Aug. 25--"I'm missing the Chagall. It doesn't look right to me," said Stephanie D'Allesandro, the Art Institute's Comer Curator of International Modern Art. She was looking at a wall in the museum's Modern Wing from which Marc Chagall's "White Crucifixion" had been removed Tuesday morning.
The iconic Chagall work -- -- a depiction of Jesus as a Jew amid scenes of the persecution of Jews -- -- is being prepared for a loan to the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Italy, where it will be part of the exhibition "Divine Beauty: From Van Gogh to Chagall and Fontana," from Sept. 24 to January 24, 2016. There, too, plans are being made for it be seen in November by Pope Francis, who told his biographers it is his favorite work of art.
And with the Art Institute collection at her disposal, D'Allesandro was able to find a work to put on the wall that will also help tell a coherent story with the paintings around it: "Red-Haired Girl" by the Danish-German expressionist Emil Nolde, whose work the Hitler regime classified as "degenerate."
