“Contemporary art, unlike modernism, is not a style,” said Giampaolo Bianconi, associate curator of modern and contemporary art at the Art Institute of Chicago, as we passed a Claes Oldenburg light switch sculpture. “It simply means things that are happening right now, in the present.”
We were in an empty gallery on a recent Tuesday. The Art Institute is closed to the public on Tuesdays, but I was there on a singular mission: to better understand contemporary art.
