Wing frames Art Institute's modern collection in a playful, inviting setting

There was always something a little too modern about the Morton Wing that previously housed the Art Institute's modern-art collection.

Compared to the more intimate galleries where the old masters were hung, the Morton Wing was big and airy, but also chilly, vast and somewhat forbidding, like much of the art itself.

This was where "that abstract stuff" tended to be found. It was off to the side and somewhat ancillary, art for the connoisseur, not the common visitor. It almost felt like a separate museum entirely.

Which is why the Art Institute's new Modern Wing is such a revelation when it formally opens to the public on Saturday, May 16. Not only does it give the museum a new north entrance that engages the tourist mecca of Millennium Park and encourages spillover from the Pritzker Pavilion, complete with a sharp new pedestrian bridge spanning Monroe Street, but it also creates a warm, bright, inviting space to usher a visitor into the museum.

"The Modern Wing has reaffirmed the Art Institute's commitment to the life of the city," said museum President James Cuno, speaking from the commanding position of a stairway landing in the wing's main space of Griffin Court at the media preview Wednesday. "It has allowed us to bring our modern and contemporary collections together under one roof and under conditions better than before."

With its abundant natural light, hidden vistas and clean, spare construction, it gives the art itself a completely different atmosphere in which to exist and thrive. Who would've thought that modern art could be not forbiddingly abstract, but playfully cheery? Yet that's the prevailing mood of the Modern Wing, from the rooftop restaurant to the natural light that seeps into the "high modern" collection on the third floor, to the Ed Paschke and Roy Lichtenstein works that greet a visitor in the contemporary collection on the second floor, to the huge, colorful Sam Francis painting "In Lovely Blueness No. 2" outside the abstract expressionist room - as airy and fresh as a sheet hanging on a line - to the little photography annex and new-media installation on the ground floor, leading one back toward the old, familiar Art Institute.

Architect Renzo Piano has also smoothed the transition from his new addition to the old museum by taking the dark promenade of Gunsaulus Hall that used to house the suits of armor and redesigning it as a warm and woody space for Asian art. By the time a visitor gets back to the main staircase leading to the old masters, it feels like home again.

That's the first of the purely utilitarian advantages of the new $300 million, 264,000-square-foot Modern Wing: It increases the museum's space by 33 percent to make it the second-largest art museum in the country after New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. It takes the museum's Picassos, which previously had been scattered about from room to room like coasters at a cocktail party, and organizes them in coherent, cohesive fashion alongside other modernist masterpieces by Matisse and Kandinsky. Its Architecture and Design gallery frees the museum's prime architecture drawings from their old home in the library and creates a collection that can begin to rival that of the Museum of Modern Art.

"We have, we think, the greatest collections of modern and contemporary art of any encyclopedic museum," Cuno boasted.

Yet, back in the old haunts, the new space likewise frees the Impressionist collection to sprawl down the second floor of Gunsaulus Hall where the modern art used to be, and opens space for a permanent folk-art exhibit, among others.

"It's allowed us to rethink those collections and how visitors appreciate them," Cuno added. Indeed, it has allowed the entire museum to be reorganized.

There's no denying, however, the primary aesthetic advantage is the wing itself. It's a work of art as architecture that also enhances the art within.

The museum's old Columbus Drive entrance to the east is gone, or at least shut down, replaced by a new Columbus entrance specifically for field trips and large groups, ushering them through the colorful classrooms, studios and cafeteria of the 20,000-foot Ryan Education Center. It's a playful, inviting area, and that spirit of play is present throughout the new wing, albeit in hues that are a bit more muted, but for the paintings on the walls.

The main entrance to that side of the museum is now at 159 E. Monroe St. (Dig how Piano designed the elevator entries to the underground parking across the street to echo the Modern Wing's facade, Aware One.) Those who take the Nichols Bridgeway across from Millennium Park to the rooftop sculpture garden will be funneled down to the same ground-floor ticket windows. From there they move through the "main street" expanse of Griffin Court to either the new galleries above or the old museum beyond.

Griffin Court is spare and elegant, stripped but for a sculpture by Cy Twombly, who is also getting the first featured exhibit in the ground-floor Abbott Galleries. The space seems made for galas and special events, as with the media preview. The new photography annex and new-media installation are off in the corner.

Up above is where the fun begins, with Paschke and Lichtenstein welcoming visitors to the contemporary galleries on the second floor. Entire rooms are devoted to Chicago Imagists and Gerhard Richter, and then comes a pair of room-size works by Robert Grober. The first seems like a child's bright yellow playroom - until one realizes the wallpaper features images of a lynching.

There is also finally space enough for Charles Ray's "Hinoki," a life-size sculpture of a fallen tree trunk that is the largest single piece in the museum. The same goes for a massive Richard Serra sculpture, which at 10,000 pounds is the museum's heaviest.

See what I mean by "playful?" Seen in this context, Jasper Johns' electric "Corpse and Mirror II" has never looked better, and while I still maintain that you have to go to New York to see top-flight Jackson Pollock, even his "Greyed Rainbow" seems more colorful than ever before.

There are 800 works throughout the Modern Wing, and even that is only scratching the surface of art the museum hasn't had room to display in the past. "A lot of these I've never even seen before because we never had space for them," the Art Institute's Chai Lee said on a recent tour. Works will be rotated in and out, no doubt including Andy Warhol's big "Mao," once a staple of the modern galleries - as soon as they can find a spot for it that doesn't overwhelm everything else around. Even so, that too would fit right in with the playful atmosphere.

European modernists and Surrealists are on the third floor, with Matisse's "Bathers by a River" placed in a position to strike a powerful opening note. Picasso, again, finally attains coherence - or as coherent as his expansive career is likely to get.

Yet the real work of art might just be overhead. Piano has designed what he calls a "flying carpet" on the roof, a cantilever-blade structure - think Venetian blinds laid flat - that allows natural light to seep into the galleries through a ceiling scrim. The north-facing windows, though shaded, also allow indirect light without damaging the art, while permitting a view of the Pritzker Pavilion's distinctive latticework and the Randolph Street skyline beyond.

In short, these galleries don't shut a visitor in with the art, but allow a little visual breathing room. That's a cure for what ails all those who find the very idea of modern art claustrophobic.

Those comforting old lions out front will always make Michigan Avenue the Art Institute's signature facade, but now with the Modern Wing the museum has a new entryway as well, one that is welcoming and stylish and that playfully links this old institution to all the fun going on in Millennium Park. From "Cloud Gate," better known as "The Bean," to Georgia O'Keefe's "Sky Above Clouds IV," it's just a stroll up the Nichols Bridgeway through the Modern Wing away.

<p class="factboxheadblack">Modern Wing</p> <p class="News"><b>Where:</b> The Art Institute of Chicago, 159 E. Monroe St., Chicago</p> <p class="News"><b>Open to the public:</b> 10 a.m. Saturday, May 16</p> <p class="News"><b>Other hours:</b> Open 10:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. weekdays except Thursday, when the museum is open until 8 p.m.; 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Open until 9 p.m. on Thursday and Friday from May 31 through August.</p> <p class="News"><b>Cost: </b>The first week the Modern Wing is open, admission to the Art Institute will be free, through Friday, May 22. The museum will also play host to a drive for the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Then the museum's new higher rates kick in: $18 for adults, $12 for students and seniors, kids younger than 12 admitted free. </p>