Museum of Art Institute of Chicago Research Paper

Art Exhibition Re-Do
12/05/12
The Museum of Art Institute in Chicago

The second-largest art museum in the country, the Art Institute houses treasures and masterpieces from around the globe, including a fabulous selection of both impressionist and post-impressionist paintings. The theme I decided to pick was called the Holiday Thorne room. The Holiday Thorne room has the most magnificent displays including descriptions of holiday objects that were labeled as historic from previous ownerships. Some artifacts took us all the way back to Germany and China which sparked the room for the holiday spirit. The 68 dollhouse-like rooms, built on a scale of one inch to one foot, display what rooms around the world looked like in different historical eras. The curator name was Lindsay Morgan, and said adding the Christmas decorations was a lot of work. Morgan says she spends months researching the holiday traditions for each room. Last year on NBC’s Today show, they had labeled the Art Institute’s most popular attractions. As I was absorbing the room’s beauty, I took note on how the rooms were specially made for holiday fineries that showcases historical traditions. Also they had offers on the window into seasonal festivities. New to the decorating tradition this year is the Pennsylvania Dutch (German) room. And, for the first time in 50 years, an original German Rococo room will be displayed in the same Thorne room.
Nine other parts of the room continue the beloved decorating tradition. Among the most elaborate is the English drawing of the Victorian Period, the only photo with a Christmas tree. A new feature they added was the Christmas tree or tannebaum, which was only brought to England from Germany in 1840 with the marriage of Prince Albert to Queen Victoria. The Thorne Room tree are based on a famous engraving of the royal couple and their children surrounding a trimmed and gigantic tree. It represented an image that would forever popularize this holiday fixture. Other ornamented displays included the English Great Hall of the Tudor period with a wassailing bowl, yule log, and an essential part of the costuming for that period’s singing-dancing revelers—a mummer’s mask; the Virginia Entrance Hall with mistletoe, wreath, and garland; the French Provincial Bedroom with shoes, or sabots, lined up before the fireplace, a crèche, and puzzle; the modern-era California Hallway with an Otto Natzler mid-century menorah and box with a dreidel; the traditional Chinese interior set to ring in the Chinese New Year; and the New Orleans and New Mexico rooms filled with regional treats of the season. The Modern Wing dazzles with natural light, and hangs Picassos and Mirós on its 3rd floor.
There are so many beautiful artworks to see after witnessing the Thorne room. That's why we took the guided tour in having visualizing other Christmas decorations in sight throughout the museum. Got a very enthusiastic and well experienced guide who took us across different departments of the museum, linking different cultures and taking the time to look back at the history of Christmas and what it really meant.