I've posted about the one remaining Banksy here, which won't be around much longer. Go check that out and have lunch around the corner at Little Goat.
I'd say skip the Bean & Millenium Park, check out the Bowie exhibit at the Modern Art Museum and have a cocktail at Green Mill.
There's several threads about chicago on here if you search. Enjoy your visit!

Went to the Modern Art Museum for the first time during the summer... blown away with how impressive it was. Also went to the Green Mill for some Jazz and soak up some Al Capone nostalgia, which was also good fun. Really good city for food, stayed in the Dana hotel which was really well located. Great city to visit. 

Art Institute of Chicago gets its largest gift ever, including 9 Warhols

A major private contemporary art collection with a value estimated at $400 million is being donated to the Art Institute of Chicago by local philanthropists Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson, in what the museum is calling the largest gift of art in its history and a coup for the institution and the city.

Numbering 42 pieces, stocked with iconic works by Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns and many other instantly recognizable names and spanning a time period from 1953 to 2011, experts called it one of the most significant collections of its kind in the world.

"This is one of the landmark gifts in our 136-year history" and "a great gift to the city of Chicago," said Douglas Druick, the museum's president and director.

"It's a powerful statement to have a collection of this international stature staying here in Chicago," said Robert Levy, chairman of the Art Institute's board. "It's unbelievably exciting for the Art Institute, for the City of Chicago, for the entire art community of Chicago. It's all good."

The Art Institute will display the collection of paintings, sculpture and photographs in the second-floor galleries of its Modern Wing for the next half-century, as the Edlis/Neeson Collection, beginning in January.

"The Art Institute made us an offer that I couldn't refuse, which is they will show the art for 50 years. A lot of collectors never get that chance," said Edlis, who is on the board of and a major donor to the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and has supported the New Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Edlis and Neeson, who live in a Gold Coast high-rise and in Aspen, Colo., keep their own collection at 200 works, he said, and have been frustrated by what typically happens with donated art.

"They always end up being shown for a short period of time, and then they end up in storage," said Edlis, 89, who immigrated with his family from Austria as a teenager in 1941, moved to Chicago in 1950 and made his fortune founding a local plastics business, Apollo Plastics. "I kept asking them: 'Do you need another warehouse full of art?'"

He said once the Art Institute had settled on the works it wanted, he and the museum's experts independently estimated their value, and both came up with almost the same $400 million figure.

The significance of the gift, though, is far more than monetary.

"At every turn this fills a gap with an iconic masterpiece, but the essence of the story is pop art," said James Rondeau, the Art Institute's curator of contemporary art. "Chicago in general and the Art Institute in particular have been historically poor in collections of classic pop art, and this in one single gift changes that forever."

"In recent memory I cannot recall a more important gift to an institution that comprises several generations of artists so clearly and so astutely," said Laura Paulson, chairman of postwar and contemporary art at the auction house Christie's. "I can't think of anything in the postwar and contemporary art world this generous and this meaningful."

Other works in the donation include sculpture by Cy Twombly, Jeff Koons and Charles Ray, photographs by Richard Prince and Cindy Sherman, and paintings by Roy Lichtenstein and Gerhard Richter. The works tend to be pivotal ones in the lives of these artists, Paulson said.

"It's not simply names and numbers," Druick said. "It's the works themselves. It's the best of the best. These are incredibly passionate and discerning collectors who have very ably refined their collections over time. … It's part of the tradition of the Art Institute. It's not that we have X dozen Monets. It's the Monets we have."

Madeleine Grynsztejn, director of the MCA, said she considered the Edlis/Neeson gift a major triumph locally.

"The collection is going to Chicago. That's what I'm really thrilled about," she said.

"It needs to be said that Stefan and Gael are extraordinarily generous to both institutions. They have been very justifiably ranked among the top collectors in the world year after year. They are truly connoisseurs."

And their collection includes "some of the highlights of mid-20th-century art," Grynsztejn said.

Edlis said he is making the donation in part because he is almost 90 and doesn't wish to saddle his wife, 71, with "the burden. Might as well do it in my lifetime," he said.

Neeson agreed: "It's going to be very exciting to see them there on the walls at the Art Institute. It's a great feeling of joy that we have," she said.

"We have some other nice things, but I'm very happy how they chose the 42 works," Edlis said, referring to Druick and Rondeau. "It was their decision. Obviously, they thought about it long and hard because they knew they would be stuck with it for 50 years. It's a very intelligent way of going about it."

The gift was honed, Druick said, with an eye toward complementing and supplementing works the museum has collected.

"The 42 constitute those works of art which will do the most for us," he said.

"There are things we obviously desperately needed, like Warhol. We had one. Now we have nine other Warhols so we can really tell the Warhol story."

The paintings by Warhol in the collection include two self-portraits from 1964 and 1966, as well as a version of his "Flowers" series and "Twelve Jackies," both also from 1964.

But the museum also wanted to be sure the collection represents who Edlis and Neeson have been as collectors, Rondeau said.

"It tells the story of a particular eye," he said. "We wanted this to stand for what they've stood for over so many decades."

Huge win for Chicago.

With LACMA's $650 million over the past weekend, that's a nice write off for these blokes. 

Wow. Love that new pose.

Unfortunately I've been out of town so I missed expo this year. Looks like some beautiful work (although not a ton of urban/street art)

I do like this one. I have a Burn print and the colours are awesome in the flesh.
What kind of money are we talking for his canvas work ? This one is lovely.

GN

These are the three that were there.

Wow @ those prices. Good for Pose. How big was the 12k one?

Also like that Kehinde Wiley. Looks like an awesome show...

this one...

Sakyamuni, it was from a new low edition series of prints. There were a couple other ones in same three color in their hideaway. The smaller one I posted was a watercolor on parchment paper (The me I never knew). 


DBSON: I think the "smaller" one that I first posted on instagram was 36x45? Trying to zoom in on my original photo but the details next to it aren't fully clear. Eitherway, it was a pretty nice size. The horizontal car crash one was the biggest, not sure on size tho. The Wiley piece was awesome to see in person. There was another one at a dif gallery, but didn't grab a pic of it.

Great range of work overall. Had to kinda hurry along as my wife is a week from being due and she didn't want to rent a scooter. lol. Wish I could have stayed longer. Pace Prints had a nice display of obey, kaws, haring works, including new Kaws print as shown above. They wanted 10k for it framed... Nice to see Paco Pomet work there. Not much street art overall, even though my pics may seem to say otherwise. Outside of Kaws, Obey (pace prints booth), pose, faile (one piece, will post in a few), mcgee and micallef (self portrait), didn't see any other big names. No banksy, Mr Brainwash (as much as I dislike him, was surprised nobody had one on display), blek, invader, swoon, jr, dface, etc. 

Who is this piece by?

Saw this yesterday on IG - its lovely. Artist is Jose Lerma
www.joselerma.com