[Title stolen from Sydney. I think. I was going to link to her post with the same title, but I couldn’t find it.]

I went to the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art today. I think this is the 4th or 5th time I’ve been. As a museum guide was explaining to a group of children, presumably on a field trip, “This Museum is not like other museums–it is Now. Because Now is always changing, when you come back in a couple months the museum will be completely different.” Which is true. It’s not a very big museum, but they are rarely displaying much in the way of a permanent collection. One of the only things that’s often displayed is a small but excellent collection of Calder mobiles, other sculpture and few paintings. I don’t mind seeing the same Calder again and again.

In 1999, it was the first contemporary art museum I’d ever been to. I was amazed. I’m not sure how many of the exhibits were genuinely good because it was all so fascinating to me at the time. Since then, the quality of what’s on display seems to vary wildly. Some visits are as awesome as the first, others have left me somewhat disappointed. The exhibits on the top floor were good this time around. I especially liked an installation by Sarah Sze. The bottom floor struck me as mostly wasted space, with some pithy expressions being displayed with giant electric marquees. I sincerely dislike almost all contemporary art with words. Invariably the message (and there’s almost always a message) is political and not even written in a very interesting way.

Ever since I’ve been paying attention to contemporary art, there’s always someone who thinks it’s a grand idea to hang speakers with people saying something, or show headache-inducing videos. I don’t like it, and I wish we’d get over with it. I think curators get all caught up in the diversity of medium that they forget to actually evaluate whether a work is good or not. I have yet to be convinced that a canvas with a word or two stenciled on it, or a name scribbled, or a phrase plastered is art-worthy. If you want to make art with a message, I’d personally rather you didn’t bother, but if you must– then figure out a way to mute the message, or force the viewer unravel it. I don’t got to an art museum to be smacked around by your not-very-original ideas.

My favorite art is simply good photography which invariably shows us something we’ve seen before but never looked at. Other mediums can do the same thing–it needn’t be limited to a visual experience, but it should at least have some intrinsic aesthetic value.

While hardly something I would consider brilliant, I’m perfectly willing to accept solid-color canvases or a purple fluorescent light bulb as art. A neon sign that forms a word? Nope, at best it’s an advertisement, at worst it’s propaganda, but it’s not art.

Other things that bother me: If you need to explain it, it’s not good enough to go in a museum. Today I saw a series of newspaper photo clippings, with captions removed, all of which showed people in the act of making music. It worked just fine alone, and the explanation that it was created by a deaf artist made sense, but wasn’t necessary to comprehend the work.

After spending so much time in New York, Chicago seems rather quaint. I looked forward to hearing, “This is Grand,” and “This is Chicago,” on the L, but the blue line says “This is Chicago and Milwaukee,” which, actually may be more amusing. I switched to the red line going the other way, where I was sure to hear it, but did the train I was on seemed to have broken announcements.

I’m divided about whether or not subways should have automated announcements. They’re intelligible and much more likely to actually be announced, but they’re stale and repetitive. After a few months in New York, you can start to understand the announcements when they’re making them, and you’re not forced to listen to the same recorded voice day in and day out. And you get to wonder: what does, “Stand clear the closing doors,” mean, anyway?

Train platforms in Chicago tend to be in the middle of the tracks, rather than on either side. This is nice because you don’t have the all-too-common situation in New York where you have to find the correct hole in the ground to go the correct direction. On the other hand, there’s new signs on the red line that theoretically tell you which direction you’re going, but I find them insanely difficult to figure out.

Instead of taking two subways to get back to the crash pad, I hopped on the west-bound Chicago bus. Without a map. How did I know where it would go? Busses in Chicago only go on one street. It’s such a simple concept that makes buses much more usable. And I’d forgotten how nice the Chicago busses are–the little automated sign always tells you what the next stop is! I’m not sure if it works off a GPS unit or mileage, but it’s always been right on for me. In New York, I needed a map to know where to get on the bus, a map to know where the bus was going, and I had had to keep watching the map while on the bus to know where to get off…

The latest news on the job is that I should find out about the displacement next friday. I think I actually believe it this time. Then again, I have been waiting since September.

Additionally, the pilot group voted yes on the tentative agreement between the union and company which means that it will become our new collective bargaining agreement. The vote was insanely close, with 418 pilots voting for it, and 400 pilots voting against. Approximately 75% of pilots eligible to vote did so. I voted for it, but I’m on the edge about whether or not this was as good as we could do at the moment. I certainly have a lot of issues with the new contract, but it’s a short, 21-month contract, and if I’m still here in 2 years, I hope the next one is better. Apparently the new contract will be phased in slowly. The big changes are a completely new way to bid for our schedules that should be better for us. In addition, we will now be paid for the time we actually work if it’s greater than the time we were scheduled to work, which is nice.

It looks like I’ve got a 4-day trip starting on Sunday, with one of my favorite captains from JFK. Unfortunately, there’s not yet anything else on my schedule after that. I was hoping the whole month would fill up, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. So it’s a good thing that I got a crash pad.

Jonah’s going to try to come visit tomorrow, and hopefully we’ll do something interesting.