2009 Mid-West (USA) Road Trip

On the Road (Again) in the Mid-West

Art, Architecture, Culture, History, Outdoors, Family & Friends

July - August 2009

In August – September 2008, less than a year ago, David and I embarked on a wonderful art, architecture, and history road trip of the central Mid-West, a trip that lasted almost 5 weeks and was inspired originally by a desire to see some of the new museums and museum additions around the Mid-West designed by architects with an international reputation.

For somewhat unintentional reasons, we wound up doing another almost 5-week Mid-West road trip this summer, running from mid-July to mid-August.  And while it was not our original intent to do such a trip, events transpired such that we found ourselves on another Mid-West road trip so soon after the first one.  The primary instigator was the birth of my 2nd granddaughter in early July – we wanted to see her, her sister, Rayzie (Rosa Pearl), and their two mothers, who settled last fall in Mendota Heights, a moderate-sized community adjacent to the south city line of St. Paul, Minnesota.  As we originally had plans for this summer (before knowing that another grandchild was on the way) to attend the Shaw Festival and Stratford Shakespeare Festival, both in southern Ontario, we decided to make seeing both the new grandchild (named Shifra Malka) and the theatre festivals, by getting in the car and stringing these two goals into one car trip.  In a Great Recession year, getting in the car and taking off seems to be the travel fashion of the times.

This trip, unlike last year’s, did not have quite as sharp a focus, and yet, now that it is over, we see that there was a lot of art and architecture, along with a fair amount of culture, some history, some outdoor experiences (partly due to our choice to camp along the way as much as possible), and a chance to see some family and friends.  As I look back on what we saw and did, I realize it was a pretty rich experience!

I smile at the workings of the “best laid plans of mice and men” syndrome.  On last year’s Mid-West road trip, from late August through the end of September, it was hot the whole time – not even the nights cooled.  So we packed for a July – August trip accordingly, thinking it would be unpleasantly hot and humid by our high desert, low humidity, chilly nights standards.  Instead, the upper Mid-West and Ontario had, in some areas, the coolest mid-summer since weather data have been tracked, and throughout it was rainy with downpours often of Biblical proportions.  So, this time we lacked warm clothing.  However, the cool (sometimes cold) temperatures made for a very comfortable trip overall, and the mid-section of country was dazzlingly green to our eyes, attuned as they are to a very different palette.  Meadows and fields of wildflowers were bursting everywhere.  One downside when we camped – mosquitoes, which usually attenuate by mid-summer, were intense.

We made stops in several big cities we missed on the last trip, with a good stretch of time (not enough of course) in Chicago (5 days) and the Twin Cities (4 days), in particular.  We also made stops in Milwaukee (half a day), Toronto (two days) and Buffalo (one day).

As with last year’s trip, we wanted to see the many new museum buildings and museum additions by globally-recognized architects, the real heavy hitters.  And once again, we struck it rich.  Here are the museums we made it to, along with a few other miscellaneous non-museum buildings that were of contemporary architectural interest.  Along with the world famous architects listed, some were designed by less well-known architectural firms, but obviously ones who are doing very high quality work:

§  Art Institute of Chicago – new wing, Renzo Piano, architect

§  Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago – Josef Paul Kleihues, architect

§  Band shell and Serpent Bridge, Millennium Park, Chicago – Frank Gehry, architect

§  Milwaukee Museum of Art – addition, Santiago Calatrava, architect

§  Monona Terrace, Madison, Wisconsin – built in the 1990s to 1930’s architectural plans by Frank Lloyd Wright

§  Guthrie Theatre, Minneapolis – Jean Nouvel, architect

§  Weisman Museum of Art, University of Minnesota – by Frank Gehry, Architect

§  Walker Art Gallery, Minneapolis --  Herzog & de Meuron, architects

§  Minneapolis Institute of Arts – one new wing by Kenzo Tange (1974) and another new wing by Michael Graves (2006)

§  Charles W. Stockey Centre for the Performing Arts, Parry Sound, Ontario – by Keith Loffler Architect + ZAS (Zawadzki Armin Stevens) Architects

§  Art Gallery of Ontario – complete renovation of interior and new façade by Frank Gehry, architect

§  Royal Ontario Museum –renovation of portions of the interior and new façade by Daniel Liebeskind, architect

§  Jackson-Triggs Niagara Estate Winery, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario – by Marianne McKenna, architect, of Kuwabara, Payne, McKenna, & Blumberg, Toronto

§  Albright-Knox Museum, Buffalo, NY – new wing, entrance, and sculpture court by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings, & Merrill

§  Burchfield-Penney Art Center, Buffalo, NY – Gwathmey-Siegel & Associates, architects

§  Dwight D. Martin House Visitor Center, Buffalo, NY – Toshiko Mori, architect

You can get an idea what all of these buildings look like by going to their Web sites.  And David has written his own trip report, a sequel to his “Art Palaces of the Mid-West” from last year’s trip.  In his report on this year’s trip, “Public Palaces of the Mid-West,” you will find detailed analysis of a number of the museum buildings listed above, and I recommend it to your reading.

For great art collections, the crème de la crème were the Art Institute of Chicago, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the Art Gallery of Ontario, which all have very fine collections.  Minneapolis is one of those relatively unknown large city museums which has a knock-out collection, not just of old masters, but of art from the ancient world, and a whole wing on the Prairie School of architecture.  The Art Gallery of Ontario focuses on the entire span of Canadian painting, and one of our pleasures was the discovery of how much good Canadian painting there has been of which we ave been almost totally unaware.  There is comparability to regional developments over the past 150 years in the U.S. in terms of what was also going on in Canada.  Why is it that we know the American painters so well, but Canadian painters of comparable quality are quite unknown to us?

A memorable one-of-a-kind art space for me was a very large room devoted to the final plaster, full-size statues of women by Henry Moore.  These were made prior to the bronze castings.  Moore’s daughter gave them to the Art Gallery of Ontario, and specified that they only be illuminated by natural light.  To walk into this space, with all these magnificent sculptures of the female form is to have an experience like stumbling on a great outdoor space of Greek sculpture from Athens’ classical area.  It is one of those rare experiences like the first time I saw four Mark Rothko’s, one per wall, in a small room in the original Philips Gallery in Washington, DC back in the 70’s.

Another highlight was the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, adjacent to the Walker Art Gallery.  This an enormous expanse, beautifully landscaped, filled with well-placed large pieces by a broad spectrum of the best 20th century sculptures.  The highlight for me, and almost every visitor, is Spoonbridge & Cherry by Claes Oldenburg & Cooje van Bruggen.  It is probably the finest Oldenburg I’ve ever seen (and I’ve seen a lot) because of its sheer gorgeous audacity and placement in a large pond.  Do go to the Web site of the Sculpture Garden to see what it looks like.  It took us almost 3 hours to explore everything in the sculpture garden, and fortunately, it was a picture-perfect day.

Perhaps it is part of a certain Mid-Western seriousness about civic duty, but one aspect of museum going that impressed me was the quality of the documentation.  In most of the museums we visited, including in Ontario, paintings, sculptures, and artifacts of the First Nations (as the phrase goes in Canada for what we call Native Americans) were extremely well documented, lucid, and informative.  One could get a real education by taking the time to read the extended labels, and I found this a real pleasure.

Another highlight of the trip was seeing the work of several great early and mid-20th century architects, in particular, Mies van der Rohe and Frank Lloyd Wright, but also including the (a new discovery for us) firm of Purcell & Elmslie (these partners worked originally in the office of Sullivan & Adler), Louis Sullivan, and Daniel Burnham.  Highlights of our visit in this category were:

§  Farnsworth House, Plano, IL – by Mies van der Rohe

§  Buildings on the campus of the Illinois Institute of Technology, including Crown Hall, Chicago – Mies van der Rohe

§  Robie House, Chicago – by Frank Lloyd Wright

§  Rockefeller Chapel, University of Chicago – Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue

§  Purcell-Cutts House, Minneapolis – Purcell & Elmslie

§  Darwin Martin House complex, Buffalo, NY – Frank Lloyd Wright

§  Guaranty Building, Buffalo, NY – Louis Sullivan

§  Ellicott Square Building, Buffalo, NY – Daniel Burnham

§  Woodbury County Courthouse, Sioux City, IA – Purcell & Elmslie

This is just a brief listing of the crème de la crème.  There were any number of other masterpieces in Chicago, especially, but elsewhere as well.  In fact, Chicago was, for us, a non-stop architectural tour, not just of great buildings, but also of many neighborhoods filled with interesting, if more modest, structures.  With the latest edition of Chicago’s Famous Buildings in hand, we walked our feet off, affording us a non-stop experience of discovery and surprise.  We also took the Chicago Architectural Foundation’s wonderful boat ride on the Chicago River to see many of the city’s finest buildings from a very different perspective.  It was a perfect summer afternoon – brilliant sunshine, comfortable temperatures, and sparkling clear air.

Mid-Western cities seem to have a serious commitment to make urban life work for their residents.  There were wonderful parks and parkways, with extended bikeways throughout.  The lakeshore of Chicago is famous and in great shape, but surprises abounded, especially in Minneapolis, with its string of lakes, all connected by parkways and the system of parks and connected parkways designed by Frederick Law Olmsted for Buffalo.  The country was far less wealthy in the late 1800’s when many of these went in, but there was a grand vision and a commitment to shared amenities that is often lacking today, when in principle, we are a much richer nation!  And consider the wealth of public works added to the country’s legacy during the Depression when we were flat-out broke!  (Just one example of many:  the building of the Blue Ridge Parkway, one of the great roads in America, and done with the interests of the general public in mind – can anyone imagine such an undertaking today, stimulus money or not?).  Perhaps what has changed the most in this country is that we now evaluate almost everything in exclusively economic terms – is it cost effective?, does it make business sense?  There was a much broader range of values that got considered in the past, I think, than just the financial factor.

Canada is considerably more expensive for the traveler than the U.S. in virtually all respects (food, gas, parks), but we always got the sense that the money one spent gave you quality in return.  The only U.S. place that gave me a similar feeling that the public welfare came first, was the Twin Cities, St. Paul – Minneapolis.  It appeared that making public spaces work for ordinary citizens was a high priority.  Clean streets, beautiful parks and bikeways, good public transportation, attractive public furniture and signage, made you feel that public good came ahead of private greed, although as mentioned previously, Mid-Western cities, in general, seem to evidence a commitment to the welfare of their citizens.

One significant focus of this trip was to attend plays at the two big theatre festivals in Canada, both in Ontario and only a few hours apart from each other – the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake (across the Niagara River from New York State), and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, in Stratford.  Because we did not know precisely when our new granddaughter would come into the world, we could not advance-purchase tickets, so we took our chances.  I had an inkling that we would be okay, since I had called both box offices early in the year and they both had said ticket sales were much slower than in previous years, which gave me confidence that we would not confront sold-out houses.  The recession has had its impact and the implementation of passport requirements for U.S. citizens has considerably reduced visitation to nearby areas in Canada.

Although Santa Fe is amazingly rich, culturally, two areas it is weak in are dance and theatre.  So we indulged in lots of plays, as these two Canadian festivals have a reputation for some of the best theatre in North America.  We did see one George Bernard Shaw play at the Shaw Festival (“The Devil’s Disciple”) out of five, but no Shakespeare at the Stratford Festival out of four (it just happened that only one Shakespeare was being done in the brief time we were there, and it did not get good reviews).  Surprisingly, Stratford is renown for its productions of American musicals, and we did see two – “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” and “West Side Story.”  Both were absolutely knock-out productions, better than how I remembered the Broadway originals.  But everything we saw at both festivals was memorable, and outstanding was Eugene O’Neil’s “A Moon for the Misbegotten” at the Shaw and “The Importance of Being Ernest” at the Stratford, in addition to the musicals.

A dear friend has a cottage in Niagara-on-the-Lake just so she can stay there each year to attend the Shaw Festival.  We had the use of it for 8 relaxing days (a welcome break after a lot of driving!) and I cannot imagine a lovelier town or region than Niagara-on-the-Lake and environs for a summer visit.  The town itself, in its present form, dates to around the time of the War of 1812, but actually dates to the time of the American Revolutionary War.  In fact, it was the major settlement area for Loyalists who left, or were driven out of the U.S., for supporting Britain during the Revolutionary War.  There is a great deal of history here (some of the most brutal campaigns of the War of 1812 were fought in this general vicinity).  We learned a great deal (especially at the magnificently restored Fort George National Historic Site) about the War of 1812 here (and always from the Canadian perspective) – perhaps some of the brutality of the campaign came from pent-up anger on the part of the Americans at their former brethren, considered so traitorous as to have sided with Britain in the fight for independence.

Noteworthy are some beautiful Greek Revival early 19th century residential buildings, and the town’s lovely setting right where the Niagara River empties into Lake Ontario.  Lush greenbelts with picnicking and bike paths border Lake Ontario and the Niagara River, there are nature reserves scattered about, and the historically significant Welland Canal, which connects Lake Eire and Lake Ontario, thereby bypassing Niagara Falls.

Most charming were the countless fruit stands brimming with local fruit and vegetables, and an amazing concentration of wineries.  We had no idea that the most significant wine growing and producing area in Canada was the region surrounding Niagara-on-the-Lake, and we were in for a treat.  There must be 150 wineries, and these are major operations, many boasting magnificent buildings (some like faux chateaux, but some with striking contemporary architecture).  The wines we tasted were of uniformly high quality, and the specialty, to utterly die for, is the ice wine that is made here.  It is very expensive, but like a German eiswein or trockenbeerenauslese, absolutely intoxicating in its lush, quite decadent, richness.  Between plays, excursions into the countryside, and side trips to Buffalo and Niagara Falls, we had no problem keeping busy and relaxing over our eight days there.

Stratford is a very different place from Niagara-on-the-Lake, not so English villagey or charming.  Instead it feels very much like a late 19th century English town, with some spectacular Victorian public buildings and the Avon River flowing through a linear park across the center of the city.

Overall, Ontario felt somewhere between the U.S. and Britain, probably 75% American in feeling, 25% British.  It was just enough to make us feel like we were in a different country (one prominent example is the use of the metric system) but not so much that we felt far from the U.S.  (And in Niagara-on-the-Lake we could even listen easily to NPR from Buffalo!)  One English trait that was very prominent was spectacular plantings and flower beds at private homes, public parks, and along commercial streets. 

 Several natural areas were stops for us – far fewer than we would have liked, but what we saw was splendid.  A few to mention:

§  Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore (Lake Superior), Upper Peninsula, Michigan

§  Niagara Falls (Canadian side), Niagara Falls, Ontario

§  Chimney Rock National Historic Site, near Scotts Bluff, Nebraska

A good way to get some sense of what part of the country one is in Is camping, and we did camp – particularly in Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where one of our campgrounds was on an isolated stretch of the south shore of Lake Superior.  Given the cool, wet weather we had the whole time, the eastern part of the country was remarkably green.

We often passed towns and rural areas of great historic and cultural interest, and it was an enduring frustration that we had so little time, it seemed, to stop.  Along with such places, two wonderful historic art communities I have wanted to see we had to skip – Roycroft in Aurora, NY (near Buffalo) and Cranbrook Academy in Bloomfield Hills MI (northwest of Detroit).

I remember feeling the frustration of passing by so many tantalizing places particularly on the portion of the drive from the Twin Cities up the St. Croix River, into Wisconsin and then across the entire Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  This is a part of the country I do not know terribly well (despite having been a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin for five years in the 60’s), and my priceless, out-of-print Smithsonian Guide to Historic America:  The Great Lakes States, kept mentioning fascinating little towns and byways with alluring histories and notable buildings, small museums and the like, and we did not have time to stop.  We took a brief break at the Visitor Center for the St. Croix National Wild & Scenic River, just to pick up brochures, and I realized what an untapped wealth of natural areas exist to be explored.  Locals in the know probably enjoy a treasure such as the St. Croix, but how many of us from outside the area have taken advantage of the opportunity it offers to get away and transition to a totally different state of mind (or even know such wonderful places exist?)  It’s at moments like this I begin dreaming about future trips, somewhat off the beaten track that I would love to take, and most likely never will.  Having time to focus on central Minnesota and northern Wisconsin seemed like just such a perfect trip, a slow exploration with time for many stops and undoubtedly, unplanned surprises and delights.

Every time we travel in the U.S., taking the time to see some things along the way, I am impressed at what a rich legacy we have accumulated in just a few hundred years, and I keep wondering how much of a sense of that rich legacy most Americans have?  We may be familiar with our limited geographic neighborhood, but beyond that, how much do we know, first-hand, and appreciate of what we have?

Another part of the Mid-West that is rich in American history, and all-too-often neglected, is Iowa and Nebraska.   There is a great legacy of the pioneer days in these two states.  On the drive east we did make one stop before springing for Chicago, and that was Red Cloud, Nebraska, girlhood home of Willa Cather, and a classic turn-of-the-century town where we took a guided tour (we were the only ones) of several buildings associated with Cather, including the house she grew up in.  Nebraska is also surprising to me in how beautiful it is.  Driving west clear across northern Nebraska, you actually experience the change from The East to the The West – within a few miles, driving across the Sand Hills, you notice the disappearance of most eastern trees and the almost sudden appearance of cottonwoods.  In less than 100 miles, the transition seems complete.  Western Nebraska protrudes well above Colorado and touches Wyoming, so it should not be surprising that it feels as much “The West” as those intermountain states that are the very essence of what we think the West to be.

Our last night, we camped in the Wildcat Hills just south of Scotts Bluff, Nebraska, and we had as western experience as we could ever hope in any of the classic Western states.  The next day, down through easter Colorado, the sense of returning “home” grew and grew, and the final miles driving into Santa Fe, our home region never felt lovelier.

 May this not be our last road trip!

 As always,

Ken