The 1987 renovation and reinstallation of the Art Institute of Chicago`s galleries of European art set new standards for logic, beauty, appropriateness and comfort. So it is in every way consistent that the first phase of the museum`s reinstallation of its collection of works from the 20th Century should be on the same high level.
Still, when 16 rooms above Gunsaulus Hall and on the top floor of the Morton Wing open to the public on Wednesday, visitors will find art from 1900 to 1950 presented with greater clarity than in any other general museum in America.
For the first time in the Institute`s history, the collection is shown in much of its richness, presenting about 400 pieces in a chronological installation that integrates European and American paintings, sculptures, prints, drawings, photographs, even ephemera. Included are 32 new acquisitions and 48 other pieces not seen for several years.
This reveals a depth to the collection that may astonish viewers who have thought the Institute`s chief strength was in its famous Impressionist and Post-Impressionist holdings. But as the planner of the installation, curator Charles F. Stuckey, said, ”A dozen museums throughout the world could equal our fine 19th Century collections, but only six or eight specialist museums can rival what we have from the 20th Century.”
Not that anyone outside the museum would have known it in years past, as the collection was geographically split: American works downstairs, European pieces above Gunsaulus Hall and the Morton Wing, large-scale contemporary American art in galleries around McKinlock Court. So consolidation clearly was in order, and there were revelations once it occurred.
”The museum has a really wonderful 20th Century sculpture collection, which came as a surprise to both Charlie (Stuckey) and me,” said Institute director James N. Wood, who in the project`s final phase assumed an editorial role. ”The installation now allows us to recognize this strength and, wherever possible, presents sculpture on pedestals that enable viewing in the round.”
A surprise for viewers is the elimination of an arbitrary break at 1900. They will move directly from Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works in the Allerton Building to the first of the new rooms, which presents paintings by Claude Monet and Edouard Vuillard as well as Childe Hassam, William Glackens and Everett Shinn.
No other museum mixes Europeans and Americans in this way. But the sense of it is perfect, first because American artists of the period had a European orientation that allows Glackens and Shinn to represent currents in works by Degas and Renoir that the Institute does not have, and, second, because the 20th Century comes to be ”about” a variety that the presence of American artists underlines.
Chronology gives the installation enough flexibility to acknowledge moments between the World Wars when many Americans reacted against European esthetics, adopting an isolationism whose vehemence is best conveyed by showing a number of such works by themselves. Thus, two rooms that seem to be American interludes nonetheless impart significant ideas of separateness common to the time.
Lighting and color of the gallery walls also have much to say, though subtly. The 1987 renovation brought natural light into rooms holding works created under that condition. But 20th Century art does not at all depend on it, and everything on view-including pieces in the galleries with skylights-is appropriately, artificially illuminated.
The rooms that bring us to the mid 1930s are gray, as if echoing the color of America`s premier modernist showplace, Alfred Stieglitz`s Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession. Yet, thereafter, the installation uses a flat white that became the rule just before World War II, not least in An American Place, Stieglitz`s final gallery. The one exception occurs in a small (midnight blue) room devoted to Joseph Cornell boxes, which again has a precedent, this time set by the artist.
Many will recall that the 37 Cornells given the Institute in 1982 by Edwin and Lindy Bergman originally were displayed in a room-within-a-room designed by architect Ron Krueck. This shrine is not a part of the new installation, as the pieces have been split into chronological segments. Several Cornells are on a wall unit derived from one of his gallery exhibitions; others are in a case resembling a library table-also the mode of display for selections from the Mary Reynolds collection of artist`s books and ephemera.
Careful viewers will notice how many works on loan supplement the museum`s permanent collection, and the Bergman family has been especially generous here, too, filling no fewer than five rooms with exceptional pieces that will come to the Institute as a bequest. These join more than 20 major acquisitions-including Constantin Brancusi`s ”Golden Bird,” Jackson Pollock`s ”The Key,” and an untitled screen by Yves Tanguy-made by the museum since Stuckey became curator in 1987 and now on view for the first time.
Withal, the installation does not employ works didactically, juxtaposing one with another to make specific art historical points, as happens most often at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. True, Pablo Picasso`s ”Mother and Child” is next to a fragment the artist cut from the painting and never destroyed. But there, as with the placement of, say, Brancusi`s ”Golden Bird” in relation to Henri Matisse`s ”Bathers by a River,” the effect is primarily visual, a matter of giving a heightened esthetic experience.
The Institute carries on its teaching through about a dozen large text panels of the sort found in exhibitions such as the recent Gauguin and Warhol retrospectives but never in the permanent collection. These discuss at some length specific pieces, donors, artistic schools or techniques, and the only wonder is why they were never used before.
The installation also caused some rethinking about wall labels, which once provided only the barest information: artist, title, date and the like. All the new labels are more detailed, giving changes in nationality, admitting uncertainties about artists or dates, and explaining virtually every proper noun in the titles. Of course, not everyone will care that Georgia O`Keeffe`s ”Black Cross, New Mexico” was originally ”Black Cross, Arizona.” But such information is there for those who are interested, and that is an important step forward.
Work continues on the framing of paintings, reflecting a similar desire to present the artists` first thoughts. This, again, is the opposite of the Museum of Modern Art, which has given all paintings simple frames to compete as little as possible with formal qualities of the pictures. Stuckey is more comfortable with a kind of antiquarianism that minimizes his own design decisions. It is the most meticulous and potentially satisfying approach, but much remains to be done.
The reinstallation of art from the second half of the century will not take place until 1993 on the lower level of the Morton Wing, which currently serves as storage and provides some departmental offices. Until then, rotating selections of contemporary art will be in six galleries on the second floor of the Rice Building, which Stuckey would like to retain, though temporary exhibitions, such as the current Paul Strand retrospective, interrupt the program.
”There is no such thing as an ideal installation,” Stuckey said. ”The strength of ours will lie in its ability to change and keep works fresh. There always are other ways to organize a collection, and we don`t want to be blind to them in the years to come.”
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”Modern Art 1900-1950: The Collection Reinstalled,” a project designed by the Office of John Vinci, Inc., will open Wednesday on the second floor of the East and Morton wings of the Art Institute of Chicago, Michigan Avenue at Adams Street.
