Hear It Here: The Museum’s Audio Tour Experience

NARRATOR: It’s pretty cool, right? Do you you know what that is? This seemingly idyllic landscape of Niagara Falls was done by Thomas Cole. Cole was born in England, but emigrated to the United States in 1818.

ANNELISE MADSEN: Thomas Cole, today, is commonly thought of as the father of the Hudson River School, and the Hudson River School was the first great movement in landscape painting in the U.S.

NARRATOR: In 1829, Cole was getting ready to head off to England to seek additional training as an artist. But before he left, there was one thing he was determined to see first: Niagara Falls. Why? Well, by the 19th century, Niagara Falls was already an iconic American landscapes, nearly verging on mythical, and Cole did not want to throw away his shot to capture it.

So he travels to the Falls in upstate New York and sketches onsite, taking detailed notes, so that once he is in England he’d be able to recreate what he saw. But the landscape in front of you is not exactly what Cole experienced.

ANNELISE MADSEN: So there is, no doubt, a measure of agency of framing on Cole’s part. For example, if we look at this landscape we see the great colors of autumn in this scene. Well, Cole wasn’t there in autumn.

NARRATOR: And notice those two people down near the center of the painting.

ANNELISE MADSEN: He also places two Native American figures in the foreground, right atin the center. And that is, one, it marks the scale of the work, you see how small they are in comparison to the vastness of this natural scene, and it also marks the landscape as an American landscape.

NARRATOR: You may be thinking, “Okay he added some people and thought Fall was prettier, that’s no big deal, right?” Well, turns out that Cole left out a lot more than that.

ANNELISE MADSEN: He’s editing out quite a bit as it turns out. Because Niagara, already in 1830, is a prime tourist destination. So there are hotels right near by, there are factories that are harnessing the power of Niagara’s waters, and so you’re dealing with pollution already nearby. There are scenic outlooks for people to take in the great scene.

NARRATOR: Why would Cole edit all of this out of his painting? Well, just like we edit our photos to present an idealized the version of a particular moment, Cole was doing that with Niagara Falls. Cole was also concerned about the industrial expansion that he was witnessing in the U.S.

ANNELISE MADSEN: So in some ways he’s painting these romanticized views of natural wonders because he’s concerned that such views will at some point not be around or will vanish. Because if you look at a scene like this Cole is seeing the sublime power of nature. But someone else standing there may see a whole lot of timber and a market for the lumber industry. Or the power of the water rushing down the falls as something that could be harnessed for commercial value.

NARRATOR: When considering landscapes, like this one by Cole, it’s critical to think about how the artist is shaping what we see and what we don’t, and what their motivations behind those choices might be.

Sasash: Hello, my name is a Sasash and I am a member of Teen Council. Alma Thomas, the artist of the painting you’re in front of, never got the chance to go to Space but her fascination with America’s Apollo missions in the 1960s brought about the beginning of her Space Series. "Starry Night and the Astronauts," the final work in the series, uses thick brush strokes and vivid colors to evoke the image of space.

Narrator: Based on interviews and statements Thomas gave on Space Series, we decided to imagine what Thomas would have said had she been able to travel through Space. What follows is a fictional diary where Thomas is floating through the cosmos remarking on what she sees.

Jack King: "This is Apollo 7 Launch Control. We passed the six-minute mark in our countdown for Apollo 11; 12, 11, 10, 9, ignition sequence starts. Six— <aircraft blasts off>

Narrator: "Day Four. The view from here is amazing. It’s even better in person. It’s day four and I still can’t get over the beauty. I’m captivated by the charming colorful cosmos. The endless mosaic surface reflects the vivid visions and ambitions of those who came before me. I’ve stepped into my childhood dream. Walking among the stars I looked up at each night, these are the stars that I call mine, the ones that brought me hope and wonder. As I look through the porthole, Earth almost doesn’t look real. The world seems to shimmer as the sun touches it. Stepping into the expanse of horizon I’m surrounded by the cold, dark, shimmering stars, which oddly bring me warmth."

"Day 35. It’s phenomenal how much things have changed since I was a child. I grew up in horse and buggy days and remember marveling at the color TV in the living room. Never in my wildest dreams would I even imagine myself traveling through Space and bringing new discoveries to the public. The wonders beyond Earth called to me and I answered. I gave all my dreams, my hopes and my life to this great expanse of velvet blue."

"Day 89. Days here now to find the rotation of the Sun. The day is over when I choose and starts again when I wake up. I become lost in the abyss of color and it is in this sloth that I’ve sought to concentrate on beauty and happiness. I’m now becoming one with the stars. With every turn within the infinity of Space I stay further and further away from the idea of going back home."

Tobias Capwell: If you have any scrap of claustrophobia anywhere in your head, this is not the game for you. This is worse than being in a submarine. I am Tobias Capwell, and I’m Curator of Arms and Armor at the Wallace Collection in London. Yeah, jousting— certainly jousts in 16th century jousting armor, which are designed to give almost total protection, is a very difficult, technically complicated set of skills. You have to imagine all of your senses as deadened. You can’t hear very much, you can’t see very much, and you can’t feel very much. Riding a horse when you can’t see the horse or your hands or anything around you is really challenging, and you have to pay much more attention to your sense of touch and balance, and just your awareness of what you think should be there even though you can’t see it.

Jenny Tiramani: At the School of Historical Dress, we make clothes for people. We’ve never been asked to make clothes for an animal before. My name’s Jenny Tiramani, and I’m the principal of the School of Historical Dress. We didn’t feel confident in making the horse’s clothes until we’d seen some real ones, so Jonathan arranged for us to go to Innsbruck in Austria, and Vienna and study the surviving ones in the collection there. We were just shocked because we’ve all been used to looking at the paintings of people riding horses wearing these things, but the real one the velvet had rotted because the whole thing was a sandwich of a wool backing, a silk velvet front, and curved iron rods stitched between them, inside this thing. That’s why it looks three-dimensional. It’s amazing. I mean, it’s— there are very few people in the world who know this. And what it does, it gives a weight to the whole piece, and you can imagine that when the horse was moving, it would have this wonderful quality, this graceful kind of movement, whereas if there was nothing inside it. If it was just fabric, it would be really wimpy.

Martha Wolff: Well here you’re looking at a case of precious relics from the Church of Saint Blaise in Dubrovnik. I’m Martha Wolff, curator of European Painting and Sculpture before 1750. You want to single out the large reliquary with a transparent crystal in the center of it. This is the reliquary that contains the tooth of Saint John the Baptist, or what was thought to be the tooth of Saint John the Baptist.

Rebecca Long: A relic is anything that is from the body of a saint, or touched by the saint. I’m Rebecca Long, I am associate curator of European Painting and Sculpture before 1750. The reliquary objects that are presented here call back to the really central role of relics in the church, in that you really had to have a relic in order to found an altar.

Martha Wolff: It’s interesting that they had sort of advertising campaigns in a sense that Dubrovnik in Northwest Germany was on the root to Achen [ph?] which was a pilgrimage site. On your way to Achen, you could stop off at Dubrovnik and see their relics.

Rebecca Long: I mean it was a tourist industry, really. You would have these examples where a church was trying to establish itself on the pilgrimage route to wherever and they would even resort to stealing the body of a saint from another church so that they could establish themselves as the place to go and see, for example, the body of Mary Magdalene, or the Tooth of Saint John the Baptist.

Martha Wolff: We’ve recently had this examined as part of a project to look scientifically at the DNA and the carbon-dating of relics and they found that it was really very old. Of course we can’t prove that it had anything to do with Saint John the Baptist, but it’s older than other relics that claim to be part of Saint John the Baptist.

Rebecca Long: It’s not a chicken bone.

BLAIR KAMIN: As you come in, you are going through this kind of forest, this metaphorical forest, and the screens are beyond it. And so there’s a moment of confusion, and then there’s this clarity.

ERIN HOGAN: The Architecture of the Art Institute of Chicago: The Ando Gallery.

So tucked away at the back of the Japanese Art Galleries is a beautiful room that opened in 1992 that the Art Institute commissioned from the Japanese architect Tadao Ando. I tend to spend more time in this gallery wandering through the 16 pillars because I love that every step you take the pillars reorient your visual field.

JANICE KATZ: They are there in order to create a mental transition. And supposedly by the time you get to the other side you should be focused and calm. My name is Janice Katz and I am the Associate Curator of Japanese Art here at the Art Institute of Chicago. Being designed as a gallery for Japanese screens, it certainly functions very well for that because as you’ll note the ground line is continuous from the space where the visitors are through to the cases. And so they are in a way, inhabiting the same space as you are, which is how you would encounter them in Japan.

It’s part of the museum where one can be alone with one’s thoughts, more so than in other parts of the building. One can also being alone with a partner, and supposedly the Ando Gallery used to be one of the best public make out spots in Chicago. I don’t know if it still is.

ERIN HOGAN: What I’ve always appreciated about the Ando gallery is that it is an oasis of tranquility in a very busy museum, at the heart of a major American city, with trains and buses and pedestrians and cabs, but when you are in this gallery you don’t really have a sense of any of that happening around you. This is a really enclosed, beautiful, tranquil space. I’ve always considered it the chapel of the Art Institute.

BLAIR KAMIN: It’s done with great subtly. It’s not a kind of, showy, spectacle. But it’s really done by a master who realizes that quiet moves can speak as powerfully and as profoundly as showy ones. It’s rewarding in a deep way.

LINDSAY MICAN MORGAN: A1. Massachusetts living room and kitchen. Circa 1675 to 1700.

Most rooms have to be cleaned about every three to four months. There are some rooms that are mysterious and love to be dusty almost immediately. So I’m going to clean the Massachusetts living room and I’m going to open it up now. And here’s one of our magical keys.

One of the main parts that gets a bit of dust is actually where the keyhole is. So <laughs> we have people gratefully coming in by the masses right off the street, so they bring in a fair amount of dust from the outside. We’ll start removing the objects from the room. Now I’m going to pick up this largest piece of furniture, this cabinet from the back of the room. This has quite a few pieces of pewter. I try never to be in any kind of a rush. And I won’t deal with the fireplace, because Mrs. Thorne would actually gather the ash trays from her workers and save the ashes to put in the fireplaces. Of course, I’ll clean off the dust on the stones and everything, but we don’t want to dust in the fireplace really all that much, ‘cause we don’t want to lose the little ashy bits in there.

LINDSAY MICAN MORGAN: You know, some people love to joke about— if they see me during the day, they’re like, “Oh, where’s your mini-vacuum?” And we actually do have vacuums, but they’re not miniature at all.

The major tools that I use are a couple of different brushes. The fun part is getting your— you can actually get your whole head inside a room to be able to see around a corner or something.

Now let’s go ahead and get back in here. Okay. This chair goes over here and that one goes in the back.

MALE VISITOR: You’re setting up a room.

CHILD VISITOR: You’re setting up a room.

LINDSAY MICAN MORGAN: Yeah, we’re just inspecting everything and making sure everything is—

MALE VISITOR: I bet you they dusted it just like we dust our room at home.

LINDSAY MICAN MORGAN: We just did!

All right. And there we go. I’ll probably go back over that way, because I was a little rushed.

MALE VISITOR: Okay, should we keep looking?

LINDSAY MICAN MORGAN: Have fun, guys!

MALE VISITOR: Well, when you’re five this is cool.

LINDSAY MICAN MORGAN: This is cool when you’re fif—

I was like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” This is pretty cool at <inaudible>

I have to be very careful every time I’m within these rooms that these are such precious objects. It’s pretty— you know, quite an honor to be able to work with them.

NARRATOR:
Judith Barter, Field ¬McCormick Chair & Curator, American Arts.

JUDITH BARTER:
‘Nighthawks’ is a really fascinating painting. It’s such an American painting. The Americanness is in many of the details: The ‘Phillies Cigar’ ad above the diner. The salt shakers, the heavy-duty porcelain mugs. The napkin holders. The big coffee urns in the back. The soda jerk, with his cap on. It’s what America was like and what America liked in the ’30s and ’40s.

NARRATOR:
But look closer. There’s something unrealistic—and off-putting—about Edward Hopper’s scene.

JUDITH BARTER:
It looks real, but it’s not. There’s no sense of real depth. When you try to go deep into this picture, it pushes you back to the surface. He uses acid greens against bright yellows and oranges—the red dress of the woman with her orange hair. These set your teeth on edge, but they do work together; he was a brilliant colorist.] And if you look at the diner, there’s no way in or out except through that orange door that ostensibly goes to the kitchen. So it’s sort of a hermetically-sealed environment with these four people in this diner at night.

NARRATOR:
And…no one is talking. To many, ‘Nighthawks’ evokes a sense of loneliness. But Hopper himself disagreed with this interpretation. In an interview, he said.

[EDWARD HOPPER ARCHIVAL AUDIO]:
I think those are the words of critics. It may be true, it may not be true. It’s how the viewer looks on the pictures. What he sees in them.

JUDITH BARTER:
What I see in Hopper is a sense of everyman. That any of us could be sitting in this diner. it’s really the idea of we are individuals, but we have a collective consciousness as well. I think people just relate to the everydayness of it. They can put themselves in these pictures.