The Art Institute

The Art Institute of Chicago was so amazing, it deserves it's own post.  How I wish we could have spent an entire day there, but, coincidentally, we were there on a free day, which only lasted a few hours.  It turned out that that was okay- by 6:00 at night, the last thing the kids wanted to hear was "Don't touch that!  Sit down!  Be quiet!"  It was definitely a do-again, but perhaps next time we will do it without the kids.

I tried to get a picture of everyone next to their favorite original painting.  And I only forgot to turn the flash off once (which resulted in a stern talking-to by the museum guard).

 Nighthawks by Edward Hopper

 Haystacks by Claude Monet

In the contemporary exhibition, I heard Leah quote Ian Falconer's Olivia, "I could do that in about five minutes."

The Old Guitarist by Pablo Picasso

Farmer J and his wife... just kidding...  

American Gothic by Grant Wood

Jason's family has a tradition of taking pictures with a straight face.  I think you can see here why we haven't carried that tradition on... yikes!

A Sunday afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat
Okay, so I had more than one favorite, but they were all so amazing.  To be surrounded by such masterpieces- it was a fantastic end to the day, even if by the end everyone else looked like this:

Totally worth it!