Once upon a time, the Sun-Times had a jazz critic and an opera critic, a book editor and a TV reviewer. All those experts, that passion and specialized knowledge, were washed away in the endless internet storm. Now their titles seem wild indulgences plucked from the deep past, something out of Louis XIV France: the keeper of the king’s slipper, the reviewer of rock ‘n’ roll concerts.
I don’t believe we ever had a museum critic. A shame, in a city like Chicago. I think I could step away from this general interest column hamster wheel and happily devote three days a week apprising you of what’s up at the Art Institute, the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Field Museum, That Rich Guy in Florida Whose Name Sticks in My Throat Museum of Science and Industry, and all the lesser lights: the radiant National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen, the museum formerly know as the Oriental Institute. And on and on.
When I was in Washington, D.C., as much as we enjoyed unpacking my son and daughter-in-law and tending, though never jiggling or kissing their new baby, my wife and I would occasionally slip away for a few hours to give the new parents some alone time. Believe it or not, as helpful we certainly were, they never once grabbed us by the lapels and implored, “No no, please stay!”
First stop was the National Portrait Gallery, an underappreciated wonderland. The good news is the lobotomy that the current administration seems intent on inflicting upon our cultural institutions has not yet manifested itself here. One of the first portraits I saw was of Opal Lee, “the grandmother of Juneteenth,” hanging in the entrance hall. I imagine it’ll be crated in some warehouse in suburban Maryland next time we visit, replaced by a black velvet painting of Kid Rock. The exhibit of Civil War portraits was so fascinating, my wife and I almost never made it further.
But I was interested in checking out the “America’s Presidents” gallery.
“I want to see if they’re all Trump,” I said.
The other 44 predecessors are still there, starting with Gilbert Stuart’s full length George Washington portrait. The past can both comfort and distress, but I’ve been definitely groping toward the former. I paused a long time before Chester Arthur, not one of history’s favorites: He took over after James Garfield was shot by a disappointed office seeker.
“Though Arthur had long favored this ‘spoils’ system, he endorsed the Pendleton Civil Service Act (1883),” the placard noted, “which created competitive examination for some federal positions and offered protections from partisan discrimination.”
The president giveth, the president taketh away.
Arthur also signed the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, “the first significant law restricting immigration.”
There would be more to come, a welcome reminder that few jaw-dropping lapses of today are worse than what once passed as ordinary. We’re running backward, true, but at least to a place we know how to escape. We’ve done it before.
Another day, I popped over to the Hirshhorn Museum, and am glad I did.
In 2021, the Hirshhorn gave Glen Elyn native-done-good Laurie Anderson a room, which she painted with slogans and figures, white on black. I spent awhile reading the pithy (and oblique) Andersonian aphorisms.
“Books are the way the dead talk to the living” and “If you think technology will solve your problems, then you don’t understand technology — AND you don’t understand your problems.” I smiled seeing one — “I dreamed I had to take a test in a Dairy Queen on another planet” — a longer version of a phrase she had on a piece of magnetic tape on a violin bow, played in concert to great effect.
See how much fun this is? I’m telling you, all museums, all the time. It could be great. You want the federal government to function, to run vaccine programs and preschool education centers, but also these splendid institutions — the museums of the Smithsonian are free — that present history and art fearlessly.
I hope next time I go to Washington the collections haven’t been sold off, like they’re trying to do another American treasure house, the national parks. Who can say it’s impossible?
During World War II, the French hid the Mona Lisa in various chateaus and abbeys to keep the Nazis from snatching it. Maybe the National Gallery of Art should stash its portrait of Ginevra de’ Benci — the only Leonardo da Vinci in the Western Hemisphere — somewhere safe, until the danger passes. Assuming the danger will ever pass.
