THE LOOP — With the easing of coronavirus restrictions across the city as we completely bungle our vaccine rollout like the rest of the country, the Art Institute of Chicago has announced that it is extending its special Monet and Chicago Exhibit through June for any artphiles who are planning on still being alive by then.
“It’s obvious that this year has been a turbulent one for the arts,” admitted Art Institute Director of Programs Muriel Spune, 41, “but Chicago boasts one of the largest collection of Monet pieces outside of Paris, and we feel it would be wrong not to extend this very special, very Chicago display until the early summer for any lover of art who isn’t planning on dropping dead due to the gross negligence of anyone operating any lever of power in the next five months.”
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“It’s nice that they’re doing this,” said local painter and part-time barista Angela Rossi, 31. “For a while I was kind of weighing my options about going to it, and then a lot of in-person stuff was kind of verboten so I wasn’t sure I’d get the chance to go. Now though, I just have to roll the dice and hope one of my shithead regulars who insists on coming into the coffee shop every day doesn’t give me COVID before I manage to get down to the Loop again.”
“This is a great initiative,” said Roland Sinclair, 52, a session musician in a jazz quartet. “It really speaks to art’s ability to bounce back from any level of tragedy and bind us together in these uncertain times. That said, I’d be fooling myself if I said I thought I was going to be anything other than extremely dead from coronavirus within the next two weeks at absolute max, and I’m booked pretty solid until then. So I don’t think I’ll be able to take advantage of this extended timeline.”
When asked how Lori Lightfoot felt about it, an aide from the mayor’s office stated via email that “Mayor Lightfoot was aware of the situation at the Art Institute and has been working tirelessly to find a way to shut them down again to cut down on the roadblocks Chicagoans need to navigate to get them back inside a dingy bar the city can collect taxes on where they belong.”
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