Chicago museum's new wing features "Flying Carpet"

By Andrew Stern

CHICAGO (Reuters Life!) - Airy, transparent, and welcoming are some attributes ascribed to Renzo Piano's new wing for the Art Institute of Chicago.

The famed Italian architect's glass, aluminum and limestone wing, which is due to open in the spring, makes several references to Chicago's legacy as a pioneer of steel-and-glass-framed skyscrapers that first allowed sunlight into what had been dank downtowns.

"It will be one of the most brightly lit museums," said Art Institute spokesman Erin Hogan, who led a recent tour of the unfinished Modern Wing.

An exterior of floor-to-ceiling glass panels encased in aluminum mullions and tapered steel columns create a sensation that the rectangular-shaped building is floating. Limestone blocks were cut from the same Indiana quarry as those that built the century-old neoclassical Art Institute.

"It's not overwhelming in scale, it's not pompous," said museum director James Cuno, who is using the addition's nearly 300,000 square feet of gallery space to reinstall the museum's encyclopedic collection to create "a more coherent experience" for viewers.

"It's humane in scale and size and is made from soft materials, plaster and wood, and simple materials, glass and steel," he said.

The $300 million cost was covered primarily by the city's elite. The museum's collection is highlighted by Georges Seurat's huge pointillist masterpiece "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grand Jatte," which will be rehung near a second-floor entryway into the new wing.

The wing's overhanging roof, dubbed the Flying Carpet, features curved panels that channel light to skylights filtered by scrims which will illuminate the museum's early 19th Century collection of works by Picasso, Braque, Giacometti and others.