A Downtown Columbus Day

Another warm day, a good one for walking around downtown. Lilly and Ann and I spent the afternoon at Union Station, the Art Institute and the Sears Tower, and sidewalks in between. Not much has changed at Union Station lately, but I noticed new things at both other places.

Mostly we were downstairs at the Art Institute, which has an exhibit of artwork you can touch, along with the Thorne Miniature Rooms. I was fairly sure both kids would like these rooms, and they did.

"The 68 Thorne Miniature Rooms enable one to glimpse elements of European interiors from the late 13th century to the 1930s and American furnishings from the 17th century to the 1930s," the Art Institute web site notes. "Painstakingly constructed on a scale of one inch to one foot, these fascinating models were conceived by Mrs. James Ward Thorne of Chicago and constructed between 1932 and 1940 by master craftsmen according to her specifications."

Glad to hear that Mrs. Thorne, who married into Montgomery Ward money, employed master craftsmen during the Depression. The exhibit includes the likes of "French Bathroom and Boudoir of the Revolutionary Period, 1793-1804," "English Drawing Room of the Georgian Period, 1770-90," and "Tennessee Entrance Hall, 1835," which sound like dry academic classifications, but the detail is astonishing. You half-expect five- to six-inch people to be in the rooms, going about their miniature lives (or deaths -- how about Marat in that Revolutionary bathtub?).

Also, Mrs. Thorne seems to have had a special fondness for miniature wax fruit.

Lilly asked why the bath in the Revolutionary room didn't have any faucets, which led to a short discussion of indoor plumbing. Later, she asked what a drawing room was, and I wondered why it was called that myself. I told her it was for entertaining visitors, but I wasn't sure of the etymology. My American Heritage New College Dictionary says that it's short for "withdrawing room." That's what we all need sometimes, a withdrawing room.

Before we left, I wanted to take a stroll through the first floor Arms and Armory exhibit, along a long hall that also includes a lot of European decorative arts. It's one of my favorite galleries in the museum: how could you not like a dark room with displays of full body armor, racks of medieval and renaissance weaponry, gold goblets, silver plate and a reliquary with a tooth of John the Baptist? At the end of the room, through a door under a twin staircase, you can then go straight to the Chicago Chagall Windows.

Except you can't see any of those things right now. Arms and Armory was gone. The museum's being renovated. The long-hall gallery is becoming something else -- now it's as bright as an overpriced retail boutique, and it looks like the layout of displays is going to be similarly airy, though only a few pieces are in place: buddhas, mostly. Next to the twin staircases was a man behind a desk that said ASK ME. So I did. He didn't know where the Arms and Armory had gone. (In fairness, the sign didn't say he would know the answer.)

The Chagall Windows were gone too. What's going on here? At least the museum could have posted a sign saying where they were and when they would be back.