Renzo Piano’s Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago isn’t simply the best new building to hit Chicago in years. It represents the triumph of a type — the art museum with parallel masonry walls, generous expanses of glass, and an oversailing roof that serves as a louvered sunshade for galleries below. When Piano introduced this type at his Beyeler Foundation Museum near Basel, Switzerland, in 1997, it was overshadowed by the hoopla surrounding Frank Gehry’s eruption of titanium in Bilbao. Yet time has revealed the Beyeler model to be both durable and flexible. It has now winningly reappeared in his diminutive Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas as well as the large-scale Modern Wing, which, at an imposing 264,000 square feet, makes the Art Institute the nation’s second-largest art museum.
These similar but distinct iterations, which effortlessly synthesize Classical repose and Modern translucency, naturally offend critics for whom architecture is a never-ending quest for novel shapes. But Piano is unafraid to reuse and reimagine his type. His genius is to adapt it to distinct conditions of function, scale, and site, which in Chicago includes a choice spot across from Millennium Park, the city’s new town square. Millennium Park is packed with attention-getting architecture and public sculpture, including Frank Gehry’s exuberant Pritzker Pavilion and its headdress of stainless steel. The last thing the park needed was another self-aggrandizing “wow” building on its borders. Instead, Piano wisely endeavored to produce an accumulation of ever-shifting, sensory delights — a journey that would ward off museum fatigue by entrancing the viewer at every step.
You have 0 complimentary articles remaining.
Unlimited access + premium benefits for as low as $1.99/month.