Art in Chicago: A Guide for Collectors, Curators and the Curious (Digital Edition)

From the Monster Roster to the Modern Moment

Chicago art movements over the years

"Chicago’s art movements over the years have repeatedly displayed an urgency, vim and uniqueness that allows them to stand alone; in any context; measured by any standard. It’s a fact not regularly celebrated externally, given the willful and active resistance from other places—notably New York and Los Angeles—to see Chicago and its art. But for those who know of it, who are steeped in it or happen upon it, there is little doubting the city’s art vibrancy and depth of heritage; its quality and scale."  (Jon Bonfiglio)

A Place of Perpetual Warmth

Hyde Park Art Center and the making of Chicago’s creative identity

"There are two Chicagos. There is Chicago on postcards, the skyline gleaming across the Lake, the marquee lights of the Loop, the iconic museums with encyclopedic collections. Then there is the other Chicago, where real artists and creatives live and work. Tucked in artists’ lofts and former industrial neighborhoods across the city, this Chicago is no less brilliant." (Jen Torwudzo-Stroh)

Home for the Vanguard

How the Arts Club of Chicago stays contemporary in its second century

"Artists often have to balance between the DIY world of apartment galleries and artist-run spaces and the polished professionalism of marble-floored museums and white-walled galleries. But in Chicago, the collaborative spirit of the art scene blurs the boundaries between these worlds. Nowhere is this clearer than at the Arts Club of Chicago, which gave Pablo Picasso his first solo institutional exhibition in the United States in 1923 and was a frequent haunt of intellectuals like Gertrude Stein as well as an early home for the works of John Cage."  (Jonathan Bonfiglio)

A Special Mission

A Home for Black Artists

How the South Side Community Art Center grew from an icon of the Black renaissance to a vital and expanding force

"A charming brick and stone Georgian Revival-style residence in the heart of Bronzeville houses the South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC), the first such Black art institution in the United States. Alive with the sweep of brushes across canvas and eager footsteps around its many artworks, the center now hums with a different energy: construction as part of a monumental campaign to rehabilitate and expand the center’s iconic home." (Natalie Jenkins)

The Relentless Avant-Garde of The Renaissance Society

How did a hidden, nondescript place in a campus classroom building with a name that sounds like something from Harry Potter become one of the most important venues for contemporary art in the world?

"By name, location and association, the Renaissance Society should be a fortress for art history’s stuffy establishment. It is anything but. Since the society’s creation in 1915, its exhibitions have pushed the envelope of contemporary art beyond the coasts into the Midwest. Throughout its storied exhibition history, artists on their way to becoming household names have found an ally with the Ren’s forward-thinking female directors. Through their foresight and trust, these curators have shaped the contours of art and culture beyond the walls of their modest gallery space." (Teddy Sandler)

A Charmed School

How SAIC became and remains one of the top art schools in America

"With a new president at the helm, and living through 159 years of history—including the Great Chicago Fire, World’s Columbian Exposition, the Women’s Suffrage Movement, the Great Depression, two World Wars and a global pandemic—the School of the Art Institute of Chicago ranks high as a private art school. A survey conducted recently by the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University named it 'the most influential art school in the United States.'" (Kristine Hansen)

Beauty by Volume

On the art-book trail

"Famed art-book publisher Rizzoli once had a retail store in Water Tower Place. Did you ever visit? It welcomed book-lovers for twenty-five years before closing in 2001. If you’re very lucky, you had the chance to shop at Prairie Avenue Bookshop, at one time the world’s largest architectural bookstore. Their shop on South Wabash, which closed in 2009, was as beautiful as the volumes they carried. And maybe you remember a shorter-lived place, Golden Age, first in Pilsen and then in the West Loop, where artists Marco Kane Braunschweiler and Martine Syms put a spotlight on books by and about contemporary artists. It closed in 2011. Those were the good old days." (Joseph Cothrel)

The Art Geography of Chicago

"There was a time, a few decades ago, when the bulk of Chicago’s art world was clustered along Michigan Avenue, where the museums are; in a small but influential enclave in Hyde Park; and in River North, a then-new lofty neighborhood that conjured up comparisons to New York’s Soho. But then a major River North building burned to the ground, destroying the galleries and their art inside, and soon its absence, coupled with rising rents in the remaining buildings, dispersed many galleries, first to the West Loop, and more recently to West Town." 

66 Pages/PDF