Thorne Rooms at the Phoenix Art Museum

My husband had a conference in Phoenix last weekend.  Although I had spent most of my life in Utah, I had never been to Phoenix!  We took advantage of a break to go to the Phoenix Art Museum.  They don't have many famous pieces, but they do have 20 of the Thorne Miniature Rooms (Chicago has 68).  They were fun to see.

Thursday Text: The Sixty-Eight Rooms

My sister and nephew came to visit over the weekend, and it was a lot of fun!  We went to the Art Institute where Ian got to see the Thorne Miniature Rooms.  Then we heard that some of the girls in Young Women's had read a book about the miniature rooms.  The Sixty-Eight Rooms by Marianne Malone sounds like a great adventure.

Friday Featured Art: Holiday Thorne Rooms

For the holidays, the Thorne Miniature Rooms at the Art Institute are decorated all festively. It's fascinating to me that they open the rooms and clean things and move things around, etc. We'll be checking out this seasonal display the next time we're in the city.

Friday Featured Art: Miniature Rooms

When we were in Chicago last week, we picked up the Miniature Rooms book at the Art Institute. It's a guide to the the Thorne Miniature Rooms collection. It's really great, but it's kind of hard to judge the scale from the photos in the book. You just have to see the real things!

Thorne Miniature Rooms

When our relationship began, I was living in Utah and Tony was attending Northern Illinois University. So our first official date took place when I visited Tony and we spent the entire day in Chicago. My favorite by far was the Art Institute of Chicago. One of Tony's favorite parts of the Art Institute is the Thorne Miniature Rooms collection downstairs. The rooms are set into the wall at eye level so that you can peek into them. They are fascinating, intricately-detailed rooms depicting European and American interiors from specific time periods (with a scale of one inch to one foot). Here's a Massachusetts parlor from 1818. Notice the tree that you can see through the window. Which is your favorite?