iArt Institute of ChicagoGrant Park / Loop
Mary Cassatt: After Impressionism
The first Art Institute show devoted to Cassatt in over 25 years brings together 70 paintings and works on paper from the late 1880s to the early 1900s, her most ambitious and experimental period.
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Cassatt's biggest painting isn't here, because nobody knows where it is. Modern Woman, a mural about 60 feet wide, hung in the Woman's Building at the 1893 World's Fair in Jackson Park and was last recorded in a Chicago storage facility in 1912. One room stands in for it: her letters to Bertha Palmer, a looped video, and an 1893 book open at the only known colour reproduction of part of it.
Around it, in Galleries 182 to 184, are more than 70 paintings, pastels and colour prints from the late 1880s to the early 1900s. You turn a corner onto the striped dress of The Child's Bath, then a run of prints made after Japanese woodblocks. Newcity's reviewer singled out the reworked series, like the versions of The Fitting, each a different dress colour or turn of the arm.
A $7 exhibition ticket is needed on top of general admission (members go free). Thursdays run to 8pm, and it closes on 3 January.
Look for
The Child's Bath
In Gallery 184, a woman steadies a child on her lap and holds its foot in the washbasin, seen from so steeply above that the patterned carpet seems to stand upright.
The Modern Woman room
Cassatt's letters to Bertha Palmer and William Walton's 1893 fair book, open at the only known colour reproduction of part of the lost mural's central panel, with Child Picking a Fruit nearby.
The versions of The Fitting
Look for the same fitting-room scene several times over, each version changed slightly: a different dress colour, a small turn of the arm.
Woman Bathing
In this colour print a woman stands over a washbasin, a mirror catching part of her reflection, her gown striped green and pink against a blue carpet patterned with leaves.
Breakfast in Bed
Lent by the Huntington, it shows a child sitting on the covers over its reclining mother, both flushed, the mother watching through lowered lids; Newcity's reviewer picked it as the standout.
Good for
- First-Timers
- Nerding Out
- Out-Of-Town Guests
Skip if
You want to see the mural itself: it is lost, and shown only through letters, books and video.
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Image credits
9
- Mary Cassatt: After ImpressionismCourtesy of Art Institute of Chicago
- Flyway City: Architecture for a Flourishing EcosystemPhoto by Steve Hall, courtesy of Studio Gang.
- Chicago's Living HabitatPhoto by Madison Smith
- Currents: 60 Years of the Chicago Architecture CenterCourtesy of Chicago Architecture Center
- Art Institute of ChicagoDiego Delso, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Chicago Architecture CenterAlanscottwalker / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Museum of Contemporary PhotographyAjay Suresh via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
- Shedd AquariumDiego Delso, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Field MuseumPaul Sableman via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0