The Art Institute of Chicago

Imagining the Art Institute: William M. R. French's Travel NotebookAuthor(s): Bart RyckboschSource: Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, Vol. 34, No. 2, Art through the Pages:Library Collections at the Art Institute of Chicago (2008), pp. 78-79Published by: The Art Institute of ChicagoStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20205636 .

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continued to indirectly influence the world of modern

photography through its earlier graduates (see fig. 4), who

spread its revolutionary doctrine of photographic education to new generations all across the country. In this way, the ID

solidified its status as "the seminal place for the education

of the modern artist-photographer," a process which is

revealed in the Ryerson's significant archival holdings on

this influential Chicago-based institution.32

Figure i. William M. R. French, travel diary for May 17,1889. Here, French sketched bronze sculptures of lions at the ?cole des Beaux Arts, Paris, and a painting of a farm girl by Jules Breton. In 1894, the Art Institute installed Edward Kemeys s lion sculptures at the Michigan Avenue entrance

and acquired Breton's Song of the Lark (1884). William M. R. French Papers, Art Institute of Chicago Archives.

IMAGINING THE ART INSTITUTE: WILLIAM M. R. FRENCH'S TRAVEL NOTEBOOK

BART RYCKBOSCH

New Hampshire native and Harvard-educated engineer

William M. R. French moved to Chicago after serving in the

Union Army during the Civil War, teaming up with noted

landscape architect H. W. S. Cleveland.1 They had a successful

practice, even coauthoring

a book, A Few Hints on Landscape

Gardening in the West (1871). When the Illinois Industrial

Interstate Exposition building was erected on the rubble of

the Great Chicago Fire, French dissolved the partnership to become the manager of the exposition building's art

department. At the same, time he taught at Chicago's first art

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school, the Chicago Academy of Design (founded in 1866), for which he also functioned as chief administrator.

In 1879, the Academy of Design was replaced by the

Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, which renamed itself the

Art Institute of Chicago three years later. French became

the secretary of this new corporation and its first director

in 1885, holding this position until his death in 1914. The

young, well-run organization quickly outgrew its first

few locations, and at the end of the 1880s, French and the

trustees began planning for a major building campaign. In spring 1889, he and President Charles L. Hutchinson

undertook a two-month-long trip to Europe, visiting the

most prestigious dealers, museums, and private collections

in England, France, and Italy. There, they gleaned the finest

examples of museum design and the latest innovations in

exhibition display, lighting, signage, and other state-of-the

art presentation techniques.

French recorded his findings in a tiny, 118-page booklet

that is filled with copious meas-urements, notes, and

sketches. Now in the Art Institute Archives, it provides a

unique insight into both his travels and their influence on

the genesis of the museum's new home at Michigan Avenue

and Adams Street. Indeed, the director recorded many details that were incorporated into the design of the 1893

building and subsequent projects, from major elements such

as the Grand Staircase and the monumental lions guarding the front steps to smaller features including guard rails,

labels, light fixtures, mosaic floor patterns, and skylights

(see fig. 1 and the illustration on p. 4). While in Europe, French and Hutchinson also visited with American artists

working there, many of them alumni of the School of the

Art Institute. One, Lawton Parker, reported at length on

the final examination process for students at the Ecole des

Beaux-Arts, Paris.

The trip also paved the way for some significant acqui sitions, most notably a group of Old Master paintings from

the Demidoff collection, one of the most celebrated of the

nineteenth century (see p. 7). After returning to Chicago, French and Hutchinson reported on the availability of

these Dutch and Flemish works to the museum's trustees,

generating interest for a potential purchase. The following

year Hutchinson and his friend and fellow philanthropist Martin A. Ryerson (see pp. 9-10) attended the auction in

Paris, where they made the museum's first major acquisitions, which included Jan Steen's Family Concert (1666) and Young Woman at an Open Half Door (1645) from the workshop of

Rembrandt van Rijn.

HALIC: HISTORIC ARCHITECTURE AND LANDSCAPE IMAGE COLLECTION

KRISTAN HANSON

In 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition, which celebrated the four hundredth anniversary of

Christopher Columbus's voyage to the New World. An

ambitious endeavor, the fair possessed a vast size and scope

that were meant to demonstrate Chicago's resurgence after

the Great Fire of 1871. Envisioning a showcase for new

American architecture, the planners, who included Daniel

H. Burnham and John W. Root, ultimately selected a

Beaux-Arts plan that emulated European models.1 Within

this classicized "White City," Dankmar Adler and Louis

Sullivan's Transportation Building (see fig. 1) was a marked

exception; its functional design, organic ornamentation, and colorful decorative scheme embodied the innovative

practices of the first Chicago School, which included Adler,

Sullivan, William Le Baron Jenney, and others.2

This image of the Transportation Building's Golden

Doorway provides an important visual record of its brilliant

hues?a combination of red, orange, yellow, and "gold

leaf"?as many fair-goers would have encountered them.3

Originally published as a color illustration, the picture is part of the Historic Architecture and Landscape Image Collection, or HALIC, which is managed by the Ryerson and Burnham Archives.4 The collection consists of nearly 11,500 lantern slides, mounted photographs, and postcards

made and published between the 1860s and the 1970s.5 HALIC documents architecture, landscape design, and

urban planning across the United States, focusing on Chicago and its suburbs. Most images depict late-nineteenth- and

early-twentieth-century buildings and structures by known

architects. Additional image subjects include pre-Civil War,

vernacular, and unidentified buildings; architectural plans and renderings; and streetscape and landscape views.

HALIC is remarkable for its corpus of lantern slides

related to city planning, most notably a group produced for

the Chicago Plan Commission and used during public talks

to promote Daniel H. Burnham and Edward H. Bennett's

Plan of Chicago (see pp. 67-70).6 One of these is a vivid, hand-colored image (fig. 2), originally published in black

and-white in the Plan of Chicago, that illustrates the lagoons and harbors proposed for Grant Park.7 The collection also

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