BY GINNY VAN ALYEA

On Saturday, April 5 there&#39;s a dynamic fundraiser party and benefit art auction taking place at TUSK in Logan Square. The event is in support of&nbsp;<a href="http://summerforum.org">Summer Forum for Inquiry + Exchange</a>,&nbsp;a new&nbsp;discussion-based residency program.

The cause is in the name of dialogue and creative thinking, and the supporters run the gamut from collectors, curators, up and coming thinkers, and of course artists. A variety of artists, in fact, not just the visual, are part of this residency. At a time when most of us are so on-the-go that we are too fried&nbsp;to daydream, unless we&#39;re stuck somewhere with a dead cellphone battery, Summer Forum has taken up the cause to let people think. And talk. It&#39;s all about old school approaches to being creative.

The&nbsp;auction&nbsp;includes great works by artists such as Heidi Norton, Carrie Schneider,&nbsp;Paul Cowan,&nbsp;Jenny Kendler, Andrew Holmquist, and Alex Chitty, among many others.&nbsp;There will also be a whole bunch of unique raffle items, including limited edition LPs by artists Jason Lazarus and Michael Rakowitz. Plus, the party is guaranteed to bring out a host of Chicago art world players looking to catch up while ogling fun, affordable art.

Pre-sale tickets are&nbsp;$25&nbsp;online&nbsp;and include unlimited food and drinks, and a raffle ticket. Tickets are also available&nbsp;at the door for $35.

<img alt="" class="left" data-caption="Aron Gent, Material Scrap #46, Epson Ultra Chrome Ink on paper, 20 x 24&quot; framed, 2014." data-rich-file-id="208" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/208/original/gent.jpg" />Online bidding has already started and&nbsp;closes at noon on Saturday, April 5. After that you&#39;ll have to bid in person on Saturday night.&nbsp;

I&#39;m interested in Summer Forum because of my talented and super smart friend, curator Karsten Lund. Karsten and I endured the antics and quirks of a few crazy art professors together in college (including one who wore three pairs of glasses at a time, and another who changed her name to sound like a flattering adjective), and today he&#39;s one of the smartest, artiest people I know in Chicago. Anything he loves to support is a great cause.&nbsp;

Lund&nbsp;sums up the program&#39;s goals well:&nbsp;

&quot;The goal of this unusual residency -- happening every two years -- is to bring together artists, writers, scholars, and other creative people to discuss and explore the complex issues of the present moment in a different geographical location for a week in the summer.&nbsp;This coming July&nbsp;(6th-13th), thirty-four residents will meet in Joshua Tree, California to discuss the theme, &lsquo;Networks of Belonging.&rsquo; We have also invited four amazing guests to give a talk about the theme, including design theorist Benjamin Bratton, novelist Gina Apostol, architecture scholar Felicity Scott, and philosopher and prison activist Lisa Guenther.&nbsp;The first session in 2012, in New Harmony, Indiana, the site of a 19th-century utopian community, was incredibly successful and the sequel&nbsp;should be just as fantastic.&quot;

&bull; Please visit <a href="http://summerforum.org">summerforum.org</a> for more information about the residency.&nbsp;

&bull; To see the items in the auction or to buy tickets to the event, <a href="http://summerforum.org/auction/">click here</a>.

&bull; To lend your support via Kickstarter, <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/summerforum/summer-forum-for-inquiry-exchange-2014">click here</a>&nbsp;(3 weeks left to go to $10,000!)

Summer Forum 2014 Fundraiser and Art Auction&nbsp; 
Saturday, April 5, 2014,&nbsp;7-11 pm 
<a href="http://www.tuskchicago.com">TUSK</a> (Logan Square) 3205 W. Armitage Avenue

Buy Art and Support Inquiry + Exchange

BY GINNY VAN ALYEA

<img alt="" class="left" data-caption="Waterlillies and Shadows, 32&quot; x 40&quot;, Oil on Canvas, 2010" data-rich-file-id="206" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/206/original/index-04.jpg" />I met Gregg Driben at a fundraiser a couple of years ago, not long after he&nbsp;suddenly lost his partner, Irish-born&nbsp;artist Kieran McGonnell, in a devastating accident. Driben had&nbsp;recently moved to Chicago with McGonnell when tragedy struck, and when we spoke he was just trying to get a hold on how to move forward with life on his own in a new place.&nbsp;I listened to Gregg talk about Kieran&#39;s life and I saw how passionate he was about the artist&#39;s vibrant art work. &nbsp;

Now, three year&#39;s after McGonnell&#39;s death, Driben has gathered dozens of his partner&#39;s paintings and watercolors&nbsp;and&nbsp;partnered with <a href="http://www.chicagogallerynews.com/galleries/ugly-step-sister-gallery">Ugly Step Sister Gallery</a> in Pilsen to mount a three-month long exhibition of the artist&#39;s work. &nbsp;

The labor of love comes in two parts - the show will open first on <a href="http://www.chicagogallerynews.com/calendar/kieran-mcgonnell-round-trip-ticket-opening">Friday, April 11</a>, and then a subsequent&nbsp;reception will introduce the second half of the show on May&nbsp;9.&nbsp;All of this is taking place as Driben prepares to move out of the home he and McGonnell purchased together when they first moved to Chicago, just weeks before McGonnell was injured. Now Driben is seeing his vision for McGonnell&#39;s work take shape while he also moves into another chapter of his life that will be in San Francisco. &nbsp;

McGonnell&#39;s vivid art has been shown and collected in Dublin, New York and LA, but this extended show in Chicago will bring many works together for the first time in an effort to create a full picture of the artist&#39;s vision and passion. McGonnell did&nbsp;not work in a single style or medium, and he drew on a range of influences and subjects, from the war on terror, to transportation, the&nbsp;every day, and Celtic mythology and imagery.&nbsp;

The exhibition promises to be a celebration of McGonnell&#39;s life, his art and a keystone for his legacy, a sort of extended&nbsp;love letter from Driben.&nbsp;

For more information on the artist and to view images of his work, visit <a href="http://www.kieranmcgonnell.com">www.kieranmcgonnell.com</a>&nbsp;or on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kieran-McGonnell-Fine-Art/368452845215">Facebook</a>

Kieran McGonnell - An Artist's Work Comes to Light

By KEVIN NANCE

Every property of glass as an art medium&mdash;its translucence, its luminosity, its malleability, its ability to reflect, refract and distort&mdash;will be on full display in Chicago this week as the Glass Art Society holds its annual conference in the Windy City for the first time.

<img alt="" class="left" data-caption="Ignite Glass courtyard" data-rich-file-id="201" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/201/original/ignite-courtyard-2.jpg" />The 52-year-old Seattle-based group, which claims 2,100 members from 54 countries (including artists, collectors, curators and dealers), kicks off three days of workshops, seminars, demonstrations, exhibits and other events on Thursday through Saturday, March 20-22, at the Palmer House Hilton and other venues. About 1,200 people are scheduled to attend the conference, whose on-site registration fees range from $250 (for full-time students) to $395, plus membership fees of $40-$70.

Of particular interest to non-members of the Glass Art Society is a free pre-conference event on Wednesday, March 19, featuring glass-sculpting demonstrations, studio tours, exhibitions and other events at various conference venues (including Ignite Glass Studios and West Supply, both in the West Loop). &ldquo;It will be a day to introduce Chicagoans to glass art,&rdquo; says Glass Art Society executive director Pamela Koss.

That evening, a pre-conference fundraising event at Ignite ($200-$225) will feature special hors d&rsquo;oeuvres and drinks by Chef Thai Dang and Danielle Pizzutillo of Embeya and a dinner created by Chef Matthias Merges of Yusho, Billy Sunday and A10.

The conference will also offer live and silent auctions of glass art pieces by artists from around the world, most with a value of between $800 and $12,000. One piece will be a rare collaboration between leading glass artists in honor of this year&rsquo;s Lifetime Achievement Award recipient, Dan Dailey. The ceremony honoring Dailey, at the Palmer House on Thursday, will also feature a keynote address by Chicago artist Theaster Gates.

Several of the conference seminars will focus on entrepreneurship. &ldquo;If you&rsquo;re working as a glass artist, you are your own business&mdash;or, rather, your skills are your business,&rdquo; Koss explains. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s part of the draw of being a glass artist: the fact that you are working on your own. In 2012, we celebrated 50 years of American studio glass, a movement started by people breaking out of corporate glass jobs, building their own studios in their garages and so on. The entrepreneurial aspect has always been important to this very independent group of artists, which is why we emphasize it in our conferences: business skills, marketing, everything you need to make sure you can sustain yourself in that way. The idea is to give people more operational tools to help them stay artists in uncertain economic times.&rdquo;

<img alt="" class="right" data-caption="Ignite Glass hotshop studio" data-rich-file-id="202" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/202/original/ignite-hotshop-team-working.jpg" />

Why Chicago, and why now? &ldquo;Chicago was always a perfect fit for us with its design, art, food&mdash;a popular city for artists to come to&mdash;but what we didn&rsquo;t really have for our conference was enough infrastructure, especially for our lecture-demonstrations,&rdquo; Koss says. &ldquo;We needed a pretty large glass studio with enough space for our attendees to view the demonstrations. Now we have that at Ignite, which is fantastic.&rdquo;

Ignite, a complex with a glass-art gallery, a 3,000-square-foot glassblowing studio and a 6,000-square-foot event space at 401 N. Armour, opened in November 2012, just before that year&rsquo;s edition of SOFA Chicago, the annual sculpture, objects, functional art and design show at Navy Pier. Among the SOFA attendees that year were Koss and other members of the Glass Art Society, which led to a partnership that ultimately brought the GAS conference to Chicago.

&ldquo;Many of the artists coming into Chicago for SOFA, domestically and internationally, were glass artists, so it seemed like a natural for us to have a reception for them that year,&rdquo; recalls Trish Tullman, who co-owns Ignite with her husband, Glen. (Glen&rsquo;s brother, Howard Tullman, is a noted Chicago art collector.) &ldquo;Pam was there, and afterwards the Glass Art Society approached us about them coming to Chicago in 2014. It&rsquo;s all worked out according to plan, which is great.&rdquo;

For more information about Ignite Glass Studios, visit www.igniteglass.com. To learn more about the Glass Art Society and its Chicago conference, visit <a href="http://www.glassart.org">www.glassart.org</a>

&nbsp;

Kevin Nance is a Chicago-based freelance writer and photographer. Twitter: <a href="https://twitter.com/KevinNance1">@KevinNance1</a>

Glass Art Society holds its annual conference in the Windy City

<h3>&ldquo;PERSONAL PROPERTY VALUATION COURSE SERIES&rdquo;</h3>

In partnership with the American Society of Appraisers, <a href="https://grahamschool.uchicago.edu/">The University of Chicago Graham School</a> offers a four-course series designed to prepare you for professional appraisal work and the USPAP exam. These classes focus on valuation methods that are common to all appraisers.&nbsp;

About the Program 
As the only ASA approved location in the Midwest, The University of Chicago Graham School is able to provide quality courses to a wide variety of students. Through this series, you will gain the specialized knowledge and practical hands-on experience to competently produce appraisals for a variety of specific objectives such as insurance coverage, estate tax, damage claims, charitable contributions, sale, dissolution of marriage, and equitable distribution and liquidation.

Program Structure 
Personal Property Valuation 201 &ndash; 204 must be taken in sequence. Each of the four courses is offered over a four-day period, beginning on Wednesday and ending on Saturday afternoon. This allows our course sessions to be travel-friendly to our out-of-state students.

Program Requirements 
An exam is administered at the end of each course.&nbsp; You must receive a passing grade in each course in order to enroll in the next course in the sequence.

The first course in the new series begins Wednesday, January 29.&nbsp; Register by Tuesday, January 28 by visiting <a href="https://grahamschool.uchicago.edu/noncredit/certificates/american-society-appraisers/index">grahamschool.uchicago.edu/ASCHGN.</a>

American Society of Appraisers 

<img alt="" class="right" data-caption="Image of CGN publisher by Barry Blitt, 2013 © The North Shore Weekend" data-rich-file-id="144" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/144/original/vbv-barryblitt2013.jpg" />Happy new year! 2014 is upon us and I&rsquo;ve been anticipating the start to this year for quite awhile. In this winter issue we are looking forward to many new exhibitions in galleries and museums around the city, and things are taking shape to make this a year of fresh takes on the issues of our day.&nbsp;

Recently I read a Wall Street Journal interview with the collector and philanthropist Eli Broad. When discussing his many reasons for collecting art, Broad spent quite a bit of time talking about the ever changing market and the attention on the stratospheric prices a lot of works have achieved in the past few years, but he also pointed out that what really resonates with him are &ldquo;artists&rsquo; thoughts on the &lsquo;human condition.&rsquo;&rdquo; I liked this point of view because it brought home to me the reason why, despite the market ups and downs and the numbers game many people follow, we really ought to pay close attention to what artists are doing in their work and how they explain what moves them to create engaging art. What they see every day in the world and how they see it is different from how you and I do. We can read the newspaper and listen to pundits all day long, but how artists reveal their thoughts and perspectives on a range of current issues and conditions can enlighten us, enrage us, or simply make us stop and appreciate a moment. They draw from a deeper well of meaning and share their resources with the rest of us.&nbsp;

When collectors Eileen and Peter Broido spoke with Kevin Nance for this issue, their passion for collecting recalled familiar sentiments about connecting with artists and the energetic dealers who represent them. The couple has been collecting for decades, but for them the adventure never ends.&nbsp;

In the museum world, many starts get going in 2014. Nance interviewed Solveig &Oslash;vsteb&oslash;, the Renaissance Society&rsquo;s first new director in 40 years. The Norweigan &Oslash;vsteb&oslash; is young and eager to experiment at the Ren. Continuing the spirit of a new year and new beginnings, Franck Mercurio previews the reopening of Northwestern University&rsquo;s Block Museum this January. After closing last summer the museum freshened up its galleries and took the opportunity to mount two new exhibitions. Mercurio also highlights local artist William J. O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s first major survey exhibition opening at the Museum of Contemporary Art in January, which will introduce many to his work for the first time as well as surprise those familiar with his engaging, tactile sculptures.&nbsp;

And there is still more. Illustrator Edward Gorey&rsquo;s works will be celebrated at LUMA. Christoper Wool comes to the Art Institute. Two major conferences take place here this winter: the College Art Association returns in February, while the Glass Art Society arrives in March. The Chicago International Art, Antique &amp; Jewelry Show debuts in Navy Pier&rsquo;s Festival Hall at the end of April. There is so much to&nbsp;explore in Chicago this season. Art in every form from every period will fill up our year. Read the full winter news lineup <a href="http://www.chicagogallerynews.com/news">here</a>.

Letter from the Publisher

BY KEVIN NANCE

<img alt="" data-caption="Øvstebø is right at home in her new role as executive director of The Renaissance Society. Photo by Kevin Nance" data-rich-file-id="73" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/73/original/solveig.jpg" />

When Solveig &Oslash;vsteb&oslash; first received a phone call from The Renaissance Society in Chicago about the possibility of her becoming the institution&rsquo;s new executive director&mdash;replacing Susanne Ghez, who was retiring after 40 years in the position&mdash;the timing could hardly have been worse.&nbsp;

For one thing, &Oslash;vsteb&oslash; had recently accepted a new term as director of Norway&rsquo;s Bergen Kunsthall, which she had led for nearly a decade and which was expanding with additional gallery space and a new office for her. For another, she was three days away from giving birth to her daughter, Ella. As she recalls now with comic understatement, &ldquo;It was not a time when I was looking for a new job.&rdquo;&nbsp;

But the Ren, as the renowned art space on the University of Chicago campus is known, was persistent. Six weeks after the first call, a second one came. &ldquo;We had a very short list of people we wanted for the job, and Solveig was on the top of that list,&rdquo; says Canice Prendergast, the member of the Ren&rsquo;s search committee who took the lead in communicating with &Oslash;vsteb&oslash;. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a very difficult job to fill, because we need to have one of the best curators of avant-garde art in the world who also happens to be very good at running an institution like ours. It&rsquo;s rare to find someone with both qualities; the group of people who do is very, very small. The new director also has very big shoes to fill, since Susanne essentially created the Renaissance Society and turned it into a world-class institution. But given Solveig&rsquo;s track record, we thought she was the ideal person to fill those shoes.&rdquo;

This time around, &Oslash;vsteb&oslash; found herself intrigued. She knew of the Renaissance Society&rsquo;s high regard on the international art scene, having hosted some of the same artists whose work had been shown at the Ren. The two organizations&rsquo; structure and practice were similar; they were both non-collecting institutions focused on temporary exhibitions of cutting-edge art. Most important, the Ren&rsquo;s search committee emphasized that she could concentrate on presenting art exhibitions largely free from the complicating factors&mdash;audience and sponsor expectations, commercial and market forces, political considerations&mdash;that plague her peers around the world.&nbsp;

&ldquo;Sometimes those factors can become so important for an institution that there&rsquo;s not enough space left for what&rsquo;s really interesting to me, which is the art production and the communication with the artists,&rdquo; she says in an interview at her office, where she took over from Ghez last fall. &ldquo;They convinced me that this is a place where art comes first.&rdquo;

In her new job, &Oslash;vsteb&oslash; says she plans to increase the Ren&rsquo;s profile locally by expanding its outreach efforts, which could include a satellite gallery to supplement the institution&rsquo;s smallish 3,200-square-foot exhibition space in Hyde Park. (She has no plans, however, to support a move away from the University of Chicago campus in search of larger permanent quarters. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s not on my to-do list,&rdquo; she says, &ldquo;and I have a big to-do list.&rdquo;) She also wants to publish exhibition catalogs and other publications on a larger scale and within the timeframe of the exhibition in question (as opposed to the current practice of publishing some catalogs after-the-fact).&nbsp;

In addition to her duties overseeing the Ren&rsquo;s administrative operations and strategy, &Oslash;vsteb&oslash; is also its chief curator. Her first outings in Chicago begin this month with a show of new work by the German artist Nora Schultz (January 12-February 23), followed by an exhibition by the Canadian artist Christina Mackie (April 27-June 29). These will be the earliest demonstrations of &Oslash;vsteb&oslash;&rsquo;s vision of the curatorial role as closely tied to artistic production in the early stages of the creative process. Last year, for example, she spent four days in Schultz&rsquo;s empty studio in Berlin in conversation with the artist, acting as a sounding board and filter for her ideas. &nbsp;

&ldquo;This institution is not just a passive space where we show artworks that have been seen elsewhere,&rdquo; &Oslash;vsteb&oslash; explains. &ldquo;Instead of picking artworks that have been shown in museums or biennials or galleries, I am asking the artists to present works that they are producing with us, that are completely new, that maybe are based on ideas that the artist hasn&rsquo;t been able to try out yet. This is a place where they can experiment with new ideas, and so in dialogue with us, new works can come about.&rdquo;

Although it was not a factor in her decision to accept the new job, there was an additional circumstance that made &Oslash;vsteb&oslash;&rsquo;s move to Chicago seem, in hindsight, somehow inevitable: She was born here. In 1972, her parents moved to the Windy City, where her father, a professor of theology, served a two-year stint as pastor of the Norwegian Memorial Church, also known as the Minnekirken, a Norwegian-speaking Lutheran congregation in Logan Square. The family went back to Norway when their new daughter was 18 months old, never to return.

&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a strange thing,&rdquo; muses &Oslash;vsteb&oslash;, 40. &ldquo;My daughter is now the same age I was when we lived in Chicago the first time, and I am now the age my mother was when we were here. And because I was born here, I am a U.S. citizen, but never had an American passport. I thought it would be hard to get one, but I went to the embassy and brought my birth certificate, and they gave me my passport, just like that.&rdquo; She smiles. &ldquo;And here I am.&rdquo;

Solveig Øvstebø at the Renaissance Society

BY FRANCK MERCURIO

Last August, the staff of the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art at Northwestern&nbsp;University were confronted with a near disaster. A pipe connected to the museum&rsquo;s sprinkler system burst. Luckily, the collections were not damaged; but the museum needed to close its gallery spaces&mdash;for all of fall quarter&mdash;while repairs were made.

Instead of viewing the closure as a set-back, the Block saw an opportunity to upgrade its facilities and focus its energies on developing a robust series of programs and exhibitions for winter quarter. &ldquo;It really gave us a chance to do what we needed on a system wide level to bring us to a state-of-the-art space,&rdquo; said Susy Bielak, the Block&rsquo;s Associate Director of Engagement. &ldquo;It also gave us time to launch with a program in January that we&rsquo;re really quite exhilarated about.&rdquo;

The museum&rsquo;s under-utilized entry-foyer has been transformed into the Spot Lounge, a more inviting&mdash;and activated&mdash;space. Comfortable seating, study areas, and WiFi now attract students, professors, and university staff to this new social hub.&nbsp;

<img alt="" class="left" data-caption="Andy Warhol, &quot;Unidentified Woman wearing pearls&quot;, 1984, internal dye diffusion transfer print (Polaroid). Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, 2008.1.17. © 2013 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York" data-rich-file-id="75" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/75/original/warhol-2008-1-17.jpg" />&nbsp;<img alt="" class="left" data-caption="Edward Steichen, &quot;Actress Clara Bow for Vanity Fair&quot;, 1928, vintage gelatin silver print. Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Gift of the Hollander Family in Honor of Morton and Mimi Schapiro. 2012.10.16. Steichen / Condé Nast Archive. Steichen/ Vanity Fair; © Condé Nast. " data-rich-file-id="74" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/74/original/steichen-2012-10-16.jpg" />

The Block&rsquo;s renovated gallery spaces will be celebrated officially on Saturday, January 18, with the unveiling of two new temporary&nbsp;exhibitions and a slate of public programs.

Steichen/Warhol: Picturing Fame features&nbsp;photographs by Edward Steichen (1879-1973) alongside Polaroids by Andy Warhol. It is the first exhibition to compare the works of the two artists side-by-side and to fully explore the influence of Steichen&rsquo;s photography on Warhol&rsquo;s portraits.

&ldquo;The exhibition posits an unlikely comparison between Steichen&rsquo;s early glamour photography and Warhol&rsquo;s late career portraits,&rdquo; says the Block&rsquo;s Special Projects Curator, Elliot Reichert, who organized the exhibition.

Beginning in the late 1920s, Steichen became famous for photographing Hollywood&rsquo;s elite and defining the conventions of glamour photography during Hollywood&rsquo;s golden era.&nbsp;

Steichen/Warhol presents vintage Steichen prints from the Block&rsquo;s permanent collection (recently donated by Richard and Jackie Hollander), including portraits of film stars such as&nbsp;Greta Garbo and Clara Bow.

These images had a profound effect on Warhol, influencing his silk-screen style portrait paintings of the 1970s and 80s. Warhol began his process by snapping Polaroids of celebrities and wealthy collectors, consciously employing some of the same photographic conventions established by Steichen 50 years earlier.

&ldquo;Warhol never really intended these [Polaroids] as art objects to be exhibited,&rdquo; says Reichert, &ldquo;They are pieces of his process that have been reintroduced as objects worthy of study.&rdquo;

The exhibition presents a range of Warhol Polaroids recently acquired from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, bringing a fascinating new perspective on the artist&rsquo;s creative process. Combined with 49 Steichen images, the total number of works in the exhibition is 140.

Opening in tandem with Steichen/Warhol is The Left Front: Radical Art in the &ldquo;Red Decade,&rdquo; 1929&ndash;1940, curated by Northwestern University PhD candidates John Murphy and Jill Bugajski. The show examines Depression-era artists who questioned the capitalist system in the face of economic catastrophe and practiced art as a form of social and political activism.

<img alt="" class="left" data-caption="Mitchell Siporin, &quot;Workers Family&quot;, from the portfolio A Gift to Biro Bidjan, 1937, woodcut. Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, 1997.30.15." data-rich-file-id="76" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/76/original/siporin-workers-family.jpg" />&ldquo;Artists were becoming activists, taking it to the streets, beyond the galleries and museums,&rdquo; says Murphy, &ldquo;and asking &lsquo;What kind of art earns the name revolutionary?&rsquo; They saw themselves as soldiers in a class struggle using art as a weapon.&rdquo;

Examples in the show include over 100 prints, paintings, posters, rare books and ephemera assembled from the Block&rsquo;s permanent&nbsp;collections, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Terra Foundation, the Smart Museum, and the&nbsp;Hull-House Museum.

In the 1930s, printmaking was seen as a way of distributing art to the masses. Lithographs, etchings, and woodcuts&mdash;by the likes of Carl Hoeckner, Rockwell Kent and Stuart Davis&mdash;figure prominently in the exhibition.

&ldquo;These artists were making political gestures,&rdquo; says Bugajski, &ldquo;but also trying to shift the social fabric by moving art away from institutions and the upper crust and bringing it to the people as a force for change.&rdquo;

The Block will open&nbsp;The Left Front&nbsp;with a series of events and programs meant to engage&nbsp;Chicago in the question of &ldquo;What is revolutionary art?&rdquo; On Saturday, January 18, the museum will host what Bielak calls a &ldquo;multi-fold opening&rdquo; including performances by NU students and a presentation on &ldquo;Fashion and Revolution&rdquo; by Tom Mitchell, professor of&nbsp;English and Art History at the University&nbsp;of Chicago. For a full roster of upcoming programs addressing &ldquo;revolutionary art,&rdquo; visit the Block&rsquo;s website at <a href="http://www.block.northwestern.edu">block.northwestern.edu</a>

Northwestern’s Block Museum Reopens

BY LAURA MILLER

Juan Angel Ch&aacute;vez is a passionate and active member of Chicago&rsquo;s art community.&nbsp; The artist was born in Chihuahua, Mexico, and currently lives and works in Chicago where he teaches at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). He has exhibited his work internationally and has been recognized with numerous prestigious awards from notable organizations including the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and 3Arts, just to name a few. &nbsp;&nbsp;

<img alt="" data-caption="Juan Angel Chávez, &quot;NEPTUNO&quot;, 2011, interactive sculpture. Top image: LA ESPERANZA, street installation, 2005" data-rich-file-id="82" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/82/original/7juan.jpg" />

Tell me about where you&rsquo;re from and your transition to Chicago.

I&rsquo;m originally from Chihuahua, Mexico, and I moved to Chicago when I was 13 years old. At first I suffered from severe culture shock. I was in 7th grade, and I didn&rsquo;t speak English.&nbsp; I came from a place where the emphasis was on farming and ranching, and my school&rsquo;s agricultural curriculum focused on breeding cattle and growing apples. At first, Chicago was suffocating, and I wanted to run back to splicing fruit trees and vaccinating cattle.

After a year of living in Uptown/Andersonville, I adapted and gained confidence as I explored the city. When some of my neighbors started to get involved with the Latin Kings, at my mom&rsquo;s first opportunity she enrolled me in art classes. She encouraged me to apply my talents through a constructive form, and I owe a lot to her and the teachers she roped into her art class conspiracy.

The real assimilation into Chicago culture happened when I discovered skateboarding, because it gave me space and freedom. It made me think of the urban space as a landscape and not confinement. I&rsquo;ve grown with the city and now feel like I&rsquo;m a part of Chicago. I go back to Chihuahua quite often, and I love going there, but after a few months, I&rsquo;m ready to feel the energy of the city again.

Please discuss your visual arts studies and how you&rsquo;ve honed your practice and technique over the years.

My art studies are a bit complex. I think my mother had a lot to do with that because, aside from enrolling me in art classes, she had my high school teachers register me for SAIC&rsquo;s early college programs as well. I attended SAIC for my undergrad on a scholarship, but my career was short lived when I was asked to leave the school. I had an issue with writing in English, and my scholarship was revoked.

I decided to get involved in as many positive and creative endeavors as possible. I started working with the National Museum of Mexican Art, and I got involved with community public art. I took skateboarding more seriously and began to hang out with DJs, graphic designers, graffiti writers, and rave promoters. I&rsquo;m partly SAIC schooled and partly street schooled.&nbsp;

How and when did you first start exhibiting?

In 2001 I was very involved in public art. I was painting murals and mosaics in schools, and I didn&rsquo;t really see the value of exhibiting my work. I started putting up relief sculptures on boarded up buildings all over the city to try and change the idea of advertising space with something more whimsical. I didn&rsquo;t have a goal with that series - it was just fun! Shortly after, I was nominated for the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation&rsquo;s Individual Artist Award, and I won it. That really changed my perspective and marked the direction of my work.

<img alt="" data-caption="Juan Angel Chávez, SPEAKER PROJECT, Interactive sculpture, 2007" data-rich-file-id="160" height="454" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/160/original/juan3.jpg" width="670" />

Your mixed media art has many components. I particularly enjoy the carpentry elements in your large wooden pieces. Talk about the significance of the materials you use &ndash; what are you drawn to working with, and why?

I view the use of materials and objects as contemporary artifacts ingrained in the quest for survival, exploration and establishment. Carpentry to me is not just construction; it represents components of methods or processes that signify shelter and navigation in the establishment for survival. It is really interesting for me to see materials that reveal an essence of history in their texture and shape.&nbsp;

<img alt="" data-caption="Juan Angel Chávez, SPEAKER PROJECT, Interactive sculpture, 2007" data-rich-file-id="159" height="444" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/159/original/juan4.jpg" width="666" />

Tell me about your studio practice.

My two kids take a lot of my time, so I work out of my home studio at night. At first it was hard to adapt to working at home, but I&rsquo;ve made some interesting changes and this new process has made me think in more detail about my projects. I make everything small scale now and that helps with materials, budget, labor, space &ndash; plus I don&rsquo;t get stuck with storage issues. &nbsp;

Chicago&rsquo;s public art is one of my favorite things about this city. You have work on view at various CTA stations as a part of the city&rsquo;s public art initiative. How do you feel about having work displayed at these locations?&nbsp;

I&rsquo;m a big fan of the public art in Chicago as well, and I&rsquo;m honored to be a part of the city&rsquo;s collection. The work I&rsquo;ve done for the CTA has immortalized my art in the city - I love that!&nbsp; I would love the opportunity to make another public art piece, and I still think about making more public art, but I don&rsquo;t know how my new ideas would apply. New work would be very different than VIDA SIMPLE at the pink line, for example.

<img alt="" data-caption="Juan Angel Chávez, ﻿GIANT, street installation, 1999" data-rich-file-id="161" height="605" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/161/original/juan1.jpg" width="426" />

You are one of many commissioned artists involved in the Hyde Park Art Center&rsquo;s&nbsp;Not Just Another Pretty Face program.&nbsp;(This year&rsquo;s show runs thru March 30, 2014.) Would you share comments on the program?&nbsp;

I&rsquo;ve done NJAPF three times; it&rsquo;s been lots of fun and great works have come out of it. Cultivating relationships between artists and patrons is an excellent idea. HPAC is not afraid to try new things and neither are their NJAPF patrons. It&rsquo;s very liberating to try and reinvent the wheel when considering portraits.

Are you in the middle of any big projects?&nbsp;

I&rsquo;m gearing up for larger projects this spring and summer, but this winter I&rsquo;m trying to focus on the creation of smaller works with a new direction. I&rsquo;ve always done very large projects that have an immediate result, but I want to try and focus on pieces that take longer to make.&nbsp;

How do you see Chicago&rsquo;s art community?

Chicago is a very vibrant city, and I love being a part of its art community. Emerging artists are making really inspiring and amazing work, and the creative energy in this city is more intense because of that; it keeps me on my toes.

<img alt="" data-caption="Juan Angel Chávez, NO SHOES NO SHIRT NO SERVICE, Found materials installation, 2013" data-rich-file-id="162" height="454" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/162/original/juan11.jpg" width="680" />

<a class="btn" href="http://www.juanangelchavez.com/">www.juanangelchavez.com</a>

Artist Insights: Juan Angel Chávez

BY FRANCK MERCURIO

William J. O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s first big solo museum exhibition at the Renaissance Society in 2011 helped cement his reputation as a skilled ceramicist. Standing out from the 100 ceramic works were O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s &ldquo;busts&rdquo;&mdash;highly expressive, human-like heads that carry a wide range of cultural references from 19th century face jugs to rubber Halloween masks. These pieces read as engaging psychological portraits, but they also showcase O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s accomplishments in the medium of clay.

<img alt="" class="left" data-caption="William J. O’Brien, &lt;i&gt;Untitled&lt;/i&gt;, 2007. Collection of Dana Hirt. © William J. O’Brien. Photo: Tom Van Eynde, courtesy of the artist; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York." data-rich-file-id="77" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/77/original/90e1cwob284.jpg" />So, it may be surprising to learn that the 38-year-old, Chicago-based artist is well versed in a variety of media&mdash;besides ceramics&mdash;including assemblage, painting, drawing, and metal sculpture. Examples of each genre are presented in O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s first comprehensive museum exhibition, William J. O&rsquo;Brien, opening January 25 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago.

&ldquo;The work in the studio was nothing like the stuff I saw in the [Renaissance Society] show. He had all these other incredible bodies of work,&rdquo; says MCA curator Naomi Beckwith who organized the O&rsquo;Brien exhibition. &ldquo;What I wanted to do was to bring the breadth of his works out to the public.&rdquo;&nbsp;

O&rsquo;Brien first exhibited at the MCA in 2005 as part of the museum&rsquo;s 12 x 12 series (now called BMO Harris Chicago Works). He was also included in the MCA&rsquo;s group exhibition Phantom Limb: Approaches to Painting Today in 2012.&nbsp;&ldquo;Bill is clearly someone, institutionally, who we&rsquo;ve been watching for some time,&rdquo; says Beckwith.

O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s current exhibition is the latest installment in the MCA&rsquo;s &ldquo;ascendant artist&rdquo; series&mdash;which has featured such notables as Rashid Johnson, Amalia Pica, and Paul Sietsema. As the word &ldquo;ascendant&rdquo; implies, these exhibitions present artists who are not quite at mid-career, but are on the brink of fame. Says Beckwith, &ldquo;We&rsquo;re catching people on their way up.&rdquo;

O&rsquo;Brien is the first Chicago-based artist to be showcased in the MCA&rsquo;s ascendant artist series. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s really great to feature someone located here [in Chicago], someone who&rsquo;s already showing in New York,&rdquo; says Beckwith. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s nice to come home and look at the talent that&rsquo;s right under our noses.

In addition to being represented by the Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago, O&rsquo;Brien is also represented by the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York and the Almine Rech&nbsp;Gallery in Paris.

<img alt="" class="left" data-caption="William J. O’Brien, &quot;Untitled&quot;, 2013. Courtesy of the artist and Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York. © William J. O’Brien. Photo: Robert Chase Heishman" data-rich-file-id="78" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/78/original/ec339002.jpg" />The physicality O&rsquo;Brien brings to his art is a constant that runs through each genre he tackles.&nbsp;&ldquo;He has such a bodily investment in the work that he produces,&rdquo; says Beckwith, &ldquo;You can see him really working across the page in the drawings. You can see him wrapping, molding, reshaping, breaking and sticking things together in the assemblage work.&rdquo;

Representative of the physicality of O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s process is the layering of textures in his work. His ceramic busts are heavily textured, often featuring knobs of clay protruding from glazed surfaces, giving a kind of bumpy, nubby appearance. Some of O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s &ldquo;paintings&rdquo; are assemblages constructed of layers of detritus&mdash;packing materials, old clothes, sticks&mdash;all covered in a unifying pigment. His metal sculptures are created by welding a series of planar elements together, giving the impression of texture through layering. Even O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s drawings are multilayered.&nbsp;A counter-balance to the &ldquo;masculine physicality&rdquo; of O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s pieces is his interest in color, pattern, and na&iuml;ve forms&mdash;qualities that are often associated with feminist artists, outsider artists, and/or artists of color.

<img alt="" class="right" data-caption="William J. O’Brien, &quot;Untitled&quot;, 2008. Collection of Larry and Marilyn Fields. © William J. O’Brien. Photo: Tom Van Eynde, courtesy of the artist; Shane Campbell Gallery, Chicago; Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York. " data-rich-file-id="80" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/80/original/3de77wob380.jpg" />&ldquo;There is almost a kind of feminist gesture there,&rdquo; says Beckwith, &ldquo;where you see his work moving from the decorative, associated with women&rsquo;s work, to something that feels like abstraction. You see his work veering from quilting and textile to assemblage.&rdquo;&nbsp;

This push-and-pull between masculine and feminine, art and craft, high and low is evident throughout all of O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s works. &ldquo;He&rsquo;s thinking about those things that have been dropped out of art history,&rdquo; says Beckwith, &ldquo;while using those things that have been valued by art history.&rdquo;

In September 2011 a fire almost completely destroyed O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s studio and the studios of three other artists in an Avondale warehouse. Many of his works were lost. Luckily, enough works survived in the galleries and in the hands of collectors that the current MCA show could still be mounted. New pieces have filled the gaps, including a large-scale, site specific installation that Beckwith describes as &ldquo;totemic objects&rdquo; exploring the idea of &ldquo;monuments to feelings.&rdquo;

When speaking of O&rsquo;Brien&rsquo;s likely reception at the MCA, Beckwith stated, &ldquo;He&rsquo;s been teaching at the School of the Art Institute for a while. It&rsquo;s going to be amazing to have his students here [at the MCA] alongside his colleagues. Clearly, he has a collection base and group of supporters here in the city. It&rsquo;s nice to have what feels like a big family hug around William at this time.&rdquo;

Accompanying the MCA&nbsp;exhibition will be a monograph, William J. O&rsquo;Brien, co-written by Beckwith and Trevor Smith of the Peabody Essex Museum, which will include a creative writing piece by local critic Jason Foumberg. The monograph will include a checklist of the 140 objects to be displayed in the MCA exhibition.

For more information about William J. O&rsquo;Brien (both the exhibition and the monograph), visit <a href="http://www.mcachicago.org/exhibitions/">www.mcachicago.org/exhibitions/</a>

William J. O’Brien at the MCA

By KEVIN NANCE

When Peter and Eileen Broido moved from the west suburbs to a highrise condo overlooking downtown Chicago in 2004, it wasn&rsquo;t the spectacular view of the Chicago River and the Loop that was the primary selling point.&nbsp;

&ldquo;It was the wall space,&rdquo; Peter Broido says. &ldquo;That and the size of the freight elevator.&rdquo;

<img alt="" class="left" data-caption="Peter and Eileen Broido: “The fun for us is finding art, putting our money where our mouth is.” Artwork pictured: Lari Pittman, &lt;i&gt;Ephemeral and Needy,&lt;/i&gt; 1990, 82 x 66&quot;. Photo: Kevin Nance " data-rich-file-id="81" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/81/original/peter-and-eileen-broido.jpg" />He smiles when he says it, but he isn&rsquo;t kidding. The Broidos needed plenty of room to display their impressive collection of contemporary art, which currently consists of nearly 180 paintings, sculptures and mixed-media pieces on view. (An additional 50 artworks reside at their adult children&rsquo;s homes on the East Coast, with about 30 more pieces in storage.) And the freight elevator was of real concern. Early on, a recently acquired 10-foot-wide panoramic photograph by Gerard Maynard missed fitting into the elevator by a couple of inches. The building management suggested that the piece could be hoisted by crane to the Broidos&rsquo; balcony more than 30 floors above the riverbank, but in the Windy City this seemed like too much of a risk; in the end, they donated the photograph to the Brooklyn Museum of Art. Another acquisition, a large painting by Chicago artist Judy Ledgerwood, made it into the elevator but couldn&rsquo;t be brought through the apartment door because the corridor outside was too narrow; the painting&rsquo;s frame had to be broken down and reassembled inside the apartment.

Such are the adventures of one of the city&rsquo;s most prolific art-collecting couples, who have spent the past 40 years in daily dialogue with art. They&rsquo;ve feathered their 2,600-square-foot nest with works by Chicago artists (Ledgerwood, Jim Nutt, Karl Wirsum, Curtis Mann, Tom Friedman, John Pittman and Stephanie Brooks, among others) and others from elsewhere in the United States (John Baldessari, Jane Hammond, Jenny Holzer, Byron Kim, Chris Martin, Bruce Nauman,&nbsp;Jon Pestoni, Raymond Pettibon, Lari Pittman, Zak Prekop, Richard Tuttle, Kehinde Wiley, etc.). Most recently they&rsquo;ve begun branching out to Europe, with emphasis on works by German artists such as Frank Nietzsche.&nbsp;

Abstract painting dominates the collection, which also includes a smattering of mixed-media work, notably a large painted collage on a sculpted metal and canvas substructure by the Argentine-American artist Fabian Marcaccio. A group of works on paper&mdash;including works by Nutt and Tuttle&mdash;take refuge in a bathroom, where they&rsquo;re shielded from the natural light that otherwise suffuses the apartment.

Most of the pieces were acquired soon after their creation and early in the artists&rsquo; careers; the Broidos collect only what they like, not what they think might appreciate in monetary value. &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t do it as an investment,&rdquo; Peter Broido says. &ldquo;The fun for us is finding art, putting our money where our mouth is, and seeing what happens. And it&rsquo;s been OK.&rdquo;&nbsp;

The Broidos rarely sell their holdings (though they do sometimes trade one piece for another), instead choosing to donate to museums. Beneficiaries of their largesse include the Museum of Contemporary Art (where the Broidos are longtime supporters and members of MCA&rsquo;s Merge, a collecting group), the Akron Art Museum and the Elmhurst Art Museum, which displayed several Broido-donated works this fall as part of Inventory, an exhibition of EAM&rsquo;s collection.&nbsp;

&ldquo;What strikes me about Peter and Eileen&rsquo;s collecting is that they&rsquo;re focused on emerging artists,&rdquo; says Staci Boris, EAM&rsquo;s chief curator. &ldquo;They like to seek out new artists, not people who have a track record or are well known. They enjoy the discovery aspect of it, the process of figuring out who is interesting and who has a future. They&rsquo;re unique in their vision, and they don&rsquo;t follow trends.&rdquo;

Along the way, the Broidos have become fixtures on the Chicago art scene, mixing with artists, curators, gallerists and other collectors with an ease born of an engagement sustained over four decades. As Eileen Broido puts it with a smile, &ldquo;We&rsquo;re kind of part of the woodwork in Chicago.&rdquo;

The Broidos&rsquo; collecting journey began soon after they moved to the Chicago area in 1969. (Originally from Manhattan&mdash;where he spent much of his undergraduate years at Columbia University visiting art galleries at a time when you could pick up a Jasper Johns painting for $500&mdash;Peter Broido was a surgeon at Central DuPage Hospital for many years; his wife was a nurse.) Although they lived 30 miles west of the Loop, the young couple came into the city most weekends. &ldquo;We spent a lot of time on the Eisenhower Expressway,&rdquo; he recalls with a smile. One day they were walking down Michigan Avenue and turned east on Ontario, where they were met with a scene that reminded them of Disney&rsquo;s Fantasia: a row of people coming out of an art gallery carrying small paintings.

&ldquo;It was like those walking buckets from&nbsp;The Sorcerer&rsquo;s Apprentice,&rdquo; Peter Broido recalls. &ldquo;The Phyllis Kind Gallery had had a show of Roger Brown paintings, and people were taking their pieces home with them.&rdquo;&nbsp;

The Broidos were enchanted. They didn&rsquo;t buy a Brown then&mdash;though they would do so a half-dozen times in the years to come&mdash;but they met Kind, who introduced them to the Hairy Who painters, including Wirsum, Nutt and Gladys Nilsson, along with other Imagists including Brown and Ed Paschke. &ldquo;That was fun,&rdquo; recalls Eileen Broido, who was so enthused that she went back to college, studying art history at the University of Illinois at Chicago and, later, the University of Chicago.&nbsp;

In the next two decades, the Broidos amassed one of the city&rsquo;s largest and most significant collections of Imagist painting, focusing on works that combined figurative and abstract elements. Over the years, however, they began to feel that the Imagists were stuck in a bit of a rut. The turning point came with a Paschke retrospective at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1989-90. &ldquo;We looked at it and said, &lsquo;Ed Paschke is repainting Ed Paschke,&rsquo;&rdquo; Peter Broido recalls. &ldquo;We started looking critically at what we were buying, and basically all of those artists were painting the same things. They hadn&rsquo;t really moved on. And we decided it was time for us to move on, too.&rdquo;

Although the Broidos continued to buy some work by Chicago-based artists, often from Chicago galleries (they maintain relationships with the Rhona Hoffman, Kavi Gupta and Shane Campbell galleries to this day), they began to make an increasing percentage of their acquisitions in New York, forging relationships with dealers in Chelsea and, in later years, on the Lower East Side. And while their earlier purchases had featured the figure, more and more the Broidos concentrated on purely abstract works.

&ldquo;Abstraction just seemed to wear better,&rdquo; Peter Broido says. &ldquo;If you go back and look at abstract art from the &rsquo;40s, the &rsquo;50s, it still looks pretty fresh. Hans Hofmann, my God! Those are just fabulous paintings. They still sing.&rdquo; On the other hand, his wife says, &ldquo;It&rsquo;s just hard to find anything incredibly new with the figure.&rdquo;

In the 1990s, photography and conceptual art came to the forefront of the art world, but the Broidos largely stuck with painting. Conceptual art they found &ldquo;a little boring,&rdquo; Eileen Broido says. And photography? &ldquo;The problem with photography is in some ways the same thing that&rsquo;s true with figurative art,&rdquo; her husband says. &ldquo;What are you going to do with it that&rsquo;s different today? You need to make your mark in some way, and another sunset isn&rsquo;t going to do it.&rdquo;

As the Broidos developed their taste in art&mdash;they rarely disagree; &ldquo;After 45 years of marriage, we&rsquo;re pretty much the same person,&rdquo; Peter Broido says&mdash;they also established patterns in the manner of their collecting. They often visit art fairs&mdash;they&rsquo;re regulars at Art Basel Miami and NADA, and say they have enjoyed the first two years of Expo Chicago at Navy Pier&mdash;but almost never buy at the fairs. &ldquo;What I find art fairs most useful for is making connections with dealers I&rsquo;ve never met before and seeing work that we haven&rsquo;t seen,&rdquo; Peter Broido says. &ldquo;I probably will never buy anything out of a fair, because we don&rsquo;t like making snap decisions.&rdquo;&nbsp;

For similar reasons, the Broidos tend to avoid making studio visits with artists with whom they have no prior relationship, because of what they experience as an implicit pressure to buy. &ldquo;I like talking to artists, because I think they&rsquo;re terrific people,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;But I really don&rsquo;t want to go to their studios, because you feel pressured. It isn&rsquo;t even overt. It&rsquo;s subtle, but I just don&rsquo;t want to be in that position. If we went out on a tour with 100 people, I&rsquo;d be thrilled to go to artists&rsquo; studios, but I don&rsquo;t want to be there one-on-one.&rdquo;

&ldquo;We do sometimes go after we&rsquo;ve purchased a piece,&rdquo; his wife adds. &ldquo;We were just in Berlin and went to Frank Nietzsche&rsquo;s studio. His dealer said, &lsquo;You&rsquo;re here, Frank&rsquo;s here, why don&rsquo;t you stop by and say hi?&rsquo; We did, and it was interesting to meet him. But there was no pressure, because we had already bought a piece from him.&rdquo;

The gregarious Broidos especially enjoy discovering new artists by talking with gallerists&mdash;which explains their increasing preference for smaller and emerging galleries on New York&rsquo;s Lower East Side. &ldquo;Nowadays if you go into the galleries in Chelsea, and if the dealers are there, they&rsquo;re certainly not out where you can see them,&rdquo; he says. &ldquo;On the Lower East Side, the owners are there. They&rsquo;re young and energetic and enthusiastic and intelligent, and they really enjoy telling you about their art, which is the way it used to be when I was younger. It&rsquo;s fun to see that.&rdquo;

And so for the Broidos, the fun continues. The day after their interview with Chicago Gallery News, they were off to Miami for another round of art-fair visits, combing the aisles in search of new artists to collect. Fortunately for them, they still have a few square feet of open wall space.

Collector profile: Eileen and Peter Broido

BY MARY DEYOE

<img alt="" class="left" data-caption="Illustrations © The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust. All rights reserved." data-rich-file-id="84" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/84/original/99045-05maybewbn.jpg" />In February the Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA) will present two concurrent exhibitions of the work by writer and illustrator Edward Gorey (1925-2000), Elegant Enigmas: the Art of Edward Gorey and G is for Gorey - C is for Chicago: The Collection of Thomas Michalak. Well known for his illustrations colored by dark humor and wit, Gorey has worked for decades as an artist, creating book covers, magazine illustrations, and costume and set designs. While the exhibitions will display many of these examples, they will also draw heavily on Gorey&rsquo;s connection to his hometown, Chicago.

Even those unfamiliar with Edward Gorey the artist will recognize his idiosyncratic style. Tim Burton&rsquo;s dark tales, particularly Coraline, and the work of Daniel Handler - more famously known as Lemony Snicket, are direct inheritors of Gorey&rsquo;s dry wit and Edwardian-inspired designs. &ldquo;Snicket admits to being a &lsquo;complete rip off&rsquo; of Edward Gorey,&rdquo; said LUMA Senior Curator Jonathan Canning.&nbsp;

It is easy to see why Gorey&rsquo;s work stays relevant and beloved. &ldquo;[His] detailed drawing style draws in the eye and engages the viewer,&rdquo; said Canning. His perfectly balanced compositions [also] have a cinematic quality to them. He was very influenced by film, theater, and ballet.&rdquo; This love for these art forms was shared by Gorey and his college roommate, the poet Frank O&rsquo;Hara. Gorey and O&rsquo;Hara, who both attended Harvard on the GI Bill, were known on campus for &ldquo;throwing the best parties&rdquo; according to poet Donald Hall, and to essentially turning their dorm room into a literary salon.

But before attending Harvard and before serving in WWII, Gorey was a student at Chicago&rsquo;s Francis Parker school and for a short while attended the School of the Art Institute. G is for Gorey - C is for Chicago: The Collection of Thomas Michalak will present several items from his days as a student in Chicago, including yearbooks from Francis Parker. The Thomas Michalak Collection was recently given to Loyola University Chicago Libraries. Thomas Michalak (BS &rsquo;63) is a retired Harvard librarian and a member of the board of directors of the Edward Gorey House in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts. He has been collecting Gorey materials for over 35 years.&nbsp;

The companion exhibition to G is for Gorey &ndash; C is for Chicago is Elegant Enigmas: the Art of Edward Gorey, and it was organized by the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust and&nbsp;the Brandywine River Museum in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. The exhibition has been traveling throughout the country and will continue on when it leaves Chicago in June.&nbsp;

One of the key points in the exhibitions is that &ldquo;Gorey was a very hardworking commercial artist right up to the end of his life,&rdquo; said Canning. He illustrated magazines&mdash;including numerous covers for TV Guide&mdash;and had a long-time relationship with Anchor books, which was a division of Doubleday. Gorey served as the art editor, creating the overall uniform style including the lettering, typography and design layouts. Gorey is also well known for his opening animated credits of the PBS television series&nbsp;Mystery!&nbsp;

Despite Gorey&rsquo;s interest and work in popular culture, &ldquo;We do not find that his work was at all influenced by it,&rdquo; said Canning. Gorey maintained his own unique and idiosyncratic style. Children are common characters, and as in many original fairy tales, they do not always fair so well. It seems danger is often lurking around the corner. In one illustration, a small boy wearing a coat with a sailor collar peers over his shoulder. His expression is wary. Two bears more than twice his size are following close behind. There is a tenderness to it and yet it is, as Gorey described much of his own work, &ldquo;mildly unsettling.&rdquo; Perhaps this is another reason we continue to return to his mysterious images. There is always more to the story than what appears on the surface.

<img alt="" class="right" data-caption="Illustrations © The Edward Gorey Charitable Trust. All rights reserved." data-rich-file-id="85" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/85/original/b-rev.jpg" />On February 22 LUMA is hosting the Edward Gorey Birthday Bash to benefit Loyola University Chicago Libraries and LUMA. This is one of many programs and events LUMA is planning in conjunction with the Loyola University Libraries (some of the events will take place on the Rogers Park campus). Events include lectures, performances and readings of Gorey&rsquo;s most beloved stories including (among many) the macabre Gashlycrumb Tinnies &ndash; a abecedarian book that tells the story of the untimely death of 26 children all of whom represent a different letter of the alphabet &ndash; and the cautionary tale of the Wuggly Ump (What is a Wuggly Ump? You&rsquo;ll have to see for yourself). In addition to these events, with what one can only imagine is a hint of irony, LUMA is also co-sponsoring a blood drive with the Law School.&nbsp;

Edward Gorey&rsquo;s engaging storytelling and remarkably grand characters, many of whom we see draped in fur and wearing top hats &ndash; a nod to the Edwardian details he loved, would be enough to draw visitors to the exhibition, but the personal effects from the Michalak collection &ndash; including letters from the artist to friends &ndash; offers us a much fuller look at the life of the artist, his inspiration, his lifelong dedication to the arts and the creation of his particular world full of dark-humor, wit, and playfulness.

The exhibitions are on view February 15-June 15, 2014 and are co-presented by Loyola University Chicago Libraries and LUMA with cooperation from the Edward Gorey Charitable Trust. Details can be found at <a href="http://www.luc.edu/gorey">luc.edu/gorey</a>

Edward Gorey's Dark and Witty World

<img alt="" data-rich-file-id="87" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/chigal/rich/rich_files/rich_files/87/original/img-2560.jpg" />

BY MARY DEYOE

When you walk into Ann Nathan&rsquo;s gallery you feel like you&rsquo;re floating. The gallery sits about a half story above street level, and when you stand at one of the enormous picture windows looking out at those passing by, you are in another world. I imagine that is just as Nathan intended it.&nbsp;

For more than 30 years in Chicago, Ann Nathan has run a gallery. She began in 1980 in a 200-square foot space she rented from the ceramicist Ruth Duckworth. &ldquo;The space was tiny. We showed jewelry and ceramics, and we used every inch of space. The pedestals opened up and doubled as storage space,&rdquo; Nathan recalls. For several years the gallery existed there before a couple of moves, then survived a fire and relocated and rebuilt in her current space on Superior Street. &ldquo;Although many galleries have since opened further south and west, I think this area will always survive because of its location.&rdquo; The galleries are close to the L and blocks from Michigan Avenue.&rdquo;

When talking about how she has thrived for so many years, Nathan admits she has always had a simple approach. &ldquo;I am open to showing what works.&rdquo; This is, though, limited to figurative art and realism. &ldquo;When we started everyone was showing abstract work, but I was never interested in doing what everyone was doing.&rdquo; This perspective has freed Nathan to show a diverse range of artists and styles. The work, by artists from around the world, ranges from the dreamy paintings by Christina Haglid to the bold and dynamic sculptures by the long-time Chicago artist Michael Gross. &ldquo;Michael&rsquo;s work is unique and strange,&rdquo; Nathan said. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s sculptural, functional furniture.&rdquo; This is another trend you&rsquo;ll find at Nathan&rsquo;s gallery. The furniture pieces are always functional. In fact, when we met, Nathan and I sat and talked on two beautifully carved wooden stools.

In regards to how the gallery and art landscape has changed in Chicago, Nathan seems unfazed. &ldquo;Chicago is a welcoming place, but every space is different.&rdquo; Nathan believes you have to pick work you like and show what you like to show.&nbsp;

Nathan and her gallery staff are certainly welcoming to visitors, a trait that has undoubtedly helped in the gallery&rsquo;s success throughout the decades. While you explore the work in the gallery and move from a gigantic charcoal portrait by Mary Borgman to playful, smiling nude sculptures by Esther Shimazu, you feel transported, at least for a little while, to a place far away from Superior Street.

An Interview with Art Dealer Ann Nathan

September = art. That sums up this month in Chicago's creative community. Beginning tonight things go full steam in galleries and art spaces around the city. Dozens of gallery receptions take place and you can plan whatever kind of arty evening strikes your fancy. Grab a copy of&nbsp;CGN&nbsp;to guide you on your artistic search, or just go where the crowds take you. Many galleries save their strongest shows of the year for this big opening season, while others take advantage of the chance to introduce their new stars to an engaged audience. Check out&nbsp;our list of who's opening&nbsp;where tonight - you'll be able to visit dozens of spaces in River North, West Loop, the suburbs and on the North Side. &nbsp;Join our&nbsp;Flickr group&nbsp;to post your opening night photos, or be sure to Tweet us&nbsp;@ChiGalleryNews&nbsp;and keep up with the crowds.If you can't make it out tonight, then go on a free Saturday tour of the galleries tomorrow - details here.- Happy gallery hopping!

The Fall Gallery Season is Here!

<html><head></head><body><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721418167/itdrdtvw7b68klneai3i.jpg"></figure>By KEVIN NANCEThere will be no special exhibit, no monograph, no hoopla whatsoever commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Richard Gray Gallery this fall. “We spent a lot of time thinking about that, but didn’t come up with anything that needed to be done,” gallery director Paul Gray says one recent morning in his office at the John Hancock Center. “Fifty years is a substantial achievement, I recognize that, but we looked at things others have done on major anniversaries, and none of them inspired me to devote time to that. We started work on a publication, but it seemed self-indulgent and not very meaningful, so we canceled it.”So, this fall it will be business as usual: two major openings (new paintings by Alex Katz September 20–November 2, 2013,&nbsp;followed by a show of older works by David Hockney at Frieze Masters in London and later in Chicago), participation in large international art fairs (including EXPO CHICAGO at Navy Pier) and the usual whirl of buying, selling and brokering transactions of mostly blue-chip work by famous artists to deep-pocketed clients in the Windy City and around the world. The gallery’s clients now include more than 10 percent of the Forbes 400 list, including nine members from the Chicago area, as well as similarly high-rolling collectors and museum curators from Europe, Asia, the Middle East and South America. In 2012, sales were just under $100 million.The decision to avoid anniversary-related festivities is both typical of Paul Gray (who took over management of the city’s most successful gallery from his father, Richard Gray, nearly two decades ago) and telling. The younger Gray, now 58, is known for his preference for a tightly focused business strategy, concentrating on a single niche of the art market—the high end—rather than the more eclectic approach once favored by his father, who dealt in antiquities, tribal art and works on paper in addition to the early and mid-20th-century paintings and sculpture that have always been the gallery’s primary stock-in-trade.“My father always wanted to be sure that there were many opportunities for success in the course of the year, but I felt that that was making us more mediocre on all levels, that we were spreading ourselves a little thin,” says Gray, whose hair, elegantly tailored suit and even his argyle socks are visual reminders of his family name.&nbsp; “I wanted to be more of an expert in something, so I decided to specialize in more expensive art, regardless of medium, and I wanted to relate to collectors who were a little further along on thedevelopment timeline—collectors who were really knowledgeable and demanding, and who would be appreciative of whatever we could bring to them.” If it can’t be done well, in short, Paul Gray doesn’t want to do it, including anniversary celebrations.The Richard Gray Gallery opened on November 4, 1963, at 155 E. Ontario. The elder Gray—his son was 9 years old at the time—had worked for his own father for several years and had been casting about for a new direction.&nbsp; Trained as an architect, he’d long been interested in the visual arts, particularly painting and sculpture, and he’d married into a family of art collectors.&nbsp; When a friend suggested that he open an art gallery, it struck him as an opportunity to combine business with pleasure.“Maybe because of my architecture background, I had a particular interest in draftsmanship, prints and drawings,” says Richard Gray, 84. “When I opened the gallery, I had the idea that I’d be handling that kind of thing, and that’s what happened. I started out by representing established and emerging artists primarily working on paper.” Quickly, however, Gray sold works by a number of painters and sculptors, including Jules Olitski, Morris Louis, Louise Nevelson, Hans Hofmann, Fernand Léger and Jim Dine, an impressive list that would eventually grow to include Hockney, Josef Albers, Joseph Cornell, Richard Diebenkorn, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Roy Lichtenstein, Agnes Martin, Henry Moore, Robert Motherwell, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, David Smith, Cy Twombly and Andy Warhol, among many others. Gray also made significant forays into aboriginal and African art.“My standards were about trusting my own eye, my own sense of aesthetics,” Gray recalls. “It wasn’t the particular style or period that interested me; it was the individual work of art.”&nbsp;Demonstrating a talent for networking with artists and clients, Gray quickly established a reputation as the Chicago gallery with the deepest bench, the longest reach and the highest ambition. “They were the best gallery in Chicago, as far as I was concerned,” says Dine, still one of the Grays’ most-shown artists. “Richard has a tremendous eye and a great world view, and he was really the only truly international gallery in Chicago for a long time. I was very pleased to be there.”&nbsp;For most of his youth and early adulthood, Paul Gray gave little thought to the prospect of joining the family business. He was mildly interested in visual art—like his father, he had dabbled in painting and drawing in high school—but lacked a deep or abiding passion for it. As his father went about the business of making the gallery into a success, the younger Gray was no more absorbed by the process than most young people are in the careers of their parents. “I was raised around the art world and didn’t totally take it for granted, but I didn’t idolize it in any way, either,” he recalls. “It certainly wasn’t preordained that I would go into this field. I didn’t even think about it until I was nearly 30.”After five years as a theater producer on the East Coast, Gray returned to Chicago to attend graduate school at Columbia College and began working at his father’s gallery one day a week, hanging art, making follow-up calls to artists and clients, and generally learning the business. It was a ground-up apprenticeship that eventually led to his succeeding his father as managing partner in 1994. (Richard Gray maintains a presence at the gallery, where he keeps an office from which he manages his personal affairs, but he no longer plays an active role in its management.) Paul Gray opened a New York branch of the gallery in 1996. In years since then, he gradually phased out many of his father’s initiatives, including separate departments for tribal art and prints and drawings, as part of his overall strategy to pursue a narrower and potentially more lucrative focus on the market’s highest strata.As part of that process, the younger Gray also represents fewer emerging or even mid-career artists than his father did. There are exceptions, such as Jan Tichy, a Czech-born new-media and video artist who moved to Chicago to attend the School of the Art Institute. “Jan is very busy, but he doesn’t have a large commercial market at this point, and he doesn’t have any commercial impact on our business,” Gray says. “But I took him on because I find his work compelling.” Still, Tichy is the exception that proves the rule.“Of course Paul had his own notions, his own particular tastes, some of which were different from mine,” Richard Gray says now. “But he’s done extremely well, building a first-rate reputation, not just in Chicago but internationally. I was absolutely happy for him to do his own thing.”In at least one respect, Paul Gray is a chip off the old block. Just like his dad, he quickly showed a flair for cultivating professional and sometimes deeply personal relationships with clients and artists, despite—or perhaps because of—the latter group’s reputation for eccentricity and prickliness. “Artists play a special role in culture, because they’re the bravest, most adventurous, the most willing to bare their souls in public,” he says. “They have a lot to teach us, and that’s why people are drawn to their work. On the other hand, I think most artists would acknowledge that they’re not the easiest people to be close to, because they’re pretty uncompromising and pretty self-involved; they’re focused on making that next discovery in their work. They can be social, but they can be highly antisocial also, and that’s one of the things I respect about them.”Gray has formed a particularly close relationship with the Spanish artist Jaume Plensa, best known in Chicago for his Crown Fountain in Millennium Park, and to whose portfolio Gray now assigns two full-time staff members. About the same age, Gray and Plensa initially met at the artist’s first show in Chicago in 1996. “We hit it off in two seconds,” Plensa recalls. “Since that day Paul and I have grown together, developing a beautiful friendly relationship. Richard and his wife, Mary, really embraced me as one more member of their family, and I consider Paul a brother, even though he insists on teaching me to swim in any ocean despite knowing that I can only swim in the Dead Sea.”Paul Gray has also proved adept at the delicate art of connecting some of the world’s richest art collectors with each other, acting as a go-between in private transactions involving large egos and even larger sums. In his biggest such coup several years ago, Gray brokered a deal between Los Angeles mogul David Geffen and Chicago hedge-fund billionaires Anne and Kenneth Griffin. The Griffins, regular clients of Gray’s, were interested in acquiring a Jackson Pollock; Geffen, also a client, was interested in selling one—for which purpose Gray introduced the two sides. “Over lunch at Geffen’s home, Ken Griffin’s eyes kept drifting toward a very, very important Jasper Johns painting on the wall nearby,” Gray recalls. “When we left the house, he said to me, ‘I think that painting is one of the most incredible things I have ever seen.’”The Griffins didn’t buy Geffen’s Pollock, but after a week of intense negotiations overseen by Gray, the Griffins purchased Johns’s False Start (1959) for $80 million, the highest price ever paid for the work of a living artist at the time. (The Griffins have since loaned the work for exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art and the National Gallery of Art.) In the process, Gray’s reputation as an experienced liaison between collectors buying and selling art to each other was cemented.“It used to be that any serious art collector in Chicago would come by the gallery at least once a month, but that rarely happens now,” says Gray, who recently moved the gallery to a larger space with higher ceilings on the Hancock Center’s 38th floor. “Now we largely go to the collectors as advisors and curators. It’s part of the evolution of the business.” <a href="https://www.chicagogallerynews.com/organizations/richard-gray-gallery--2">The Richard Gray Gallery</a> keeps evolving right along with it.&nbsp;Image: Paul Gray, photo by Kevin Nance</body></html>

CGN interviews Paul Gray of Richard Gray Gallery on the occasion of the gallery's 50th anniversary in 2013

50 Years: A Milestone Arrives Quietly at Richard Gray Gallery

<html><head></head><body><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721418552/phqnsirf4ynajjsteijw.png"></figure>&nbsp;During a summer visit to South Side, North Washington Park home of collector D.E. Simmons, his thoughts were decidedly on the fall and the 10-year anniversary of Diasporal Rhythms, a Chicago collecting group devoted to art of the African Diaspora. Having heard about the group’s mission and collecting initiatives from co-founder Patric McCoy, Simmons, who works closely with the group and is their fall event chair, told me about this season’s home-tour series as well as the changes the group has undergone in the past decade. When DR started in 2003 there were four founding members; today they number 60-strong; the ambitious group now has its sights on what to accomplish next in the collecting community. -GVSimmons describes Diasporal Rhythms’ fall home tours as having a uniqueness that comes out of the spirit of the South Side art community and its desire to express to the larger population that there are talented artists doing wonderful works worthy of notoriety, and more important, of being added to other collections. Simmons says, “I always talk about us as the little organization that could, and can, and does. We’ve offered eight versions of the tour in 10 years, and we’ve focused on expanding and making them creative.” Simmons says that tour-goers can get a little overwhelmed at first, but ultimately the sensory overload is productive. “If you’ve never been on the tour and you don’t live with this much art in your home, it’s a lot to drink in,” he explains. “You have several houses to go through and so many ideas can come to you. That pollination effect is powerful - not that we hope to wear people out but we want them to think about what’s possible for themselves.” Simmons acknowledges, “The last couple of years some of thesame homes have been on the tour, and since we’re trying to make a new experience we have to look at different communities. This year the combination of four homes in South Shore and South Chicago, plus our Logan Center exhibition is going to be really powerful.”Getting people to interact at home is more unusual than one might think. Simmons says there is some reluctance to opening up one’s home, “There’s something about not letting people into your space. Socially, I think in Chicago people tend to say, ‘Oh I’ll meet you here,’ but I’ve noticed that many people won’t invite you over. This home tour is special. It’s not only on the South Side, but it makes people open doors - to everyone who has a ticket of course - so others can experience passion in a personal space. It’s a rare opportunity.” Homeowners quickly find it to be a very positive experience. They enjoy seeing guests inspired by the abundance of artwork. To Simmons, “It is a wonderful exchange - you get to talk about your passion for your collection and answer questions. We’re asking people to join the conversation and explore the possibilities. That openness has made many people want to support our organization.”Simmons has received almost shocked personal feedback from participants: “Some of the notes I get say, ‘I didn’t know we lived like this culturally,’ or ‘I didn’t know I could be a collector - I thought it was only high-brow.’ I say it’s about what you like. We want you to join this madcap adventure called collecting because it is enjoyable. We learn quite a bit about certain artists, their techniques, styles, what they’re capturing and then transferring, and we react to it. We buy a piece and bring it into our own environment and thatsays something about what’s resonating within ourselves.”Diasporal Rhythms will stage an anniversary exhibition in October at the Logan Art Center at the University of Chicago. The chance to show member works in an academic setting is a new way to come together, and the time is right to exhibit in a major art center. To Simmons, “Having pieces taken out of collections and shown together as a part of this show allows others to see the progression from when we started buying work and where we are today. Additionally a catalogue will be published for the exhibition, which is a way of documenting this moment and setting the standard for us and others. This has been our first real test, and I think we’ve passed - we have lasted 10 years. So, the next challenge is ‘what are we going to do next?’”Reflecting on the economic difficulties that have been hard on everyone in recent years, Simmons says that many Diasporal Rhythms members have still managed to add to their collections and support artists, and they continue to be interested in art despite less-than-ideal-conditions. Three years ago, in the midst of the global financial tumult, the group reviewed and revamped their mission. “By taking a hard look at ourselves as an organization,” Simmons says, “we had to decide whether we were going to do more concrete things. Being more adroit and focused about how to grow this organization and keep it interesting spurred us to pursue more activities like studio visits to find out what artists are doing. Diasporal Rhythms aims to emphasize that you don’t have to be a multi-millionaire to be a collector. The key is that you don’t have to leave Chicago to find great artists - they’re probably living right next door to you and you just don’t know it.”Simmons led me on a tour of his home and collection the day I visited. From the entryway to the upstairs bedrooms of his vintage home, colorful, figurative works of art cover most of the available wall space. When he acquires something new, it starts out in his office, almost visible from the sidewalk out front through the picture window. Simmons explains, “When I get a new piece it stays here for me to commune with. Ultimately it will go where it’s supposed to be in the house.” He points to the painting that is there now, “This is the only piece that’s come in and stayed and basically said, ‘This is my spot.’ This is my daughter’s work. I saw her finish this and I paid her for it, and she goes, ‘Are you serious?’ I told her yes, but she just thought I was being a dad. When I got it here I just kept looking at it and looking at it. She came over for her birthday, and when she walked in and saw I had it framed, she said, ‘Oh my God, I love it.’ I couldn’t convince her how much I really respected her work, so when she saw it was in this space, she understood that it was for real.”Each piece, says Simmons, tends to have its own voice, and he’s not the only Diasporal Rhythms member who feels this way, “That’s a common theme when you get to know us - we say the artwork speaks to us.” Works by Joyce Owens, Alonzo Evans, Emmett McBain and Theodore Feaster populate the downstairs of Simmons’s home, demonstrating the range of work he’s collected, from large-scale paintings like Owens’s to Evans’s works on corrugated cardboard, to Feaster’s contemporary stained glass. Each piece tells a story, whether through its placement in the house, the materials used, or in the case of Feaster’s stained glass, the tough scene that inspired it. Simmons says that for a while the economy limited his collecting abilities; since he wasn’t able to buy art, he bought frames. To him, as is the case at Boston’s Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum where empty frames represent dozens of major works stolen in the 90s, “Everyone was asking, ‘Why are you buying frames?’ and I said, “If you buy the frame, the artwork will come.’” Simmons was eventually able to buy art once again and seek out new artists. The Diasporal Rhythms 10-year anniversary has energized Simmons and the group as a whole, and it is clear that the next 10 years will bring new relationships betweenartists, collectors and their homes.</body></html>

Diasporal Rhythms: 10 Years of Collecting

A young doctor quietly living on Chicago’s North Side fell into collecting art 20 years ago. Like many devoted collectors, he says at first he didn’t know what he was doing, but it’s been a passion ever since. Within his Modern-looking condo, surrounded by faces of all colors and shapes and contortions, one is struck by the number of works by Outsiders - those curious and inspiring artists who are compelled to create art using any means and materials necessary in an effort to express the thoughts within them. Through learning about his own tastes and interests, this collector has discovered the pleasures of meeting artists in unexpected places and the fun in sharing the unconventional with friends at home. -GVCGN: Tell me how you got started collecting works of art? Is your focus different today? DR: The first work I bought was at auction, at Kass/Meridian, probably 20 or so years ago.&nbsp; Unfortunately I was caught in a bidding war - with my roommate at the time! I ‘won’ that battle, only to find I owned a work I knew nothing about, by an artist I had never heard of, but for which I had fought feverishly. That lesson in impulse buying taught me to research, take my time, enjoy the process of discovering what type of art I liked and how to go about finding and collecting it. Much of the art I acquired in the beginning of my collecting days was during travel - I’d pick something up when I was in Vietnam, Peru, Mexico, or London. Eventually, as I formed stronger opinions and learned a bit, I gravitated to Outsider/self-taught artists. I also like to support local artists, and in particular the younger artists who have come from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.You have focused on figurative work as well as Outsider art. What is it about these genres or view points that attracts you? I’ve tried and failed to come up with a unifying theme for the art in my collection, and in the end I’ve realized it’s not important to have one. You hear so often (because it’s true!) that you should collect what you like and what you want to live with, and that is always what I’ve sought to find, whether it is work by self-taught artists, contemporary trained painters or photographers, or furniture designers. I have collected paintings, drawings, some sculpture, furniture and woodwork from various eras - really a hodge-podge, but ultimately from this chaos comes a space in which I love to live. I am constantly changing it to accommodate new additions. The Outsiders appeal to me because they were not beholden to the market or to a perceived audience of collectors, gallery agents, professors, and so on. I think in many ways you are able to see their pure creativity. I have collected works by Lee Godie, Charles Steffen, Jim Work, Henry Darger, Paul Estrada, and Anna Zemankova - some of these artists participated in the established art world and some did not, but all of them have communicated absolutely unique visions.Please highlight any favorite pieces or collecting experiences. Are there lessons you’ve learned through observing and buying art? I found an artist in Hanoi whose work I loved several years ago. She was represented at a gallery there but lived outside Ho Chi Minh City, so I spent a day trekking miles past the finished roads on the outskirts of the city to find the compound where she and her husband, a sculptor, lived. With blond hair, blue eyes, and the biggest nose in Vietnam, apparently, I certainly stood out wading through those fields, so I trailed about ten kids with me by the time I reached the artist. She and her husband hosted me for hours, showing me how and where they worked and looking through all their art - it was really a great day, and I think that was one of the experiences that really hooked me. Part of the joy of collecting is the process, of course, and learning about the lives and influences of the people you meet along the way. Many of the works that mean the most to me I acquired in artists’ studios, or on the streets in destinations like Lima, Peru and Mexico City - places outside the complex that has grown around the art business, such as the mega-fairs and galleries.Are there any reactions to the works in your collection that have surprised you, such as&nbsp; candid responses from friends or family? My friends think I am nuts, particularly when they are evaluating the latest Outsider&nbsp;acquisition: ‘So, he was schizophenic, or&nbsp;bipolar?’ and ‘You paid for that, or you found it on the street?’ or, ‘Can I sell you what my kid did in school last week?’ I think to most people there is more respect for art that comes from traditionally trained artists, or from recognized galleries, or for more figurative work. In my house there is no relationship between a work’s monetary value and how it is received by a casual observer who is over for dinner. In fact Henry Darger’s work inspires the least positive reviews, though when a guest learns the back story it intrigues them enormously and changes many opinions. Along those same lines, not everything in my home is really family-friendly, and Darger is a good example of that; his reverse image with hermaphrodite Vivian Girls only comes out at more festive dinner parties!

Collector Profile: An Eye for the Outsider

by Kevin NanceWhen the nonprofit grant-making organization 3Arts was founded in Chicago five years ago, its leaders thought they were joining a stable community of similar groups providing financial support to local artists. The organization’s unique, tripartite focus—&nbsp;on jumpstarting and/ or developing the careers of women artists, artists of color and those with disabilities in the performing, teaching, and visual arts—&nbsp;was intended to supplement the funding activities of other funders, including private foundations and government-subsidized agencies. Individual artists (as opposed to arts organizations) who might not be lucky enough to secure funding for their careers and projects, from say, the Illinois Arts Council or the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, could turn to 3Arts.But as the years went by, 3Arts found itself increasingly lonely in the world of Chicago art advocacy. The Driehaus Foundation, which has for years been giving a small number of $15,000 grants to visual artists, discontinued that practice after its board changed its priorities. The Illinois Arts Council, which had once been a major benefactor to visual artists around the state, had seen its grant programs devastated by budget cuts of around 60 percent; its grants to individual artists, which had once amounted to several thousand dollars per artist, have in many cases shrunk to a few hundred dollars—&nbsp;hardly worth the time and effort a midcareer artists would need to devote to the application process. In some cases, artists who had been notified of grant awards later received letters notifying them of the state’s inability to send the promised monies.Now, with a few exceptions such as the MacArthur Foundation (at which a local visual artist’s chances of winning a grant are hardly more than those winning a Powerball jackpot) and the City of Chicago’s Community Arts Assistance Program (whose individual artists awards are capped at $1,000 each), 3Arts is virtually alone in providing substantial grants to individual visual artists. 3Arts now awards 10 unrestricted grants of $15,000 to artists each year, along with an increasing number of grants earmarked for specific projects.“We started out giving about six annual grants, but then during the recession, artists were unemployed at twice the rate of other workers, and we nearly doubled the number of grants to about 10,” says executive director Esther Grimm, who also provides professional feedback and mentoring to artists, including those who are nominated for 3Arts grants but don’t receive them at first. “Then about a year ago, we realized that the one-time support wasn’t enough. Typically when you win a grant like ours, you’re never eligible for another. But our artists need ongoing support for their projects, and so we decided that the most impact we could have was to stick with them over the long haul, helping them build momentum and really get their careers off the ground, or just be there for them when they need us.”3Arts currently has an annual budget of about $740,000, all of which is raised from donors and given directly to artists. (Salaries for the two-person staff, including Grimm, comes from proceeds from a separate fund.) The organization also supports six two-week residencies at Ragdale, an artists’ retreat in Lake Forest, and next year plans to expand that program to include month-long residencies with larger stipends at a national network of similar artist residency programs.“I’m a huge fan of 3Arts,” says Peter Handler, program direction at the Driehaus Foundation. “I don’t know of any other organization like them in the city, and the work they do is tremendously important.”The fact that 3Arts is virtually the only game in town in its niche has made it a crucial lifeline for a community of artists whose careers might otherwise have stalled—&nbsp;artists such as Riva Lehrer, whose professional and personal prospects absorbed a potentially crippling blow when her live/ work condo in Edgewater was flooded by thousands of gallons of rainwater during a storm in 2009 while she was out of town.“It destroyed most of what I owned, and there was more than $20,000 worth of damage that wasn’t covered by my insurance,” Lehrer recalls. “Fortunately I was able to use part of my 3Arts money to put my studio back together. I don’t know what I would have done without it. Really, 3Arts is amazing. They listen better than any arts organization I’ve ever dealt with. They have passionate love for artists and a practical eye for how to help them. They’re a total gift to the city. I just wish we had a lot more people operating at that level. Or if 3Arts could manage to get a significantly larger group of donors, they could be truly transformative.”Something similar happened to emerging artists David Leggett, who used his initial 3Arts grant to pay off debt, buy a computer and rent a larger studio, which allowed him to transition from making small-scale artworks to creating larger pieces. Subsequently, his studio was flooded, and he used the money from a 3Arts project grant to repair damage to the studio and its contents.Then there’s Harold Mendez, who’s using the proceeds from his 2012 grant to develop a collaborative multimedia project at the Studio Museum of Harlem to be unveiled in February. He also plans to use part of the money to visit his home country of Colombia, where he will do family research in the national archives for an art project that’s been in the planning stages for years. “It’s been in my mind since 2005, but until recently I haven’t had the resources to make it happen,” he says. “Without the 3Arts grant, it would take me a lot longer. Chicago is a great city with great institutions, but I feel like the funding structure for artists doesn’t match the other things that Chicago offer, even though there’s so much money here. It’s great that 3Arts exists, because I know so many artists who’ve changed their practice in so many ways because of 3Arts.”There’s also Maria Vergara, a young painter who told&nbsp;Chicago Gallery News&nbsp;that she’ll use a significant portion of her 2012 3Arts grant to buy “a heck of a lot of art supplies” for a monthly program in which she teaches art-making to autistic children from local Hispanic families. “The kids are really good at art, they learn super-fact, but the funds for the program keep getting cut,” she says. “They want to paint on canvas, but I have to give them paper and crayons. But they really deserve it, so i’m going to get them some canvas.”Like Vergara’s teaching, several other 3Arts-funded projects are having what Grimm calls a significant “ripple effect,” providing arts opportunities to a number of underserved neighborhoods in Chicago. One example is The Franklin, a small exhibition space constructed in the backyard of the home of conceptual artist Edra Soto and her husband, the custom fabricator Dan Sullivan, at 3522 W. Franklin Blvd. in Garfield Park. “Dan did most of the construction, but the materials are so expensive,” Soto explains. “We couldn’t have done it without the 3Arts money.”And at 3550 W. Lawrence, in Albany Park, now stands North Branch Projects, a community founded by artists Regin Igloria that gives free instruction in art-making and bookbinding to residents of the neighborhood, which has few arts organizations of any kind. “I created it in 2010 because I was frustrated with the relationship of the contemporary art world to people in Albany Park, where I grew up,” says Igloria, who also works as director of artist residency programs at Ragdale. “There was almost no connection between the art world and non-artists, so the idea was to create a place where the concept of creativity could be explored as part of a broad dialogue with my neighbors.”As it happened Igloria’s 2011 3Arts grant arrived in the nick of time. ‘It was literally a lifesaver, because I used up all my savings and was down-and-out financially, just trying to keep this place running”, he says. “The money really helped me keep the doors open, and it gave me such a morale boost, knowing that someone was there to help me keep it alive.”

From a 2013 issue, Chicago Gallery news features 3Arts, a nonprofit organization. 

3ARTS: Changing Chicago artists' lives for 5 years

<html><head></head><body><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721418551/iohwygw7hbjneagcjfz3.jpg"></figure>&nbsp;By&nbsp;LAURA MILLERFrom the May-August 2013 print edition of Chicago Gallery NewsChicago artist Angee Lennard wears many hats. &nbsp;When she’s not creating her own work, you might find her teaching art classes or getting involved in various collaborative projects and residencies – both locally and abroad. Additionally, Lennard founded Spudnik Press Cooperative in 2007 and continues to oversee a wide range of community programs that are offered at the vibrant West Side space.&nbsp;&nbsp;What’s your Chicago story – why and when did you move here? I grew up in Michigan on a potato farm and moved to Chicago to attend The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 2001. Even though I was raised close to Toledo and Detroit, living in a huge city required a lot of adjustment, but I’ve gotten quite used to the quantity and quality of cultural events here and don’t see myself moving anytime soon.&nbsp;You graduated from SAIC in 2005 with a BFA with emphasis in print media. Are you still connected to SAIC now? Very much so. I’ve worked with interns from my alma mater, and I’m in regular contact with the staff and faculty in the Print Media Department, since they send students to Spudnik Press and donate work to our annual silent auction. &nbsp;I’ve been a guest artist in classes and at a few career-focused events. It’s rewarding transitioning to a peer of my former instructors.&nbsp;How did you start teaching? Marwen and Spudnik Press are the two organizations I consistently teach with. My desire to teach developed out of a frustration that contemporary art is often inaccessible to much of the general public. Art can often be very self-referential and hard to engage with without some education (formal or otherwise) in visual communication/thinking. I felt a big disconnect between my peers at SAIC and my neighbors in Little Village. My teaching works toward shortening this divide.&nbsp;&nbsp;Spudnik Press is a community print shop that offers open studio time, classes, residencies and exhibitions; it has evolved to be an impressive space with many offerings. How is Spudnik today different than how you first imagined it to be in 2007? I opened Spudnik Press with the intent to do exactly what we still do: offer affordable and approachable access to printmaking. However, the scale of what the shop is today was unimaginable to me in 2007. When I started out I knew the communal aspect of a print shop was the most important factor. Through running the studio for 6 years, I have a much more holistic understanding of what it means to run a community space. We bridge a variety of communities, i.e., youth programming overlapping with residency programs; writing classes alongside printmaking classes.&nbsp;&nbsp;Spudnik Press is associated with&nbsp;Chicago Area Artists Residency Programs (CAARP), and you’ve also been an artist&nbsp;in residence at AS220 in Providence, RI&nbsp;as well as Ragdale in Lake Forest, IL. Please share the impact of residency&nbsp;programs to you and other artists.&nbsp; CAARP began very organically about two years ago. Based on shared member experiences we set some goals, such as cross-promotion, collective advertising, and hosting collaborative exhibitions. While many residencies take artists away from the distractions of everyday life, urban residencies ask artists to interact with the community and often host local artists. CAARP has allowed me to be better connected to similar residency programs - residencies that are parallel to what we offer, and are therefore more relevant.&nbsp;The two residencies that I have completed have instigated substantial shifts in my work and allowed me the focus to develop new lingering ideas. I’ve also done “self-imposed” residencies, which I find useful. Last year,&nbsp;I spent a week in a cabin on the Mississippi River and created my first animation.&nbsp;&nbsp;What’s your favorite method of&nbsp;printmaking for your own work? &nbsp; My favorite process is intaglio (etching.) It offers just the right amount of control and unpredictability, and makes me feel a little like an alchemist. My technical skills are strongest for screenprinting, simply because I have had more opportunities to teach and print professional jobs and consignments.&nbsp;How do you balance your own studio&nbsp;practice and how is your work impacted?&nbsp; It is very difficult to maintain a studio practice while running Spudnik Press and teaching, but my students definitely inspire me. Young artists often approach art with such fresh perspectives and eagerness that I often leave class ready to take more risks myself. My newest body of work investigates the relationship between emotional thinking and logical/rational thinking that I believe stems from the tension between the work I do as an art administrator and as an artist. Honestly, the only way I make new work is through residencies and through participating in projects with strict deadlines. Otherwise, my art would always get pushed to the back burner.&nbsp;&nbsp;Are you in the middle of any big projects at the moment? This summer I will head to South Africa as a volunteer teaching artist with Dramatic Need, and I suspect I’ll be working on my own projects while I’m there. I’ll spend three weeks in a town called Viljoenskroon teaching animation with my partner, Colin Palombi. I’m also working on a collaborative project called Ten by Ten, a unique opportunity for visual artists and music composers to collaborate in a meaningful, shared creation. I’m working with composer Randall West to create a print and original score investigating synesthesia to be released this fall.&nbsp;How would you describe Chicago’s art scene? I don’t feel qualified to summarize the whole scene, but where I interact it seems to be tangible, good-humored and relevant. Chicagoans seem to make work that has craftsmanship, and is physical or tactile, often ironic or lighthearted, sometimes even silly. What I love about this city is that so many people make work that has importance beyond the gallery setting - work that speaks to social and political issues, or work that is digestible even by those without a degree in art.&nbsp;Angee Lennard <a href="http://www.spudnikpress.com">www.spudnikpress.</a><a href="https://www.spudnikpress.org">org</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;</body></html>

Artist Insights: Interview with Angee Lennard of Spudnik Press

<html><head></head><body><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721418168/kxmplluyyata1q2gabbc.jpg"></figure>By Laura MillerLaura Letinsky’s subtly haunting photographs stick with you. The scenes in her work convey ease and elegance, yet they are conceptually loaded with references to art history, literature, music, and writing. The viewer is asked in changing ways to consider what her images signify to them. Born in Winnipeg, Canada, Letinsky attended the University of Manitoba and Yale’s School of Art before migrating to Chicago, where she is currently a Professor of Art at the University of Chicago. She is represented locally by Valerie Carberry Gallery, in addition to other galleries in the U.S., Canada, and Germany.LM: How does Chicago compare to other cities where you’ve exhibited or where you’re represented?Laura Letinsky: Chicago is a great community. There’s a bit of self-consciousness about being smaller than New York or L.A., with all the negative associations of provincialism and its insecurities, but Chicago is fantastic in that its scale is big enough to be stimulating, challenging, and diverse while still being manageable on many levels. I can live here and manage to make art, teach, have kids, space, a garden, friends - that is, a life that is full and rich. Every place has benefits and challenges but I find Chicago a really productive and fabulous balance.LM: As a University of Chicago professor is there any sound advice that you adhere to personally that you’ve shared with a student?LL: I recently had a critique with a student who was setting up a stranglehold on the possibility for experimentation and learning and seemed at odds with her larger interests. I encouraged her to toss out the division between her art and the rest of her life and to instead revel in the places where she drew fun and enthusiasm, skepticism and challenge; to venture to places she didn’t necessarily know vs. well-trod ground. Art that is about art exclusively is to me relatively narrow. There are artists for whom this makes sense, but I’m most thrilled when art makes me see differently - seeing understood here as knowledge.LM: In your Ill Form and Void Full series the incorporated collage elements add layers of complexity to the work and blur the lines of space and perception: What is real? What is a photo of a photo, or a copy of a copy? What is missing? What might the viewer add? How did this series came about?LL: In 2010 I began work after a year’ hiatus. A number of events had conspired such that I stopped making pictures, uncertain of whether I would be able to continue; knowing I couldn’t continue as I had. A crisis of belief? For years the question, what is a photograph had driven my practice; if anything and everything is ripe as photography’s subject, and given the unrelenting volume of images, why make pictures? What do they do? I now understand the answer has to do with what they are - that is, pictures are how they exist in our world, how we produce and consume them.For the series I decided that to use images, mine and others, indiscriminately with objects, digital downloads, and scans permitted a kind of promiscuity that felt right. It’s a way of negotiating my ambivalence for this medium, a deep and abiding love and irrevocable loathing. To focus this inquiry around home and food portends a potent array of issues including consumption, sexuality, need, want, labor, gender, etc.LM: What are you trying to set the stage for when you’re assembling scenes for your photographs? A specific mood or memory?LL: There’s not really a mood or memory as there was with the earlier manifestations of my still-life work. In this series I am feeling my way around, trying to find a way to set up ideas, ambivalences, conflicts, resolutions, relationships, that bespeak of “home”.LM: Still lifes have such a loaded history. Are there any specific artists you see your work referencing/ influenced by/ commenting on?LL: When I first began my references were the Northern European still life masters, particularly Pieter Claesz, in front of whose work I still get weak-kneed. Later I turned to others in this era, as well as Chardin’s scenes of food, in the Renaissance’s religious and allegorical paintings, Modernists who used the still life precisely because of their disregard for its domesticity, i.e. its familiarity. Stronger for me now are a range of artists whose work explores the tensions between the personal and public sphere: Jessica Stockholder, Richard Tuttle, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Mickalene Thomas...For the last two years, writing and music have had more impact for my practice than visual references.LM: How do you feel about including your work in magazines that usually celebrate the perfectly polished? Are you breaking any rules, or maybe starting a new trend—&nbsp;celebrating the imperfect?LL: My pictures are never going to be widely accepted; they are not the new paradigm. I’m grateful for those who appreciate my sensibility, but the aspiration of perfection along with its inevitable failure and dissatisfaction is perhaps too deeply ingrained.Commercial work is really interesting and hearkens back to pre-modernist artistic practice in which we were hired guns, producing work for clients, the church or other patrons. The notion that art if informed by commerce is somehow impure is a modernist invention which, while it served some purpose, is a pretty impossible conceit. &nbsp;LM: Do you have any New Year’s resolutions?LL: Just the usual aspirations for deep and abiding fulfillment of all my wishes and desires, some altruistic, other pretty petty...Family and friends, first and foremost.LM: Any big plans coming up for 2013?LL: I’m really excited about my shows at the Denver Art Museum and The Photographers’ Gallery in London. I’ve also got some travel planned to Istanbul, Guadalajara and Mexico City, maybe Oaxaca, and Beijing. I really want to go to India and feel that I’m taking a circuitous route. I’m looking forward to delving back into the studio so as to continue in the direction I’ve begun.</body></html>

A 2013 Chicago Gallery News interview with local photographer Laura Letinsky. 

Artist Insights: Laura Letinsky

By&nbsp;KEVIN NANCE&nbsp;Chicago is keenly conscious of its artistic&nbsp;history and reverent toward many of its elders, but it isn’t always a hospitable place for younger and emerging artists. It’s hard for artists of any age to break through the clutter, of course, but this is especially true for artists under 40. Our inability to see them clearly is understandable, up to a point; the past is visible in a way the future can never be. But while there’s safety in venerating artists with substantial track records, identifying artists with the potential for significant careers is a risky business many are unwilling to undertake.At Chicago Gallery News, we’re sticking our necks out. We don’t say that Mariano Chavez, Renee Robbins and Tony Lewis are the future of art in Chicago, but they are three artists of great promise, worthy of the attention of gallerists, collectors and the art-interested public. Of the three, Chavez is the most diverse in style, Robbins the most immediately accessible and Lewis the most intriguingly enigmatic. We’d like to introduce them in these pages as part of a new occasional series highlighting younger and emerging artists to watch. In future installments of the series, we’ll look at younger artists working in sculpture, collage, new media and other modes. In the meantime, we introduce our first trio.Mariano Chavez:&nbsp;Stranger in ParadiseIn a typical Mariano Chavez artwork, there’s a suggestion of narrative that’s both comic and ominous. In First Date, a painting that depicts a group of prehistoric men encountering their hirsute would-be paramours, hell, pretty clearly, is about to break loose. Another painting, Mexican Vacation, pairs Tijuana tourist imagery—a cartoon taco vendor, a blanketed burro—with an iconic weeping Christ, along with the none-too-reassuring phrase “It is finished.”“There’s always the idea of paradise in my work, but also the idea that there’s going to be a tragedy,” says Chavez, 39, who teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and owns an antiques store, Agent Gallery Chicago. “All of the pictures are setting something up, a story in which we don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’s not going to be good. If I were making a movie, it would definitely be very Coen Brothers-esque, all about morality and human nature, with something bad going to happen along the way.”Chavez is primarily a painter, but also works to transform found objects, architectural fragments and other materials with color and repetition in a latter-day Pop/surrealist mode; in the process he suggests the transition of symbols from profound to banal and back again. Much of his imagery is drawn from his childhood in southwest Texas near the Mexican border, where his father was from. “Where I grew up, everybody is very religious, and the further south you go, it’s even more religious,” he recalls. “When I went to Mexico on vacation in 1993, when I was 21, that’s where I first felt this super-Catholic mysticism, the sense of the supernatural and the feeling of tragedy behind it. The mixture of all that stuff left a big impression on me.”Inevitably, perhaps, much of Chavez’s art meditates on the ubiquity and meaning of Catholicism in the lives of Mexican-Americans, as symbolized by stickers of the Virgin Mary sold in bubblegum machines in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood when he lived there in the early 1990s. “I’m interested in how an icon passes through time and becomes a cartoon of its former self,” he says. “It’s like how Munch’s The Scream was a very powerful image and then gets appropriated in the form of an inflatable doll. There was a guy who gave me a last-rites cross that used to belong to a guy who passed away. For him, I think, it was a symbol of the passage from the material and the spirit world. But when you make something like that into a toy, as people sort of do, it diminishes its power, but doesn’t eliminate it entirely. That’s interesting to me.”“What I love about Mariano’s work is the cross-pollination of religion and Mexican border-town culture,” says Tony Fitzpatrick, who included Chavez in The Bus: 29 Hooligans from Chitown, an exhibit he organized at Los Angeles’s La Luz de Jesus Gallery in April. “He doesn’t disparage religion; he makes you think about the power of symbols and images. There’s a memento-mori quality about his pieces that reminds us we’re all going to one funeral.” <a href="http://www.marianochavez.com">www.marianochavez.com</a>Renee Robbins: Voyager&nbsp;Growing up in northern Indiana, Renee Robbins wanted to be a marine biologist.&nbsp;The ocean was a place where her imagination swam, picturing what things might look like there. “The ocean was always far away,” she says, “and at some point I realized I was more interested in the visual aspect of science than the actual pursuit of it.”Now, looking at Robbins’s richly colored acrylic paintings, you feel you’re in the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine, its portholes&nbsp;offering fantastic views of undersea life in undiscovered corners of the ocean—a submarine that occasionally travels into outer space, touring the galaxies, before shrinking to atomic size and weaving its way through the cells of plants. Considering the terrain and the distances covered—between, for example, representation and abstraction, and between the real and the phantasmagorical—it’s a surprisingly smooth ride.“My work now goes from the micro to the macro, from marine life—sea creatures and plants, coral reefs—out into the cosmos, the stars and planets,” says Robbins, 34.&nbsp;“My images don’t necessarily exist in nature, but they come from natural phenomena, different systems that come together in a work, like a constellation, or the molecular pattern embedded in the structure of a plant. I think they’re a metaphor for how we make sense of ourselves and create a notion of identity.”Even though Robbins became an artist rather than a scientist, she retains a lively interest in how the world works. “I’m sort of obsessed with new discoveries in science, especially things on the nanotechnology level—the latest thing in mitochondria, say, or some YouTube video of a new creature that’s been discovered,” she says. In one recent painting, Holographic Chamber, she incorporated a carnivorous harp sponge, which has spiky white tendrils that look like the strings of a harp. “It’s beautiful, but also menacing, in a very appealing way. That dichotomy between the attraction and the repulsion of it is pretty compelling, I think.”Robbins doesn’t compare or align herself with the Chicago Imagists, but she does identify with their use of neon colors “and their pattern-making, as in Gladys Nilsson’s work.” Chicago painter Joyce Owens, who recently began collecting Robbins’s work, says, “Renee’s pieces are very organic. I think of it as looking at microorganisms and other things that we can’t see normally that she makes visible. It’s complicated work, but not difficult to look at. Some art is complex and you can’t engage with it; hers is complex and accessible at the same time, which I think is great. I like seeing it in my house.” <a href="http://www.reneerobbins.com">www.reneerobbins.com</a>Tony Lewis:&nbsp;Breaking Down LanguageTony Lewis’s graphite drawings on paper give the impression of having been handled a bit roughly; they’re smudged, scumbled and distressed in a way that can seem intentional, even gestural. As it happens, both things are true. In Lewis’s work, the planned and the accidental are indistinguishable, which is itself thought out in advance. More or less.This odd indeterminacy in the work is echoed by its apparent subject, which seems to be the difficulty—perhaps the impossibility—of communication, specifically in the form of language, whose authority comes constantly under attack. Words (or parts of words) are suspended within the frame (often a grid of four pieces of joined paper), hanging and partial, sometimes crossed out and begun again, connected by drawn lines that sometimes organize themselves into misshapen thought balloons. The overall effect is that of speech trying haltingly, at times desperately, to articulate itself.A cerebral, intriguingly austere, modernist aesthetic is in operation here. Its procedures are stark, its deepest meanings elusive, and intentionally so. Lewis, a 26-year-old recent graduate of the School of the Art Institute, offers a sort of skeleton key to several of his drawings in the form of a sentence from which many of the depicted words are drawn. But he doesn’t want the sentence—a looping, elliptical epigram of his owncomposition, relating to the intertwined historical conceptions of “colored people” and “people of color,” and the gap between the two—reproduced in full in this article, or indeed anywhere. “It’s not a scheme to keep people from knowing it, more of a way to create a considerable distance,” he explains. “Thanks for respecting and understanding.”A “person of color” himself (he’s African-American), Lewis says much of his recent work has revolved around the mystery sentence, “trying to figure out what it meant at the time, what it means now,” as he puts it. “My relationship, my attitude toward the sentence has changed to it quite a bit over time, and its meanings have shifted a lot. The sentence has a really weird quality to it. It’s nonsense, on one level, but at the same time it’s charged, and feels like it’s supposed to mean something. It does tend to make sense, sort of, when you break it up into fragments and start moving parts of it around, which is what I do in the drawings.”It’s unlikely that most viewers will “get” the work on what might be called its molecular level, but this is not a concern for Lewis. “For me, it’s not a question of people ‘getting it,’” says the artist, who’s continuing a tradition that includes language-oriented conceptual artists like Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer and Glenn Ligon. “If viewers feel they ‘understand’ the work, that’s fine, but it’s essentially irrelevant, because the piecesare rooted in drawing as much as they are in language,” Lewis says. “The work is just there. It’s just the piece itself, the paper. And it’s what’s there that should prevail—that’s the experience, whether or not you know the sentence that’s being quoted. The sentence is just a structure to attack, to analyze, to break down, to see what happens to language when you put it to through the process of being broken down.”"The graphite [in Lewis's drawings]&nbsp;spreads everywhere and the work’s conceptual underpinnings, the interrogation of race, is metaphorically conveyed in the material contamination," says Michelle Grabner, a professor at SAIC. "Nothing is clean, crisp, nor clear in his large-scale drawings.&nbsp;And nothing is absolute in contemporary racial politics." <a href="http://www.shanecampbellgallery.com/tony-lewis">http://www.shanecampbellgallery.com/tony-lewis</a>

Chicago's Young Artists: What Does the Future Hold?

<html><head></head><body><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721418552/cjyvtbpyarrlrsxkivsu.jpg"></figure>&nbsp;By GINNY VAN ALYEAWhen I arrived to meet Patric McCoy and see his collection in Kenwood, near Hyde Park on the South Side, I was totally unprepared for the volume of work I encountered in his modest condominium. Upon being buzzed inside I followed the friendly voice up the stairs, noticing the art along the way. Stepping into the entryway my eyes struggled to take in the dozens of works hanging all around me. Moving into the kitchen I just stopped and stared. Paintings were displayed on every kitchen cabinet, even behind the toaster oven. A 115 year-old bicycle that once belonged to artist Susan Clinard hung sideways from the ceiling, small tea lights suspended from the spokes. The proud collector beamed and welcomed me in - enjoying, for I’m sure not the first time, the look of surprise on his visitor’s face.&nbsp;-GV&nbsp;McCoy is a native Chicagoan, recently retired as an environmental scientist with the EPA and the University of Chicago, though judging by his art-filled apartment, one would guess he’s spent his life traveling the world and buying art. While McCoy has ventured abroad, he’s spent most of his free time&nbsp;scouring Chicago meeting and supporting local artists. He’s been a first class flyer of a different sort, commuting to work by bicycle for 30 years, taking photos and stopping for conversation along the way.&nbsp;A collector for decades, McCoy laughs when he tells me how he began collecting art in 1967 while still in college at the University of Chicago. “The very first piece I bought is there by the front door - it’s by Scott Stapleton, who was my roommate in college. He was an Art major and I was a Chemistry major. He came in one day and said ‘I’ve done this lithograph.’” Though McCoy was unfamiliar with art terminology, he says he knew what Stapleton was talking about, “In Chemistry you have to learn a lot of Greek prefixes, so I knew ‘litho’ and I knew ‘graph.’ I said, ‘You’re writing with stone, but I don’t know what you’re doing. It was fascinating, so I asked him if it was for sale. I offered him $10, and I’ve had it with me ever since.”&nbsp;McCoy describes his home growing up as filled with art. His parents were highly creative - his father painted, built furniture, and was a photographer, while his mother was a seamstress. Though McCoy first wanted to emulate his parents and be an artist, eventually he found he belonged in the field of Chemistry. He explains, “I believe that my earlier interests and exposure to the arts actually set me up to be a good scientist.” He sees the two fields as inextricably linked, “I tell people with young children you should always expose them to the visual arts; instead of telling them, ask them what they see. That way you’ll trigger creative and critical thinking before they worry about seeing the wrong thing. There’s a lot of thinking and manipulating objects that comes out of the artistic realm. I really appreciate that it ended up giving me the framework to excel in Chemistry.”“Psychologically and socially I didn’t begin to collect until the 1990s. Until then I was just acquiring work – I was doing a lot of it but I wouldn’t claim or admit I was a collector,” says McCoy. Eventually, he wanted to get others to collect, and in 2003 he co-founded Diasporal Rhythms, a group he says represents a different concept of collecting in Chicago, “Our organization is charged with how to redefine the term ‘collector.’ In America it has this meaning of being wealthy, private, academic - having the magic ability to know the future value of something. That’s what the majority of people in this country believe. We’re saying none of that has to be true. Particularly in our community on the South Side, we have to be the first voices.”McCoy acknowledges why most collectors shy away from the term. He says it took him a long time to own his passion, and he’s seen the same behavior with others he’s met and introduced to Diasporal Rhythms: “They have bought into a top-down model, and we’re saying it’s from the bottom up, like every other aspect of the culture.” He sees a model for enjoying art evident in how people appreciate music in their daily lives: “No one asks you as a music collector – and almost everyone in this country is in one shape or form – did you get a degree in music? It is something we readily share with others because we share what we like. It’s not private or expensive. Despite not being academically trained to do so, they appreciate music and view the people who create it as important. The value of music for the buyer is what they personally put into it. Why can’t we do that with the visual arts?” &nbsp;When McCoy was invited to be on a panel at the South Side Community Art Center over a decade ago, with fellow collector Dan Parker, Joan Crisler, the principal of the Dixon Elementary School, and Carol Briggs, principal of DuSable High School, it was one of the first times McCoy heard others say the things he’d come to believe about the importance of art collecting in the African American Community. He says that on the south side, in what he calls “the area of Chicago that is underneath the larger art scene radar,” there is a group operating out of a long tradition of collecting that few know anything about.&nbsp;A particularly resonant consensus was on the importance of artists to the community and in schools. McCoy says,&nbsp;“The two principals on the panel talked about how powerful art was in socializing children. Dixon Elementary School, the only institutional member of Diasporal Rhythms, is where I went in the 7th grade back in the late ‘50s, and it was the most depressing place. At the time it was like a prison. Joan Crisler took overfor 17 years, and she collected art and put it in the school. Visiting there became, ‘Oh my God, this is amazing.’ It was a spiritual environment – now a place of learning and inspiration for young children.”&nbsp;Much of the work in the school was figurative and depicted African American subjects that resonated with children unfamiliar with seeing art they could relate to. Because the art is built into the&nbsp;curriculum of the school, McCoy says teachers would bring the children out into the hall and use the art in lessons. He points out that Dixon, located in the Chatham neighborhood on the south side, is not a selective enrollment or magnet or charter school, it’s a regular Chicago Public School. He says,&nbsp;“You see that original art can be in a public space and it will take care of itself. When I went to Dixon and recognized that these are kindergarten to eighth grade kids, at an age when usually they’re bouncing off the wall like little dynamos of destruction, and these priceless pieces are safe in the halls or above their lockers, I thought, ‘these kids have been socialized by the art!’ These works survive because the children value it.”&nbsp;Today many of Dixon’s students are collection docents.&nbsp;McCoy sees the success at Dixon as more than just a nice story – it’s evidence that by holding the arts in a place of honor, while also making them accessible, you are able to teach children other subjects too, because you have gained their attention and interest. Because of Diasporal Rhythms’s relationships with many artists from the community, the group has adopted the Advanced Placement class at King College Prep, regularly inviting artists to come to the school to do workshops for students. McCoy says that for students, the power of having professional artists work with them cannot be understated. The&nbsp;students are always hungry for more.Diasporal Rhythms was founded in 2003&nbsp;following a museum panel discussion that was part of A Century of Collecting: African American Art in The Art Institute of Chicago. McCoy remembers, “The Art Institute at that time was, in my mind, perpetrating a fraud – I didn’t think they had been collecting for 100 years. Maybe they had a [Henry Ossawa] Tanner 100 years ago, but then there seemed to be a big gap and then more recent stuff. I was mostly struck by how the artists at the panel, who were in this show, shared my view and criticized AIC, saying ‘you have not done what you are presenting with this show.’”&nbsp;It wasn’t long after when McCoy and his fellow collectors created Diasporal Rhythms in an effort to unite their collective opinions and perspectives.&nbsp;McCoy sees another museum in the future now, “Whenever collectors organize, a museum is created at that particular moment. It’s true of the Art Institute and the Museum of Contemporary Art, and others. Though Diasporal Rhythms doesn’t have a brick and mortar space now, we know that’s what will happen down the road. When a collector recognizes that these works of art have a value that is bigger than they are, they want to pass the experience on to other generations.”McCoy undoubtedly spends a great deal of time on his bicycle, traveling to art openings, visiting studios or meeting up with fellow collectors. But his home is where his art experience is concentrated on a daily basis. Having lost count of the total number of pieces in his collection, McCoy says he estimates today that he has between 1,200 and 1,300 works. Nearly all of them are on display in his five-room home. Within the collection 350 artists are represented, including Theaster Gates, Joyce Owens, Luis DeLaTorre, Ed Paschke and many, many more. 90% are African American, and 90% are Chicago artists. McCoy says he also has a strong interest in acquiring work by female artists. Trying to summarize his collection, he points out its most identifiable characteristics, “I believe the face and the figure can tell all of the stories of human beings. We read body language and facial expressions. Color is also important - the use and play of color, and using color for expression. I also enjoy variety and try not to get stuck on any one thing.”&nbsp;When McCoy moved to his current home over a decade ago, he had to reinstall his expansive collection all at once. It was then that he recognized his collecting themes. For instance, in an area near his stereo, he’s assembled works relating to music – small linocut portraits of famous African American soul singers, like Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles, are arranged in what McCoy refers to as a sort of musical frieze. &nbsp;When McCoy decided he did not want any blinds or drapes in his living room, in their place he put up stained glass portraits to capture the abundant eastern sunlight. McCoy remembers when he first moved in, “It was quite a colorful neighborhood then. When I’d look out I’d see lots of people going by, so in the windows I put up these sort of masks to remind myself that people wear their own disguises, you just have to look below the surface.”&nbsp;While McCoy enjoys observing people day-to-day, his collection has focused on historical themes, such as the struggle for Africans in the Americas. One room alone acknowledges challenges for black men. The space is divided in half on a diagonal, &nbsp;“One part of the room deals with problems that black men have suffered or created, and the other side represents solutions. A piece I commissioned by artist Brian Ellison for Hyde ParkArt Center’s portrait commission program, Not Just Another Pretty Face, is done here as an African adinkra symbol for the supremacy of God, because philosophically both the problems and solutions are under one God. All of these issues that have tripped up black men in America – drugs, gangs, abandonment, whatever you can imagine as the problem and its solution, there should be an image that reflects that here.”&nbsp;McCoy says the balance of the room helped him avoid the depression that would otherwise result from focusing on only the sad side of things. To him, “I’m a proponent that all people on the planet have had a struggle, so you can’t dwell on it because everyone’s been dogged out at some time.” Opposite another area devoted to struggle is a space devoted to meditation and peace, where McCoy says ultimately he wants to be. In this section is a portrait by artist Mary Qian of McCoy smiling in Jackson Park by the Museum of Science and Industry. As he points out the piece, McCoy reminds me that the Museum began as the Fine Arts building for the White City during the World’s Fair in 1893. He enjoys the significance that the building underwent a transformation from art to science, while McCoy himself eventually went from science to art. &nbsp;McCoy tells a story throughout his home with each step. The works of art are in&nbsp;conversation with him and with each other&nbsp;in powerful ways. More than anything else McCoy is an observer who is keenly interested in people, their struggles, passions and origins. Despite already having so many works in his collection, McCoy says he’s waiting on new pieces to arrive. His collection even overflows into the stairway in his building, so art is the first thing a guest sees. He’s pleased when others enjoy the art he’s acquired, “I think it says something to a visitor when you have a welcoming environment.”Note: for info about the Dixon Elementary School, McCoy recommends a documentary, The Curators of the Dixon School, by Pamela Sherrod Anderson. The film will be screened this fall as part of Diasporal Rhythms' 10-year anniversary at the Logan Center at University of Chicago.&nbsp;&nbsp;</body></html>

Collector Profile: Kenwood's Patric McCoy

<html><head></head><body><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721418552/ya0ji1hcey0eohvobrwv.png"></figure>&nbsp;By GINNY VAN ALYEAAt the busy northside intersection of Lincoln and Diversey, floor to ceiling windows on a&nbsp;corner flatiron building reveal a seemingly&nbsp;out-of-nowhere art gallery, filled with unusual toys and bright figures displayed on the high walls. Inside visitors find quality work by both established and emerging artists in the fields&nbsp;of modern pop, illustration art and character/toy design. Everything within Rotofugi Designer Toy Store and Gallery is devoted to the unusual. Below is my conversation with co-founder Kirby Kerr.&nbsp;–GVCGN:&nbsp;How did the gallery, and Rotofugi Designer Toy Store, get started and how did you come to focus on toys and modern pop?KK: My wife and I opened Rotofugi in July 2004 because we found this thing called "urban vinyl toys" that no one in Chicago seemed to have. In August 2006 we were lucky enough to take over the building next door to our toy store and officially open Rotofugi Gallery as its own space, giving us more room to do regularly scheduled exhibitions. Before moving next door, our first exhibits were held in the back half of our store and ranged from customized toy shows to more traditional paintings and drawings. While we loved showing work in our store, we began to ache for more space after nearly two years of exhibits in the increasingly cramped space.The gallery was, to be entirely honest, almost an accident. When we were first starting out we called ourselves "Rotofugi Designer Toy Store &amp; Gallery" primarily because we wanted to get across the idea that the toys we were selling were not just toys, but art toys. What we quickly found out was that if you put the word "Gallery" anywhere as part of your name people will ask if they can have an exhibit in your space. So, in some way, we accidentally became a gallery space in addition to selling toys.Our focus has always been on showing artwork that we love. In our earliest days we booked a lot of exhibits with friends and customers of the store, and then progressed over time to inviting some of our favorite artists to exhibit in our space. In large part that philosophy has held true...we show things we personally love. These days it's a combination of modern pop, illustration and artwork by folks&nbsp;who are somehow involved in the designer toy world. Our curator, David van Alphen, joined us in 2008 after having owned/operated DvA Gallery for several years. We had long admired the way David curated his own space so when the opportunity arose, we were happy to join forces.CGN:&nbsp;What do you tell or show people who come into the gallery for the first time?KK:&nbsp;We're pretty hands off, preferring to let the work speak for itself. We like to think we've got a unique situation where the gallery gives context to the toys and vice versa. Of course if a visitor wants to talk about the work we're always happy to provide as much information and background about the artist as we can.CGN:&nbsp;Do most of your artists also work as&nbsp;(or with) designers?KK:&nbsp;It's really all over the place. Some are full-time artists, others work in graphic design or even toy design by profession, and many are professional illustrators.CGN: How do you see your gallery in relation to the overall Chicago art scene?KK:&nbsp;I've always struggled with our place in the Chicago art scene. On one hand we're often exhibiting nationally or internationally known artists. On the other hand, because we work in a lesser-known niche, the audience for the work tends to be rather small within Chicago. I'd like to think we're adding a layer of variety and showing work that would otherwise not have a home in Chicago and giving exposure to artists in a positive atmosphere.&nbsp;CGN: Does Chicago have a unique place within the modern pop and illustration art scene?KK:&nbsp;Chicago is home to a number of fantastic modern pop artists and illustrators, many of which we've shown over the years. In particular, we're big fans of both Jeremiah Ketner and Travis Lampe, two Chicago-based artists who have made a good impact with their paintings. Another Chicago artist we love,&nbsp;Jay Ryan, is probably the closest to having help put Chicago on the map, not necessarily for "modern pop" but as a gig-poster artist, another art form we absolutely love.CGN:&nbsp;Describe the scene of your typical&nbsp;openings.KK:&nbsp;It's hard to generalize, but they are for the most part pretty casual affairs. Given the nature of our combined toy store and art gallery setup we tend to be pretty family friendly (no alcohol) and we almost always arrange to have the artist available to meet with fans at the opening.&nbsp;CGN:&nbsp;Are most of the works shown in the gallery humorous or sinister? &nbsp;KK:&nbsp;A little of both actually! We do often show things that could be seen as humorous, but we don't specifically seek that out. A few of our favorite artists tend to explore dark themes too, like Daniel Danger and Derek Hess.CGN:&nbsp;Is the client market for works exhibited in the gallery different than in the designer toy store? &nbsp;KK:&nbsp;Yes...and no. We do have several good clients that purchase artwork but aren't into the toys, but also have many that buy both. In a lot of ways we see the toys we sell, when everything "clicks," as just another way for an artist to reach their collectors. Of course not every toy meets that goal, but we're constantly looking out for artists that are doing interesting things within the designer toy niche.CGN:&nbsp;Do you ever deal in the secondary market?KK:&nbsp;We've toyed around (sorry, pun not intended) with selling a few items on consignment for customers, but for the most part we avoid the secondary market...we're interested in what's new and fresh, not what's hot on eBay.CGN:&nbsp;In the toy store are you essentially&nbsp;selling highly collectible novelty items for adults, or sophisticated toys for kids? Do most of your clients get hooked early on?KK:&nbsp;For the most part the toys we sell are intended for adult collectors, though you're right, many of our good customers are younger kids or teens who appreciate the design elements. I can't say that we intentionally try to hook customers, but collecting toys is definitely an addiction for many... a&nbsp;fun addiction for sure!&nbsp;CGN: Are most of your collectors new to the&nbsp;contemporary art world?KK:&nbsp;I'd venture to say that a majority of our gallery clients are fairly new to collecting original works of art. We see a lot of people starting out with toys and collectibles that later become regular gallery patrons as they seek out unique examples of artwork. In a lot of ways it's not dissimilar to people starting out collecting inexpensive prints and "graduating" to buying paintings. In the end we're just trying to offer good art and design across a spectrum of media and prices, at least that's what we aspire to!</body></html>

CGN's interview with Rotofugi's Kirby Kerr

Dealer Profile- Rotofugi Gallery: Where Toys and Art Meet

By MARY DEYOEWhen it comes to purchasing art and furniture, an “antiques fair” may not appeal to young buyers. It sounds too expensive, too stuffy, and “just not for me.” Nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth. On April 26-29 the Merchandise Mart hosts the annual International Antiques Fair. With nearly 100 international dealers the fair is one of many excellent opportunities for individuals to find unique furniture, art, jewelry and decorative pieces for their homes.&nbsp;Speaking specifically about young and new collectors, Leslie Hindman, President and CEO of Leslie Hindman Auctioneers, suggests that people should use opportunities like fairs and auctions to really enjoy the process of collecting. It’s easy (or at least appears so) to go to a mass retailer and pick out a couch or dining room table. But the thought that this is an simpler or less expensive option is just false. “People are smarter to buy objects and furniture that have history,” says Hindman. “These items actually cost about the same as anything you would buy new, and what you’re getting&nbsp;is unique.”&nbsp;The benefit of going to a fair is also the opportunity to talk to the dealers. The dealers want to talk to customers, to tell them about each piece—where it was made; how it was made; why the craftsmanship is significant. Dealers tend to be enthusiastic about what they do and want to share that enthusiasm about the objects with collectors. “It is an extremely fun process,” Hindman adds, “and I think people can forget to or don’t take the time to have fun and to learn.”No matter how much or how little you purchase at a fair, auction or gallery, the experience will be far more exciting and personal than a trip to the mall or time spent online. Attending antiques-focused events will expose you to an expansive range of styles and designs. If you have only ever looked at Mid-Century Modern furniture, you may discover that you also like 19th Century French objects. “It is a fantastic opportunity to find inspiration,” says Hindman.Hindman&nbsp;added that there is also financial benefit to purchasing antiques. A desk from a mass retailer is unlikely to appreciate, while an authentic antique desk undoubtedly will.&nbsp;

Training Young Collectors to Buy Old Antiques

<html><head></head><body><figure class="image"><img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1721418551/lsnfholubflo2n5ys0gx.jpg"></figure>By GINNY VAN ALYEAFor most Chicagoans, Picasso first "arrived" in Chicago in 1967 in a major, public way that still resonates with our city's citizens today. Now 46 years later, his influence may be seen as the beginning of this city's modern artistic identity.&nbsp;Picasso of course never actually set foot in Chicago, or in this country for that matter. He was very, very close - it is rumored that a plane ticket to Chicago for the sculpture's unveling had been purchased by Skidmore, Owings &amp; Merrill, the firm that commissioned the sculpture that today&nbsp;is&nbsp;the star of Daley Plaza downtown. While Picasso is undoubtedly one of the most celebrated, admired and prolific artists in the history of art, Chicago has a few of its own personal ties to the artist and his work. The new exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, the first major Picasso exhibition organized by the museum in nearly three decades, makes the case that long before his famous sculpture mystified and delighted Chicagoans in 1967, Picasso's artistic style and influence was key to launching local enthusiasm for embracing modern art.&nbsp;A lot of Chicago/Picasso 'firsts' are covered in the show: in 1913 the Art Institute of Chicago became the first American museum to show Picasso's work, after being a part of the innaugural Armory Show in New York that same year. Inspired by the Armory Show, the Arts Club was founded in 1916. In 1923 it presented Picasso's first US solo showing outside of a commercial gallery. One of AIC's most well-known collection anchors is the Old Guitarist, which was purchased by Frederic Clay Bartlett in memory of his wife Helen Birch Bartlett and given to AIC in 1926. It was the first painting by Picasso acquired by a US museum.&nbsp;The exhibition is vast, including 250 works done in a range of mediums and time periods. The works come primarily from AIC's own collection, and mostly they are not blockbusters (3 major paintings on loan from other museums are separated from the main exhibition and are hanging in the Modern Wing - something I found logistically awkward) but the many pieces in the show add up to an illuminating picture of how Chicago came to see itself in an artistic light as well as be known in the world as a progressive city committed to the arts. &nbsp;It is worth spending time with as many of the pieces as possible, while also seeking out new favorites.&nbsp;A highlight is the opening of the show, where a recording of Studs Terkel interiewing Chicagoans in the Federal plaza (now Daley Plaza) on the day the Picasso Woman was unveiled. It's delightful to hear the candid respones. One spectator was there for a baton contest. &nbsp;Someone else thought a statue in honor of someone who'd 'done something for humanity' would have been more fitting. &nbsp;One gentleman thought it resembled the 'pelvic structure of a prehistoric monster.' Others were worried it would rust and hoped it 'worked out.' &nbsp;Most seemed to gaze in awe that their city had put this project together and made such a show of being progressive. After I saw the exhibition, I learned another secret from SAIC's former president, Tony Jones. He recalled recently leading Paloma Picasso on a tour of the show before it opened. While they were examining the Picasso Woman macquette, she leaned her head into the sculpture and pointed out that her father wrote inside many pieces. For the Woman he had apparently been concerned that the piece would hold up because of the weight of the steel and the strong welding that would be required. Just to make sure the piece would stand the test of time and that the heavy head would not tumble down on visitors, he wrote some simple instructions for the welders in Gary, IN - basically, he said, make sure it's on there tight!&nbsp;Picasso never accepted payment for the commission, instead giving it to the city as a gift. That generous spirit is certainly still present here today.&nbsp;</body></html>