To support continued development of the Chicago Art History Initiative, which will culminate in a series of freshly conceived exhibitions and programs in Chicago in 2018. The funding allows for the hiring of a project manager, development of a website, and convenings with cultural partners.
To support ongoing planning activities related to the Chicago Art and Design Initiative in 2015. Funds are used to support convenings with advisors and cultural partners and to enable staff to work on project plans with a consulting art historian and cultural programmer. The initiative aims to deepen and expand understanding of the visual art and design that emerged from Chicago between the Great Fire (1871) and the close of the twentieth century.
To support Painting the Gospel: Black Public Art and Religion in Chicago, a book authored by Dr. Kymberly Pinder, Dean of the College of Fine Arts at the University of New Mexico. The publication looks at the art connected with Chicago’s African American Christian churches, which have been key spaces of social, political, and religious significance from the Great Migration to the present.
To support a 2018 international scholarly conference on the history of Chicago design to be co-organized by the University of Illinois at Chicago and the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. This public conference brings 30 local, national, and international scholars to Chicago to examine an expanded history of Chicago design from the late nineteenth century through the twentieth century.
To support three seminars, in 2016 through 2018, on the history of Chicago design. Organized by the University of Illinois at Chicago’s Department of Art History, in collaboration with the School of Design and the Special Collections Department at the UIC Library, the seminars examine a range of design practices and discourses in Chicago.
To support the publication Centennial: A History of the Renaissance Society, 1915–2015. With essays ranging from the Renaissance Society’s support of African American artists in the 1930s and 1940s to its role as a facilitator of scholarship, the publication links this important Chicago cultural institution to broader developments in visual art and culture in Chicago, and in turn, the American and international artistic landscape of the twentieth century.
To support the public program “South Side Connections,” part of the Renaissance Society’s centennial programming. The program addresses the history of and interconnections between four influential art institutions on Chicago’s South Side: the Renaissance Society (founded 1915), the Hyde Park Arts Center (founded 1939), the South Side Community Art Center (founded. 1940), and the Smart Museum of Art (founded 1974).
To support research travel, research support, and two convenings in preparation for a 2018 exhibition at the National Museum of Mexican Art. The exhibition focuses on a core group of Mexican artists in Chicago during the first part of the twentieth century whose work reflects the cultural dynamics of interactions between Mexico and Chicago.
To support research travel, research assistance, and a two convenings in preparation for a 2018 exhibition about the work of photographer Kenneth Josephson and the development of conceptual photography in Chicago. The exhibition focuses on Kenneth Josephson’s role in the development of conceptual photography locally and nationally and on the unique local conditions that contributed to his practice of blurring design and fine art practices.
To support research travel, research assistance, and a two-day convening in preparation for the 2018 exhibition The Sunken City Rises, at the High Museum of Art, in Atlanta, Georgia. The exhibition situates Chicago Imagism as a central hub connecting an international coalition of artists whose work responded to the rapidly shifting socio-political landscape of 1965–1975.