Art Institute of Chicago's Modern Wing: Beautiful and Challenging

Over the July 4 weekend, I visited the Midwest’s hottest visual-arts destination this summer — the Art Institute of Chicago’s new Renzo Piano-designed Modern Wing, which opened in May. In Chicago, a town that takes architecture very seriously, the building is being hailed as a masterpiece. Although it’s three stories high, it feels light, intimate and low to the ground, the result of using lots of glass, accented by steel mullion strips, to give the limestone-cladded facade an open and inviting spirit.