Article: Art of light: Renzo Piano as the Art Institute of Chicago: Renzo Piano's newly unveiled Modern Wing at the Art Institute of Chicago is both ingenious and practical, as well as an elegant addition to America's second-largest art museum.

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On 16 May, the opening day of Renzo Piano's Modern Wing for the Art Institute of Chicago--a project 10 years in the planning and execution--it rains solidly. The light, the whole point of Mr Piano's new building, is gloomy. But as I stand in one of his upstairs galleries beside a Gerhard Richter painting on a gleaming white wall (Fig. 1), a guard remarks that I am in fact lucky--the rain and low light means the window screens that usually obscure the view have risen automatically. The floor-to-ceiling windows present a wide view of the sculpture park, with the gleaming roofs of Frank Gehry's concert pavilion popping up above the trees like a ...

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