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Full page coverage - December 1, 2005
BY KEVIN NANCE, Art Critic
When Ed Paschke died on Thanksgiving Day last year, television news crews called the Art Institute of Chicago and the Museum of Contemporary Art, asking to photograph or shoot video of his work. But even though the Art Institute and MCA owned paintings by Paschke -- perhaps the best-known Chicago artist of the past quarter-century -- none were on display.
The TV crews were disappointed, and they weren't alone. To a number of local artists and their supporters, the incident symbolized what they saw as a lack of recognition and institutional support for Chicago-based art, and it helped kick-start an effort to address the problem. The result was the formation of the Chicago Art Foundation, a nonprofit group whose goal is to create a museum dedicated to Chicago art and artists.
A year later, the Chicago Art Foundation is still in its infancy, and its plan to establish a Chicago art museum remains an unfinished canvas. But the pace is quickening. The executive director, former Chicago art gallery owner Paul Klein, has been aggressively raising awareness, support and funds, including more than $500,000 in cash and in-kind donations. More than 500 local artists and dozens of civic and business leaders have pledged their support. And on Friday, the foundation is holding its first formal benefit (with Pediatric AIDS Chicago), featuring sales of holiday ornaments made by more than 175 Chicago artists.
Klein has also been busy investigating potential museum sites and planning an exhibition next spring that will demonstrate the museum's twin goals of unearthing the largely unknown history of art in Chicago and showcasing the city's best contemporary artists.
"We're in a flurry of activity because there's a lot of excitement, and we're in the process of taking that excitement and making it real," he says. "We want to concretize our program, but to do that we need a space. I think it'll happen within a year. The right factors have to come together, but I can see it happening by Groundhog Day, if we get lucky."
As he rallies support for the cause, Klein is careful not to criticize the Art Institute or Museum of Contemporary Art, noting that their missions are too broad to provide a sustained focus on Chicago art.
"A lot of us have been encouraging those institutions to do more about Chicago for decades, and we've made inroads," he says. "They're doing more and paying more attention, but it still isn't their mission. So a number of artists came to me and said, 'Paul, instead of extolling the benefits of the Chicago community to the MCA and the Art Institute and trying to get them to do more, why don't we pat 'em on the back for the good they are doing, acknowledge that there's a void and seek to fill it?' "
One of those artists was Tony Fitzpatrick, who now serves on the foundation's artist advisory board.
"As great as the institutions that exist here are, it's not their charter to champion the artistic history and activity of the city of Chicago specifically," he says. "I think it's time for the city to examine the activity that's been going on here for 150 years and continues today, even though it's all but invisible. We need an institution that says, 'This is our talent,' that puts it front and center, and that can be there for the community of emerging artists. It's high time."
James Yood, an art critic, historian and professor at the School of the Art Institute who is now vice president of the CAF's board of directors, agrees.
"I think Chicago is the best-kept secret of modern and contemporary art," he says. "People know about our architecture, our history with blues and jazz, and our literature. But if you ask even lifelong Chicagoans about visual art, they tend to think this hasn't been a great center of art production. In fact, we have a distinguished history here. Most people just don't know about it."
A Chicago art ghetto?
As the CAF's drive gains momentum, however, some remain unconvinced that a regional museum devoted to Chicago art and artists is necessary.
"The art world is already so balkanized, so any effort to break down regionalism is a good thing," says Joseph Tabet, organizer of the annual Navy Pier Walk sculpture exhibit. "We live in a global marketplace, and I personally like to be open to things that are happening outside of my immediate sphere."
But Chicago artist Mary Lou Zelazny argues that as the art world's borders are blurring due to international travel and the Internet, regional art is increasingly important.
"The bigger the art world gets, the participants become more homogenized, so that there can be a neglect of people right under your nose that are very good artists," Zelazny says. "There are a lot of good artists in Chicago -- hundreds -- and I think people want to look at things being done closer to home."
Still, an often-expressed worry is that a Chicago museum might end up as a sort of local art ghetto. Yood says the fear is unfounded.
"Some people don't like the idea of segmenting Chicago from the larger world of the arts, and that's a valid intellectual argument," Yood says. "There've always been women who didn't want to be in 'women's art' shows, or Impressionists who didn't want to be in Impressionist shows. When you say the word 'regionalism,' in their brain they hear the word 'provincialism.' I'm as opposed to provincialism as anyone, but I also believe that New York is a region, as are Los Angeles, London and Paris. They just have bigger megaphones than Chicago does in terms of spreading the word."
Chicago artist William Conger sees the "ghetto" issue as rooted in insecurity.
"A lot of artists here have the Second City syndrome -- they're so afraid of anything that connotes a secondary or regional status," Conger says. "Every artist wants to have international recognition, and that's fine, but I don't see having local recognition as a contradiction or something negative. I have things in the [University of Chicago's] Smart Museum collection. Would I like to have more in the Art Institute? Yes, but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with the Smart."
Whatever its merits, the concept of a Chicago art museum will ultimately succeed or fail because of its financial viability. But even some of the foundation's supporters are skeptical of its ability to raise the necessary millions of dollars in a period when other local art institutions are fiercely competing for the philanthropic dollar.
"It's going to be hard," Conger says. "Everybody's looking for money right now -- the Art Institute is adding a wing, the Hyde Park Art Center is building an addition, the universities are out shaking the bushes. But I think the idea is still realistic and doable. It will develop in stages, and it will likely attract people who perceive in it enough substance and future that they may want to come in with sizable funding."
Klein originally had envisioned launching the project with a bang, opening in a centrally located space of between 30,000 and 50,000 square feet, but the cost of such an ambitious debut began to seem prohibitive. Now he's thinking of a more modest, phased approach, opening in a venue of perhaps 5,000-10,000 square feet and gradually building community and financial support from there.
"I think people who want to participate in a program like ours are more interested in the quality of the program than the quality of the building," Klein says. "In the five- to 10-year time frame, the objective remains the same: to have a 50,000-square-foot building. But in the interim, let's get going."
That worries Scott Hodes, a Chicago attorney who has championed local artists. "I respect Paul and what he's trying to do, but I'm scared to death that if he does it that way, it'll be etched in people's minds that it's an experiment. I think it needs to be funded properly and it needs to get off on a strong foot. You've got to go on a grander scale and send a message out to the public that we're here to stay."
Whatever its startup strategy, the foundation will have to convince supporters to pony up. "The real question is: Does the community have an appetite for it?" Fitzpatrick says. "I would ask them to put stock in their own culture."
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