Renaissance Society

The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago
Established 1915
Location 5811 S. Ellis Ave. Chicago, IL 60637
Coordinates 41°47′21″N 87°36′04″W / 41.7892°N 87.6010°W / 41.7892; -87.6010
Type Art museum
Director Solveig Øvstebø
Website http://www.renaissancesociety.org

The Renaissance Society is a non-collecting contemporary art museum in Chicago, Illinois. It is located on the campus of the University of Chicago, although it is a fully independent entity.

Overview

The Renaissance Society is a non-collecting museum founded in 1915 to encourage the growth and understanding of contemporary art. The Society presents four or five exhibitions each year, featuring both internationally and locally renowned artists. The museum also sponsors concerts, performances, film and video screenings, poetry and fiction readings, and lectures by artists, critics and scholars. Located on the campus of the University of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois, the Society is one of the nation's oldest museums devoted exclusively to contemporary art.[1]

History

From 1929 to 1935, the Society was led by important photographer and artist Eva Watson-Schütze, who helped create groundbreaking exhibitions of modernists including Braque, Arp, Brâncuși, Miró, and Picasso. Important one-person exhibitions organized by the Society included Henri Matisse (1930); Alexander Calder (1934); Fernand Léger (1936); László Moholy-Nagy (1939); John Sloan (1942); Käthe Kollwitz, Paul Klee (1946), Mies van der Rohe (1947); Diego Rivera (1949); José Clemente Orozco (1951); Marc Chagall (1958); Réné Magritte (1964) and Henry Moore (1967). A distinguished history of educational programs featured luminaries such as Sergei Prokofiev, Alfred Barr, Leonard Bernstein, Gertrude Stein, Zora Neale Hurston, and Paul Tillich.

From 1974 through mid-2013, curator Susanne Ghez led the Renaissance Society. During her tenure, Ghez exhibited artists such as Robert Smithson, Louise Bourgeois, Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz, Daniel Buren, On Kawara, Gunther Forg, Juan Muñoz, Hanne Darboven, Jean-Marc Bustamante, Thomas Struth, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Kara Walker, Arturo Herrera, Darren Almond, Thomas Hirschhorn, and Mark Manders.[2]

In July 2013, Ghez stepped down, and was replaced by Solveig Øvstebø as Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Society.[3] For more than a decade prior, Øvstebø had been director of Bergen Kunsthall in her native Norway.[4]

Hamza Walker is currently Associate Curator and Director of Education. He has worked at the Society since 1994 and was called by The New York Times one of the "seven most influential curators in the country", as well as "one of the museum world's most talented essayists."[5] Walker won the Ordway Prize in 2010, in recognition of his innovative curatorial work and his wide-ranging thinking and writing about contemporary art.[6]

References

  1. ↑ http://www.renaissancesociety.org/site/General_Information.html
  2. ↑ http://www.renaissancesociety.org/site/Exhibitions.html
  3. ↑ "Renaissance Society names Solveig Øvstebø first new executive director in nearly 40 years". UChicago News. University of Chicago. Retrieved 17 July 2013.
  4. ↑ Weinberg, Lauren (15 November 2012). "Renaissance Society names Solveig Øvstebø new executive director". Time Out Chicago. Retrieved 17 July 2013.
  5. ↑ Gates, Anita (2 May 2001). "The Curators: Discerning and Influential". The New York Times. Retrieved 17 July 2013.
  6. ↑ Ise, Claudine. "HAMZA WALKER WINS $100,000 ORDWAY PRIZE". Bad at Sports. Bad at Sports. Retrieved 17 July 2013.
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