My generous hosts and I got back a couple hours ago from seeing a gorgeous digitally remastered 70mm print of 2001: A Space Odyssey at the Music Box Theatre. Wow.

This afternoon I paid my inaugural visit to the inside of The Art Institute of Chicago (I took some fabulous photos of my sock monkey around the exterior last spring). Lots of cool stuff in there, including a number of Lautrec and Renoir paintings I’ve always wanted to see, some really great early 20th century Japanese prints, and the first Rauschenburg I’ve ever seen in person. Unfortunately, I only discovered the coolest exhibit a few minutes before closing time: Taken By Design is an exhibition of a ton of photographs and photograms culled from the Institute of Design, including works by Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Harry Calahan, and Aaron Siskind. It was a pleasant surprise after the disappointment of confirming that the Chicago Bauhaus museum was merely a figment of my imagination.