CGN Art World Recap: 2/8/24
Mongerson Gallery Adds New Artist
At the end of 2023 Mongerson Gallery, founded by the late Tyler Mongerson, moved from its location on West Grand Ave., to a new location on W. Superior in River North. The gallery just announced the addition of a new artist to its program and is featuring a selection of works by Polish-American artist Theresa Bernstein (1890-2002).
Often associated with the New York Ashcan School, Bernstein documented the urban landscape around her, creating vibrant works of social realism which continue to captivate.
Theresa Ferber Bernstein-Meyerowitz was born on March 1, 1890, in Kraków, Poland, and raised in Philadelphia. Following training at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women and the New York Art Student’s League, where she studied under William Merritt Chase, Bernstein quickly found success as a painter in New York City. By 1914, she was showing regularly alongside renown painters of the Ashcan School John Sloan, Stuart Davis, and Robert Henri. At a time when modernist abstraction was coming to the fore, Bernstein remained devoted to figurative subjects. Inexorably drawn to the excitement of urban life, Bernstein painted the rapidly modernizing world around her: suffragette meetings, opera houses, throngs on the omnibus, parades, and parties.
Nathan Manilow Sculpture Park Nominated for USA Today's 2024 10 Best Readers' Choice travel awards
theNate has been nominated for USA Today’s “2024 10 Best Readers’ Choice” travel awards as a contender for Best Sculpture Park. Show your support and VOTE TODAY and everyday until Monday, February 19th!
Wabash Arts Corridor nominated for USA Today's 2024 10 Best Readers' Choice travel awards
An expert panel selected Wabash Arts Corridor as a contender for Best Arts District, which just launched. A person can vote once a day for the run of the contest. Voting ends Monday, February 19th and the winners will be announced on 10Best on Friday, March 1st at 12:00pm EST.
Austin, Roseland And Humboldt Park First To Participate In Renewed Historical Marker Project
Three communities of color will be the first involved in a renewed citywide art project highlighting important people, events and locations in the city’s neighborhoods.
Two city agencies are working to expand a historical markers program that began in the 1990s as a way to highlight notable Chicagoans. The program will bring historical markers citywide, but Austin, Humboldt Park and Roseland will be the first neighborhoods to receive them, said Lydia Ross, the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Event’s (DCASE) director of public art.
The project — which began seeking scholars, artists and other collaborators in August— will be an engaging way to learn about city history, Ross said. DCASE is teaming with the Department of Planning and Development on the project.
Via Block Club
New Gallery, Community Hub Links Incarcerated Artists to Chicago Communities
Robert Curry is a prolific artist.
But it’s a rare occasion for his aunts to see his work up close.
D’Andrea Mosely and Robin Adams peered down at the two pages of comics drawn by Curry: brightly colored panels depicting “The Lost Place” as he calls it. A community hub where, he writes, children were sent when tensions with law enforcement were high.
Children in the community play pool, ping pong and basketball as “a safe haven.”
These moments growing up in a three-story walk-up near 45th Street and Champlain Avenue are a cherished memory for Curry that contrasts to his nearly 20 years incarcerated at Stateville Correctional Center.
“It’s heartwarming, but it’s also heartbreaking,” said Mosely. “Now he considers it somewhere that is lost to him and others growing up in the neighborhood, just to the community at large that we don’t have these kinds of safe havens in the Black and Brown communities anymore.”
Via WTTW