MIES/CHRYSALIS

In the new wing of MACRO, Mies Van der Rohe's Illinois house of modernism blanched of the paraphernalia of habitation, mechanically reproduced, becomes an aviary for butterflies laying claim to gaudery of flora faux and non, including the writer's smoking jacket, chrysalis. "Here the purity of the cage is undisturbed. Neither the steel columns from which it is suspended nor the independent floating terrace break the taut skin." —Philip Johnson on the Farnsworth house