West by Midwest

Nov 17, 2018 – Jan 27, 2019

Featured Images

A black-and-white photograph of two men shaking hands is mounted to a light-colored piece of wood. — Ed Ruscha and Billy Al Bengston, Business Cards, 1968. Offset on paper with business card and gold-backed paper stapled on final page; punched and tied with leather cord with silver gelatin print and photo corners adhered to wood-grained Bristol board; 7 1/16 × 5 9/16 in. (18 × 14 cm). Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, gift of Robert L. Mollers, 2012.95. © Ed Ruscha and Billy Al Bengston
Photo: Nathan Keay © MCA Chicago

A pair of shredded pantyhose are looped and tied together, tacked loosely on a wall with a weighted object contained in each foothold. — Ed Ruscha and Billy Al Bengston, Business Cards, 1968. Offset on paper with business card and gold-backed paper stapled on final page; punched and tied with leather cord with silver gelatin print and photo corners adhered to wood-grained Bristol board; 7 1/16 × 5 9/16 in. (18 × 14 cm). Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, gift of Robert L. Mollers, 2012.95. © Ed Ruscha and Billy Al Bengston
Photo: Nathan Keay © MCA Chicago

About the Exhibition

Western art history is often viewed as a neat succession of individual artists and their singular masterpieces. This narrative runs parallel to the American story of westward expansion, propelled by the idea of individualism and independence. West by Midwest offers a messier alternative—one that illuminates the ways that contemporary art practices spread and develop by tracing the intersecting lives of artists who have migrated from the American Midwest to the West Coast since the mid-20th century. Lured by career opportunities, warmer weather, and the prospect of a better life promised by the postwar boom, artists in this exhibition attended art schools together, shared studios, exhibited work in the same galleries, collaborated on projects, engaged in activism, and dated. Following these crisscrossing lines of kinship, West by Midwest reveals social, political, artistic, and intellectual networks of artists and their shared experiences of making work and making a life.

Divided into five sections, West by Midwest presents more than eighty artworks in a wide variety of media, made by some sixty-three artists from the 1960s through the 2010s. Each section maps three overlapping forms of kinship: practice, or the ways that artists make and approach their work; place, or the spaces where artists congregate and exchange ideas; and people, or the manifold human relationships that compose artists' personal and professional circles. Anchored by works in the MCA's collection, West by Midwest eschews a definitive survey of individuals' achievements to instead consider how artists move and make work within a larger field of relations.

West by Midwest is organized by Charlotte Ickes, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow, with Michael Darling, James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator. It is presented in the Griffin Galleries of Contemporary Art on the museum's fourth floor.

Featured Artists

José Antonio Aguirre
Terry Allen
Carlos Almaraz
José Alpuche
Garo Antreasian
Judith Barry
Larry Bell
Billy Al Bengston
Patrick Blackwell
Andrea Bowers
Vija Celmins
Judy Chicago
Bruce Conner
Jean Conner
Robert Cumming
Aaron Curry
Emory Douglas
Hal Fischer
Roy De Forest
Joe Goode
Anna Halprin
Lawrence Halprin
David Hammons
Richard Hawkins
Judithe Hernández
Dennis Hopper
Douglas Huebler
Jessica Jackson Hutchins
Jim Isermann
Suzanne Jackson
Stephen Kaltenbach
Barbara Kasten
Mike Kelley
Mary Kelly
Lynn Hershman Leeson
Cary Loren
Tom Marioni
Jerry McMillan
Rodney McMillian
Rebecca Morris
Bruce Nauman
Senga Nengudi
Kori Newkirk
Niagara (Lynn Rovner)
Gladys Nilsson
Jim Nutt
Catherine Opie
John Outterbridge
Laura Owens
Jorge Pardo
Stephen Prina
Roberto (Beto) de la Rocha
Frank Romero
Amanda Ross-Ho
Sterling Ruby
Allen Ruppersberg
Ed Ruscha
Miriam Schapiro
Melanie Schiff
Jim Shaw
June Wayne
William Wegman
Charles White
William T. Wiley
Mason Williams
Karl Wirsum

Additional Media

Website

Cover of the Womanhouse exhibition catalogue, 1972. Pictured from left: Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro. California Institute of the Arts Institute Archives: Feminist Art Materials Collection

Gallery Text Downloads

Installation Images

Installation view, West by Midwest, MCA Chicago November 17, 2018–January 27, 2019.
Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

Funding

Lead support for West by Midwest is provided by the Harris Family Foundation in memory of Bette and Neison Harris: Caryn and King Harris, Katherine Harris, Toni and Ron Paul, Pam and Joe Szokol, Linda and Bill Friend, and Stephanie and John Harris; Zell Family Foundation; Cari and Michael J. Sacks; Karyn and Bill Silverstein; and the Nancy Lauter McDougal and Alfred L. McDougal Exhibition Fund.

Major support is provided by Jennifer and Alec Litowitz.

Additional generous support is provided by the Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellowship program.