Thomas Hart Benton made this maquette out of modeling clay as a study for a painting. 

"Museum Guard" by Duane Hanson.

The museum cafe has a nice view of Lake Michigan. 

This is the Cornell I'm looking at below. 

What is a museum without a Cornell treat? Incomplete. With it, an abode of bliss.  

This video installation shows a live beating heart (sounding like a kettledrum) displayed over a real bed with a blood-red blanket on it. Incredibly moving in person. 

I've always loved the TV/chair combination in the Greyhound bus station and I'm glad someone has put it to good use. 

I didn't write down this artist's name, but I love her painting. She has taken the look of graffiti and created a stream-of-consciousness style that is totally new to me. I feel like I'm looking inside her head. If you know this artist's name, please email me. 

When I first saw David Salle's work twenty years ago, I hated it. Now in the age of the Internet, it makes perfect sense.  

I love Jenny Holzer's work. I can stand and watch the aphorisms roll by for long periods. I would call her my favorite poet. 

A superstar photo by Cartier-Bresson. There was a whole hallway full of his pictures. 

This Robert Irwin piece is almost as ethereal in person as it seems in this photo. 

This piece was hanging in the long corridor between buildings. 

This Chihouly is also in the lobby. (He's everywhere!) 

The lobby of the Milwaukee Art Museum.


This is from a funny parody of Christo's The Gates.


In the heart of downtown Des Moines, three Skywalk bridges on three consecutive blocks. 

"Prairie Wind" by Mac Hornecker. 

Today, I went to the downtown branch of the Art Center, which is in a Wells Fargo building. They were showing a really excellent group of California artists. All the big names were represented, plus one of my favorites, H.C. Westermann, who I always associated with Chicago. But today I learned that he grew up in L.A., and spent some time in San Francisco where he became friends with William Wiley.

The Art Center also has three Cornell boxes.

I was just showing a friend a postcard of a Mannerist painting at the Art Institute of Chicago, and at the Des Moines I saw this contemporary Mannerist painting by John Currin.

Animal Pyramid by Bruce Nauman. The Art Center has an 81 acre sculpture park attached to it.

Not your run of the mill sculpture park. This one features large scale outdoor sculpture on an 81 acre site in Greenwood Park, by four artists to dramatize the beauty of the park. Bruce Nauman's Animal Pyramid is literally a stack of bronze larger that life size well-balanced caribou, elk and foxes. Like much of Nauman's work it is enigmatic but impossible to ignore. The other artists are Richard Fleischner, Mary Miss and Richard Serra.
The master plan for the park was to allow space for twelve more sculptures, but a devastating flood in 1993 caused severe structural damage to the Art Center Building. Funds had to be diverted and the current status for completion of the park is not known.

Another unexpected pleasure

The Des Moines Art Center is a world-class museum, which I must say I didn't expect. Unfortunately, they don't allow photography inside. But their contemporary collection is phenomenal. This photo shows part of Three Cairns by Andy Goldsworthy.

Very like a whale

A whale? An anchor? No, it's Crusoe's Umbrella by Claes Oldenburg. The building behind it is the Greater Des Moines Civic Center.

The Civic Theatre, where the Chicago Lyric Opera performs. Today I met a woman from Wichita (700 miles away) who says she comes to Chicago twice a year to see the Lyric Opera. 

It's true: the Art Institute has more Cornells than any other museum on earth. Here is one of the best. 

Jasper Johns is one of my heroes and I'm glad to see a recent work that has some of the beauty of his early work.