We Are Here Review of 50th Anniversary Exhibits at Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art

"Feel today what people will exist talking about tomorrow."

That has become the mantra of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago as it prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary, and pursue its e'er-evolving function as a showcase for all that is new and provocative in the fields of both the visual and performing arts. And while a circular-the-clock roster of special events is slated for the weekend of October. 21-22, preparations for the anniversary are already well underway.

Originally the brainchild of a grouping of collectors, art dealers, artists, fine art critics and architects — who valued the venerable and internationally acclaimed collection of the Art Establish of Chicago, yet felt a powerful demand for this urban center to too take a museum devoted to the creative spirit of the moment — the MCA has grown into one of the well-nigh prestigious cultural institutions of its kind in the land, continuing alongside the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Mass MOCA and a scattering of others.

The idea for such a contemporary art showcase was outset formulated in 1964, at the very moment when this country was undergoing a monumental shift in its social, political and cultural nature. Three years later information technology opened its doors in a small building at 237 E. Ontario, where, as Madeleine Grynsztejn, who has served equally the MCA's director since 2008, proudly notes: "The very first event to exist staged there was a Happening that involved composer John Cage and two founders of the Fluxus movement. And that tradition of combining the visual and performative arts has remained a major chemical element of our programming ever since."

Creative person Christo (lesser, foreground, with his squad) goes about his work of wrapping the Museum of Contemporary Art with x,000 square feet of tarpoline in 1969. | Bob Black/Sunday-Times/File

From the outset the museum was on the cutting edge, with exhibits of the piece of work of Claes Oldenburg and such other Pop Art icons as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Robert Rauschenberg. In 1969 its building became the site of Christo'south beginning "wrap" in the United states, and was encased in tarpaulin and rope. The MCA also was the outset U.Southward. museum to mount solo exhibitions of the work of Dan Flavin, the Minimalist sculptor whose installations used flourescent calorie-free fixtures (in 1967); the nifty Mexican painter, Frida Kahlo (in 1978, with a "follow-upwardly" exhibition in 2014 featuring artists influenced by her work); and, in 1988, the Chicago-trained Jeff Koons.

That tradition has continued, with innovative shows of the work of South Africa's multi-media creative person and opera managing director William Kentridge, Polish sculptor and cloth artist Magdalena Abakanowicz, the masterful painter Kerry James Marshall and conceptual artist Rashid Johnson. Attracting record crowds in recent seasons have been such pop civilisation figures equally David Bowie and Haruki Murakami.

Kerry James Marshall, "7 am Sun Morn," 2003. | Drove Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago/ Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

The major development in the MCA'due south history came in 1996 when it opened its current home at 220 E. Chicago,the site of a one-time National Guard armory. Located on prime real manor, the iv-story, 220,000-square-foot edifice designed by Josef Paul Kleihues fabricated the MCA ane of the largest institutions devoted to contemporary art in the world. And from the start information technology was outfitted with a 300-seat theater Grynsztejn thank you as "prescient" for signaling that "more and more, gimmicky art is an constructing of living performance, media and traditional art."

Under the leadership of Peter Taub, who for 2 decades (until 2016) served as managing director of the MCA Stage series, the museum introduced audiences to an boggling assortment of work by artists both new and established — from the musical ensemble eighth blackbird, choreographer Akram Khan and puppet theater designers William Kentridge and Blair Thomas, to theater legend Peter Brook, and the Elevator Repair Service company, whose 2008 performance of "Gatz," a seven-hour enactment of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, "The Great Gatsby," remains etched in the minds of all who saw it.

Scott Shepherd, Susie Sokol, Tory Vazquez, Jim Fletcher in "Gatz." | Gene Pittman Photo

In recent decades nearly major art museums, including the Art Institute of Chicago (which opened its Modern Wing in 2009), have embarked on developing gimmicky collections. And non surprisingly, this has intensified the competition for new work.

"The contemporary art market has become explosively expensive," said Grynsztejn. "And that is just one reason why nosotros've widened our scope, sending our global team of curators — Omar Kholeif, Naomi Beckwith and Jose Esparza — to actively search out and acquire the work of artists in the Middle Due east, Africa, Southeast Asia and Latin America. For the centerpiece of our 50th anniversary exhibition, 'We Are Here,' each of them has organized a show that features artists from around the world working in painting, sculpture, installation, sound, film, and video."

Kholeif, according to the MCA'southward official announcement, "is homing in on those who borrow from popular culture — soup cans, motion picture stills, neon signage, and floor tiles — to critique its workings. He will include "historical" pieces past Warhol, Rauschenberg, and Bruce Nauman, equally well as Chicago Imagists Karl Wirsum and Roger Chocolate-brown, and also look at the work of Koons, Cindy Sherman, Gillian Wearing and others to explore how, since the 1980s, they have engaged with new forms of media."

Marisol. "Six Women, 1965–66." | Collection Museum of Gimmicky Art Chicago, souvenir of the artist./ Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago

Esparza (whose exhibition "I Am You" opens Aug. 19) has "gathered works by such established artists as Francis Bacon, René Magritte, Marisol, and Shirin Neshat (plus such younger artists every bit Jonathas de Andrade and Lynette Yiadom-Boakye), who use personal experiences to illuminate contemporary life." And artist Tino Sehgal will revive his interactive piece, "Kiss," which involves two dancers and the crucial chemical element of audience reaction.

Beckwith's department, the announcement explained, examines how the part of the viewer has changed over time, especially since the 1960s, shifting from passive onlooker to agile participant. Included will exist Pierre Huyghe's performative piece, "Name Announcer," a gallery installation with a town crier who asks visitors for their full names equally they enter and then proclaims their names loudly.

The 50th anniversary celebration at the MCA goes well beyond the bodily artworks to the concrete establish itself, with the edifice undergoing a major reorganization and enhancement during the past twelvemonth. The ground floor lobby surface area has been opened up and modernized, and at present leads to a cute new restaurant and cafe, replacing the one previously on the first flooring. Dubbed Marisol (after the French-Venezuelan sculptor who established a bond early on with the MCA, and donated one of her works to the museum), its walls are busy with exquisite line drawings and a boldly hued landscape by Chris Ofili, the Turner Prize-winning British artist of African ancestry.

The onetime two-level restaurant infinite has been rebuilt to create a stunning "public date" gathering spot on the first flooring that is festooned with 221 cutting-metallic lighting fixtures that double equally planters and were designed past the United mexican states City-based designers Pedro & Juana, while the new 2d floor space is at present devoted to educational classrooms with an enviable view, devoted to use by school groups.

"I think Chicago is enjoying a golden age in all the arts correct now," said Grynsztejn. "Manygreat artists are working here considering they can find jobs at the city'due south universities, and considering in that location are now many places that show their piece of work, from galleries, to the Smart Museum, the Mary & Leigh Block Museum, the Art Plant and, of course, the MCA."

So when does a gimmicky fine art museum become a museum of modern fine art?

Grynsztejn explained: "It'south a flummoxing question, but I call back 'contemporary' is that point in time when the work is still influencing and making art history, and connects with the moment in terms of artistry and the audience. And the contemporary lens doesn't have to exclude everything in the past; it'southward important to hold a mirror up to what was gimmicky 'then' and what is contemporary 'at present.' And I think that's in the DNA of this museum."

For additional information visit www.mcachicago.org .

Installation view, Jeff Koons: "Words 1979–1988." | Photo © MCA Chicago

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Source: https://chicago.suntimes.com/2017/8/17/18383403/mca-s-50th-anniversary-celebrates-the-now-and-the-next

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