Brick by Brick” is a new yearlong exhibit at the Museum of Science and Industry. Its subject? Legos! The show connects the childhood activity of playing with the toy bricks with serious subjects like physics and architecture through replicas of iconic buildings, such as the Golden Gate Bridge, One World Trade Center, the Hoover Dam, Cinderella’s Disney World castle, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater House in southwestern Pennsylvania, the Great Pyramid of Giza, Saint Louis’s Gateway Arch, and the Colosseum, among others. Adam Reed Tucker, one of Lego’s 14 professional builders, led the project, which begins with a quote on a wall from Ludwig Mies van der Rohe: “Architecture starts when you carefully put two bricks together. There it begins.”
Of course, science is the purview of the Museum of Science and Industry; “Brick by Brick” is still weirdly lacking in imagination. Granted, it’s hard to take issue with an exhibit that more or less effectively achieves its stated goal of framing famous feats of artful engineering through the lens of childhood recreation. Yet for all its championing of the naive, far-reaching ambition of children and architects, the show could use a dose of the absurdity and failure such visionaries are subject to—a big part of what made Legos so much fun in the first place. v
Through Feb 2017 Museum of Science and Industry 5700 S. Lake Shore 773-684-1414msichicago.org $9 adults, $7 children
