Photos: Hermano Silva

The chicagoans badly could wait: a new building of the Italian architect Renzo Piano for the Art Institute of Chicago. Made to be the new wing of the Museum, the pavilion was open two months ago. Piano’s building became an attraction by itself, making more and more people visit the Museum this summer.

The newspaper “New York Times” has said that this is “the closest Renzo Piano has come in at least a decade to achieving a near-classical ideal”. It seems also to be a kind of homage to the International Style created by the German architect Mies Van der Rohe. The sober lines and transparency that is characteristic of this style was spread in Chicago after Rohe moved to the city in the thirties.

The building has a room for contemporary photography, which to me is one of the best rooms with works from people like Diane Arbus, Robert Mapplethorpe and Richard Prince. Every week some images are changed by new ones, surprising you as a new flower in a garden. But it’s also nice to see many other works from names like Jackson Pollock and even the Brazilian brothers Campana that were hidden in the storage of the Museum until now.

It’s a pity although that the price of the ticket for the visitor has increased and now costs salty 20 dollars. As a critic of “Time Out Chicago” wrote: someone would have to pay for the $294 million building!