Envisioning the Contemporary: Selections from the Permanent Collection

About the Exhibition

Envisioning the Contemporary highlights approximately 125 works selected from the Permanent Collection and marks the public debut of many important new additions to the MCA’s holdings. Featured are key pieces from one of the largest single gifts ever made to the MCA collection: a gift of 85 works from the Lannan Foundation collection.

Envisioning the Contemporary traces major historical developments in art - making from 1945 to the present, focusing on several distinct areas of artistic activity: late surrealism, Chicago art, minimal and conceptual art, and current art. On view are key works by Richard Artschwager, Balthus, Chris Burden, Leon Golub, Robert Irwin, Mike Kelley, Franz Kline, Claes Oldenburg, Adrian Piper, Ed Ruscha, Cindy Sherman, and Jackie Winsor, as well as 15 sculptures by Alexander Calder, installed together in a gallery overlooking Lake Michigan.

In just the past two years, the MCA has added to its holdings works by more than 125 artists, more than half of whom are new to the collection. In Envisioning the Contemporary, art by Stan Douglas, Sherrie Levine, and Kerry James Marshall will be exhibited as part of the MCA collection for the first time.

The Lannan Foundation gift, announced in February 1997, has allowed the MCA to expand upon established strengths of the collection and to fill gaps with important works that otherwise would have been difficult to acquire. Envisioning the Contemporary will feature Artschwager’s Triptych of 1962; a group of Burden’s assemblages of 1979; Golub’s Mercenaries I of 1979; Irwin’s Untitled disk of 1965-67; and Ruscha’s Words Without Thoughts Never To Heaven Go of 1987. A total of approximately 45 works from the Lannan gift will be featured in Envisioning the Contemporary and a companion exhibition (opening July 24) that focuses on works on paper recently acquired by the museum.

The exhibition was organized by Alison Pearlman, MCA Assistant Curator of Collections. This exhibition is sponsored by a grant from the Pritzker Foundation. Support for this exhibition was provided in part by the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Fund Collection Accessibility Initiative.