit leads to a nearby loading dock, another to a space that can be used as a store, and yet a third to an audio-visual gallery containing long carpet-covered benches.
”The Art of Paul Gauguin” will be shown in Regenstein Hall and it looks beautiful. Stuckey`s major departure from the chronological arrangement at the National Gallery is a grouping that introduces Gauguin with most of the show`s self-portraits along with a map indicating the extent of his travels. But there are many nice small divergences, too, involving wall colors, extended text panels and special mountings of prints the institute owns.
Stuckey also added enough pieces from Midwestern collections to warrant publication of a supplement to the already thorough catalogue. So the museum really has an extraordinary exhibition with which to celebrate.
The institute`s plans include an expanded textile department (scheduled to open in December), reinstallation of the miniature Thorne Rooms (late winter or early spring), the establishment of a new architectural study center (mid-1989), an enlargment of the spaces devoted to Oriental art and the conversion of both floors of the Morton Wing into more 20th-Century European and American galleries (1990).
One suspects the Morton project will lead officials to look at the loggia with some regret, as the museum then will need another bridge across the tracks at that very spot to bring together the 20th-Century holdings.
But let us resist the impulse to look ahead too far. The institute now has a building whose most effective use the public will help determine. And only after a great many visitors pass through the doors will it make sense to perform major modifications or merely fine tuning.
This is an exciting time, then, not because the building is complete with everything in place but because a period of trial and error has just begun.
Veteran museumgoers will find their pleasure augmented by the reappearance of many works that have not been on view for years. Others will rejoice in an equally large number of new acquisitions.
Either way, the Art Institute is once again a marvelous place for discovery.
