Talk: Curating Chicago with Lynne Warren

About

As part of Art Design Chicago, the University of Chicago Graham School and the Terra Foundation present an Art Speaks lecture with Lynne Warren in the Commons at the MCA.

The perception of Chicago in the latter half of the twentieth century as the “second city,” provincial and uncultured, did not merely affect the city’s artists and weigh on critic’s minds when assessing them. Local arts institutions as well were influenced by the notion that the most forward-looking and important artists lived in New York and on the European continent. As a result, the presentation of home-grown talent often relied on strategies that ranged between outright boosterism and plodding civic duty, at times obscuring the achievements of local artists. This lecture examines the exhibition programs at the Art Institute of Chicago, the MCA, the Renaissance Society, and other institutions from the 1940s to the present to analyze the way “curating Chicago” shaped Chicago’s unique art production.