We headed north one recent Saturday morning under a low, gray autumn sky, which seemed appropriate for our destination — a new exhibition of works by Rembrandt in Wisconsin. We had lured our art-museum-averse kids (ages 10, 6 and 15 months) with the promise of taking a train ride to a museum whose roof opened and closed.
“Rembrandt and His Time: Masterworks from the Albertina, Vienna” is on exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum (MAM) and consists of more than a hundred drawings, prints and paintings from the Old Master and his contemporaries.
As it happened, we woke up late on the morning of our adventure and reached the Amtrak station in Glenview just as the train pulled up, blocking our way to the station to buy tickets. We watched dejectedly as the train moved on to Milwaukee.
So much for the train ride.
On to Plan B. We returned to the car. Driving to Milwaukee turned out to be a decent alternative, giving us time to regroup and appreciate the trees turning color. We found the museum without a hitch, and were impressed by the streamlined white building that seemed ready to set sail on Lake Michigan.
It was almost noon, the time when the museum stages a daily demonstration of the Quadracci Pavilion’s louvered sunscreen opening and closing. The landmark building, designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava, opened in 2001 and has become a destination in its own right. Our family huddled on a footbridge connected to the museum with about 40 other chilled visitors, all of us facing a brisk wind. At noon, we heard recorded music wafting from the museum and, a few seconds later, watched in awe as a vertical structure on the roof slowly unfurled its symmetrical wings like a giant bird.
We would have cheered when it was over but were too cold, so we ran straight into the breathtaking, glass-enclosed reception hall. To the right, a towering Dale Chihuly glass sculpture beckoned the kids with jewel-like color and fantastic, writhing forms. As we pried them away from the work five minutes later, the 10-year-old said, “This is the coolest place ever.”
Hungry from all the excitement, we headed down to the Museum Cafe, which offered a selection of sandwiches, salads and soups for adults, as well as a standard children’s menu (open 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily). We enjoyed the dazzling view of the lake and a dozen or so sailboats.
After lunch, we made our way to the Rembrandt exhibition, on loan from the Albertina, a renowned museum in Vienna. Although it’s been only a year and a half since the Art Institute of Chicago’s own spectacular Rembrandt exhibition, visitors should find something here to pique their interest. The exhibition covers a lot of territory, presenting 130 works by Rembrandt, his predecessors and his contemporaries. Like the Art Institute exhibition, this one focuses on drawings and etchings, including several works by Dutch artists that have never been exhibited before, as well as 15 paintings. It traces the development of several genres, including figure studies, landscapes and interiors, and shows themes shared by 17th Century Dutch and Flemish artists within a historical context.
Among the highlights are Rembrandt’s remarkable pen-and-ink landscape “Cottages Under a Stormy Sky” and two dramatically different states of the drypoint etching “The Three Crosses,” one showing the crucifixion scene flooded with light and the other shrouded in darkness. Viewers may feel a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number of artists presented and subjects tackled, but there is an excellent audio tour ($4) to help sort through the exhibition’s different strands, and several gallery talks.
Rembrandt may mean different things to different viewers — history’s most brilliant etcher, a portrayer of psychological truth, a source of artistic inspiration — but no one would accuse him of being a big draw for young children.
With that in mind, MAM’s education department has gone to great lengths to engage young viewers in Rembrandt’s processes and the pressing aesthetic issues of his day. The education gallery offers activities that help children learn the different functions drawing serves, from preparatory sketches to finished artworks. Children are encouraged to draw quick figure studies, still-lifes and self-portraits with some of the same materials Rembrandt himself used, such as red chalk.
Our kids liked doing “blind drawings” (drawing without looking at the paper) of model elephants, which referred to elephant drawings in the main exhibition. They also had a great time with the inventive children’s programming that continues into the museum’s permanent collection. At the entrance to the galleries, we found a helpful assistant offering tool belts chock full of implements designed to teach them about color theory, notepads on which they could sketch in the galleries, and family audio guides to help them navigate the artworks.
Another big hit were the costume fragments — armored gloves, a smock, a 17th-Century-style collar — similar to those appearing in certain artworks and that the kids could put on. Once they found the art containing the item they were wearing, the assistant took a Polaroid of them, which he placed in cards that gave a brief history of each work. The kids took their pictures and we reluctantly left.
Best of all, we made it back to Chicago in time for dinner.
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Getting there
BY CAR: Drive north on I-94 to I-794 east and exit at the Lakefront (Exit 1F). Proceed north on Lincoln Memorial Drive to Art Museum Drive and follow the signs to museum parking. (The museum’s garage doesn’t take credit cards, so be sure to have cash.) Travel time is roughly two hours from the Loop, depending on traffic. Parking costs from $3/hour to $15/day; open 9:45 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sat.-Sun., 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays and to 8 p.m. Thu.
BY TRAIN: For advance-of-travel tickets, contact Amtrak at 800-872-7245 or www.amtrak.com. Or purchase at the station; Amtrak stops at Chicago Union Station, Summit, Glenview, La Grange, Hammond, Ind. and Whiting, Ind. Round-trip tickets from Union Station to Milwaukee are $20 each way; kids ages 2-15 are $10 each way; seniors/disabled are $17 each way. Travel time is 89 minutes. You can walk the mile-and-a-half from the station (directions available) or take a cab.
INSIDER TIPS: The museum has plenty of features for kids, including the Children’s Audio Tour, but one oversight: there are no strollers available to rent. No flash photography. Sketching with pencils only. Large bags must be checked in the coatcheck.
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WHEN: Through Jan. 8; open daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; later hours Thursday to 8 p.m.
WHERE: Milwaukee Art Museum, 700 N. Art Museum Drive.
TICKETS: The special exhibit is $14 adults, $12 seniors, $10 students, children 12 and under free; ticket includes museum admission.
MORE INFORMATION: Call 414-224-3200 or www.mam.org.
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Gallery talks
MAM is offering several gallery talks and lectures in conjunction with the Rembrandt exhibition:
Nov. 1 at 1:30 p.m. Gallery talk: “Conservation of Works on Paper.”
Nov. 12 at 2 p.m. Gallery talk: “Beauty and the Beast: Rembrandt’s Animals for Children.”
Dec. 6 at 1:30 p.m. and Dec. 18 at 2 p.m. Gallery talk: “Exhibition Highlights.”
Nov. 10 at 6:15 p.m. lecture: Dr. Ernst van de Wetering, professor at the University of Amsterdam, will discuss the Rembrandt Research Project, which has set out to authenticate every painting by the master.
Dec. 8 at 6:15 p.m. lecture: Mariet Westermann, director of the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, will speak on the role of drawings in Rembrandt’s career.
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About the museum
When the Milwaukee Art Museum unveiled its renovation and major expansion in October 2001, the rooftop sunscreen, officially called the Burke Brise Soleil, got a lot of attention. To be sure, the sunscreen, which lifts to a wingspan of 217 feet with the help of steel fins and 22 hydraulic cylinders, is pretty amazing. But it’s just one element in Spanish-born architect Santiago Calatrava’s design highlighting the lakefront setting. Below the sunscreen lies a glass-enclosed reception hall that offers a light- filled, unparalleled view of Lake Michigan. A single-story galleria attached to the hall curves like a wave. And then there’s the Reiman Bridge, a 250-foot suspended pedestrian bridge that links the city’s downtown to the museum. It features a 200-foot mast that reinforces the feeling of being on a ship.
The Burke Brise Soleil “wings” open and close each day with museum hours of operation. They also “flap” in a demonstration opening at noon.
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