Goodbye, Chicago and Hello, Boston!
As much fun as I had on my five week vacation in Chicago, it has been really nice to be back at work selling in Boston (for those who don’t recall, I was laid off in Chicago because Merch is unionized there).
I tried to make the most of my time in Chicago. It was a hard though, because when I was by myself, I wasn’t allowed to do anything that Emma also wanted to do on one of her days or mornings off. So, I spent a lot of my free time at the Art Institute of Chicago. We had decided to purchase a membership after browsing their collection and exhibits online, and I am so glad we did! They have a really great collection of Impressionist paintings.
Impressionism is our favorite style of visual art; Van Gough is our favorite artist followed by Monet. They had a few Van Gough’s and a lot of Monet’s so it was a good time. They also have A Sunday on La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat which we also love. (When we were in Columbus, we stumbled upon a recreation made out of topiaries that we also really loved!)
They also had a few of my other favorite paintings including Paris Street; Rainy Day by Gustave Caillebotte and Nighthawks by Edward Hopper. I came to love these paintings through an old board game that my family used to play together called Masterpiece.
The premise of the game is that you are an art collector buying and selling paintings with the goal of having the most money by the end of the game. There are a few different editions of the game, but the 1996 edition that we had only had paintings from the Art Institute of Chicago in the deck of paintings up for auction. I would always bid higher for Paris Street; Rainy Day and Nighthawks just because I liked those paintings better even though their value changed each game. Georgia O’keefe’s Black Cross, New Mexico was always a forgery for some reason!
During my first visit to the Art Institute, I went straight for the Impressionism section and immediately recognized Woman at the Piano by Pierre-Auguste Renoir from the game. It was my oldest sister’s favorite, so I sent her a picture of it. As I continued to explore the museum, I saw more and more paintings I recognized from the game and sent pictures to my sisters. That is when they realized that all of the paintings from the game were in the Art Institute. Thus began my scavenger hunt.
I recruited Emma to help me with my hunt and over the course of a couple of days, we took selfies with all of the paintings that we could–there were 3 that weren’t on display.
Enjoy our scavenger hunt gallery!
-B
So fun! Good work with the scavenger hunt. And there are other versions of the game?! That could be interesting.