Spring Break

Greetings from Chicago! I'm here for two days, then swinging down to Monmouth College where a friend has set up some speaking gigs. I spent much of today at the Art Institute of Chicago, one of my favorite places - and one which has considerably expanded in size since my last visit. As you can see, I sped through the museum's many collections, stopped in my track by individual works, among them these.

Detail from one of the Thorne Miniature Rooms,
Cape Cod Living Room 1750-1850 (c. 1940)

 Six female musicians, Tang Dynasty (8th C.)

Relief with Buddha Shakyamuni meditating in the Indrashala Cave
and Buddha Dipankara, Gandhara (2nd/3rd C.)

Detail (Dance) from Marc Chagall's America Windows (1977)

Adriaen van der Spelt and Frans van Mieris, 

Trompe L'Oeuil Still Life with a Flower Garland and a Curtain (1658)

Flowers and Fruit in a China Bowl, attr. Juan de Zurbaran (c. 1645)

El Greco, Saint Martin and the Beggar (1597/1600)

Perugino, Scenes from the Life of Christ (detail) (1500/1505)

Hale Woodruff, Twilight (c. 1926)

Christopher Wool (recent)

Bodhisattva, Gandhara (2nd/3rd C.)

Would you have guessed that it was the Zurbarán (fils) at which I nearly burst into tears? Not sure why that was, though I have a tender relationship with both still lives and with the work of Zurbaran (père).