The pandemic has simplified my daily routine (no driving! no dress code!) but complicated other parts of life (do I tip for just getting takeout at a restaurant or not? The waiters aren't serving me at a table, but they ARE making the sandwich/burrito/other food item so they are putting in labor and risking their health to work at the restaurant, and how much do I tip to feel adequate like it's not an insulting 3% tip but also be able to live under my principle of tipping is just peer pressure imposed by the rich to subsidize service industries that they deem fit?).
One thing I can reminisce about pre-pandemic times was working in downtown Chicago and being walking distance from the Art Institute of Chicago at all times, which didn't seem like such a luxury to me at first especially living in suburban Chicago as a child but to MJ was like inheriting prime real estate next to an urban mecca. Seeing that she gets multiple memberships to art museums in cities that she doesn't live in and are on opposite coasts of each other (I believe she's currently a member in both the San Francisco AND Atlanta Museums of Art), it wasn't suprising that the first thing she did was get enrolled at the Art Institute. "I get to use the members lounge and get free coffee there!" Which doesn't seem like such a bad deal since she was there EVERY day (seemingly) of the several months I was there. But now I'm flabbergasted by the amount of work and prestige of some of the pieces there. Georges Seurat's "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte" (inspired the tile of this article) Grant Wood's American Gothic, Pablo Picasso's The Old Guitarist, and Edward Hopper's Nighthawks are just the headliners (like a Coachella music festival) to a grand arry of great art with Rene Magritte (the cigar guy), Andy Warhol, Jackson Pollock in the Modern and Contemporary wings. To put that in perspective, the first time I went to Getty somewhat recommended it as "they have a Van Gogh there." Well Chicago has at least those 4 pieces to match a Van Gogh and more! I only know maybe 10-20 famous pieces of art by name, and the ones at the AIC have some of them! How did the curators afford all this art? Did they go Vincenzo Peruggia and steal the Mona Lisa? And why Chicago, not exactly the first place in the world you think of when you think of the great art capitals of the world (but actually, architecture is splendid in downtown Chicago).
Right about now (middle of February) is probably the worst time ever to go to Chicago even without a pandemic as it's below freezing point and snowing, but memories of bundling up in heavy winter gear and trudging through the snow past the powder-covered Millenium Park to the lions guarding the entrance of the museum like sentinels announcing your arrival to the palace, then marching up the stairs through the entryway and stomping off all of the clustered snow while your body breathes a sigh of relief from escaping frigid temperatures and reaclimmates to a reasonable room temperature......that brings back some warm and fuzz memories that even a pandemic cannot erase.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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