Cultural Trio

July 23, 2011



Sue



Shedd Aquarium

Cultural Trio

There are a number of amazing places to see and things to do and Kathy & I decided to do the trifecta by visiting the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum of Natural History and the Art Institute of Chicago. Each of these venerable and unique institutions are among the best in the world in their particular field and all are situated with-in a few blocks of each other in what is known as the Museum Campus.







We started at the Shedd Aquarium, a place that I have visited fairly often since I was a kid, but one that is ever growing and changing and today scarcely resembles the place that I first visited. First opened in 1930, the aquarium has grown with the times and continues to be among the elite aquarium facilities in the world.







Containing over 25,000 fish, the aquarium remains one of the largest aquariums in the world and hosts amazing exhibits such as the current “Jellies” exhibit that features a huge collection of different types of jellyfish. They also are home to a group of Beluga Whales and a number of sleek and fast Pacific Whitesided Dolphin, which are very different from the Bottlenosed variety found in most zoos and aquariums.





The Shedd maintains the classic feel of the institution opened in 1930, but has a number of modern state of the art exhibits including the incredible wild reef exhibit that is home to a large collection of sharks. They also have the world’s largest collection of live coral reef, which is incredibly difficult to grow and is as impressive as anything I have ever seen in a captive setting.





The aquarium is located in a beautiful location along the shore of Lake Michigan and is home to many fascinating creatures including the oldest fish in captivity, Granddad, an Australian Lungfish that has been living at the facility since 1933 and seems to be going strong. We had an awesome visit to the aquarium.



Located just next door to the aquarium is another of the iconic museums of Chicago, The Field Museum of Natural History. The Field Museum is even more historic than the aquarium. Built in 1893 as part of the World Columbian Exhibition and known then as The Palace of Fine Arts, the building is the only surviving building of the famous “White City” that was built for the exhibition.



Field Museum

Renamed the Field Museum in 1905 in honor of Marshall Field, the museum has been host to millions of visitors since opening. The museum collection is home to more than 21 million artifacts, only a fraction of which are on display at any one time. Today there are some amazing Natural History exhibits on display including “Sue” the most complete Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton ever discovered, a huge collection of dinosaurs and one of the largest collections of taxidermy anywhere.



The third member of our Chicago Trifecta is the equally incredible Art Institute of Chicago. This amazing museum is home to many of the great masterpieces that anyone with even a casual interest in art would recognize. Located in Grant Park, just northeast of the other two, the Art Institute is one of the leading art museums in the world.

Art Institute of Chicago





It is home to what is recognized as the best collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works in the world. Just as an example, they are home to six of the series of eighteen haystack paintings done by Monet- no other institution in the world has more than two. Also in the collection are important works by Renoir such as “Two Sisters (On the Terrace)” and Henri Matisse's “The Bathers”, Paul Cézanne's “The Basket of Apples”, and “Madame Cézanne in a Yellow Chair”. Non-French paintings of the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection include VanGogh’s ” Self-portrait, 1887”. Among the most important works of the American collection are Grant Wood’s “American Gothic”, and Edward Hopper’s “Nighthawks”.





The museum is huge and we could not possibly cover all of it, but we caught the highlights and had an amazing time checking out works both familiar and unknown. Considering that the heat wave had temperatures outside in the high 90s and a heat index of 115, being inside fantastic iconic and air conditioned museums seemed like a perfect day in Chicago.



Kathy



Shedd Aquarium

Field Museum

Art Institute of Chicago