Accessible Art in Chicago

I had an art Trifecta when I visited Chicago last week. I saw a comprehensive Cezanne exhibit at the Chicago Art Institute, its premiere museum. I saw at the Museum of Contemporary Art, a museum that often disappoints, a large show of installations and sculptures of Nick Cave, an artist coming into prominence, and I saw in a hole-in-the- wall gallery in a developing neighborhood, an artist that I had never heard of. What they all had in common was the accessibility of the art. The friend I was with said you could take a pre-teen to the Cave show and the child would get its intricate hangings and the monumental outre statues, knowing some to be a joke and others just dazzling, but wondered whether the visitors would get Cezanne, and I thought so, even if Cezanne is known as a great artist and people might see the show just so as to say they were there.

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