Page 4 of 7
Washington, DC
When the soul of the city was laid to rest and the nights forgotten and left for dead
If you have read previous slideshows, you know that I like to rank museums, and in any of those (never asked for) museum rankings, the Hirshhorn in Washington, DC would easily be in the top five. Designed by Gordon Bunshaft of SOM, the same guy responsible for the Lever House in New York and the Beinecke Rare Books Library at Yale in New Haven, the building is like a great big concrete donut filled with really good contemporary art. It’s always a reason to stop by it when you’re in DC, and sometimes it’s a reason to go to DC all by itself.
This is one of those times when the trip to DC was worth it just to see the Hirshhorn. This is Doug Aitken's "Song 1", a site specific 360 degree video installation at the Hirshhorn Museum on the mall in Washington, DC. What you're missing from these somewhat blurry images are surprisingly large crowds watching along with me and a soundtrack that can be heard as far away as the East Wing of the National Gallery, a near continuous Lynchian loop of "I Only Have Eyes For You", and yes, it's as annoying as you imagine. Still the video part was incredible.
Even though the Hirshhorn was reason enough to take the train to Washington, DC, it actually wasn’t the (sole) reason for my trip this year. Once again I was there to participate in the Epilepsy Walk on the mall to support my awesome niece Darma. It usually involves walking around for an hour or two with a great big crowd in the morning, usually arounf the mall on a seemingly different route most every year.
As for the family pictured here, I have no idea who they are, other than other people participating in the Epilepsy Walk that day. Maybe they’re from wherever Green Haven is, or maybe it’s just a random meeting with a giant bird wearing gym clothes. I have no firm answer either way.
The slideshow starts to lose its somewhat chronologically accurate order as we sprint ahead a few months to Chicago.
I travel somewhat frequently to Chicago (usually a few times a year), and I follow a few basic hotel strategies now that my all time favorite (Hotel 71) is no longer a contender. One is to pick a hotwire hotel in the general River North / Streeterville area, close to attractions and restaurants and easy to get to without a car. My second option is to pick one of the hotels near the Rosemont Blue Line stop, ideally the Hyatt since it’s closer. They’re always more affordable and the Blue Line commute weekend isn’t great but it isn’t terrible. The third option is to just stay at the damn airport Hilton. This is great if you have an early flight out, and the commute into the city is comparable to staying in Rosemont. Plus if you have a runway facing room, the view can be pretty great.
Meanwhile downtown at the Art Institute, a travesty has kind of been fixed. The Marc Chagall windows have finally been returned from their multi year restoration project, although they have been exiled from their once prominent location to a hard to find and hard to reach corner, way, way, way back from anything you came to see. Plus there's an annoying column that wrecks the experience of seeing all three like you used to. I should write an angry letter or something.
Let’s now check in on some of our favorites in Chicago. Like Anish Kapoor's still wonderful (and impossible to not photograph) Cloud Gate and Jaume Plensa's Crown Fountain, same as it ever was.
I didn’t see (another) Cubs game this time, but did get all the way up to Wrigley Field to take a tour of the stadium, something I hadn’t done before. The tour took me (and everyone else on the tour) to places like the press box, both clubhouses, the Cubs' dugout and even to the field itself. It was a good tour and kind of weird (but interesting) to see the empty stadium on a nice warm day.
This was the first time that I made it to Oak Park, Illinois for the annual Wright Plus event, a day when they open up private Frank Lloyd Wright houses up for tours. Every year they open up different houses, some open up every three or four years and some (like this one) open up every 12 years. This is the William Martin House, the nicest one of the five Wright houses I had seen today. My $100 ticket gave me access to nine houses (although four were other non Wright Oak Park historical houses that I intentionally skipped) as well as a free one day 2012 pass to the Robie House, Unity Temple, the Rookery (!) and the Wright home and studio. As it turns out, I wasn't the only one who thought this was all worth $100. The crowds were tremendous, it took at least an hour wait for each of the houses and I was lucky. The Martin House may have been an hour wait for me (I did it first this morning) but by early afternoon that wait had at least doubled. Wright Plus indeed.
Another of the Wright houses (Oscar Balch House), with its terrific expansion/compression interior spaces, twisting entry sequence, art glass windows, roman bricked fireplace, continuous wood banding, custom built in furniture and all of the other bells and whistles you would expect to see in a still wonderful hundred year old Prairie Style house.
