Chicago Trip: Context blog entry

Intro to blog

On Saturday, October 14th Chicago, Illinois warmly welcomed three tour buses filled with eager MSU students. Ok, well maybe Chicago did't really "warmly" welcome us and maybe the students weren't so "eager" either, at least not with the early morning wakeup call the day before the Michigan Michigan State game and a long bus ride. But either way, we had arrived in Chicago. I have been to downtown Chicago numerous times before this trip but never experienced it the way I did on this class trip. I have always done the normal touristy things before like, visit Navy Pier, shop all of the famous stores, take pictures in "The Bean" and all the other exciting famous Chicago tourist attractions. But, one thing that I had never experienced, beside "The Bean," was the artistic side of Chicago. Every venue that we visited was a new and exciting adventure to me We started off in The Chicago Art Museum, went to the City Space Gallery, The Fine Arts Building, the MOCP Museum of Contemporary Photography, Arts and Artisans American Gallery, Blick, The Chicago Cultural Center, The Illinois Institute of Arts, and Millennium Park. What a busy day it was!

I definitely think that the venues we went to affected how I interacted with the work. I think that some of the more fancy venues made me feel like I couldn't get as close to the work because of being so special. But on the other hand, the venues definitely legitimized the work I saw. It seemed to me that the bigger and more fancy a venue was the more legit the work inside of it seemed. The smaller venues with less art in them made the work seem less important.