Since its founding in 1916, The Arts Club has maintained a permanent collection that tracks the history of the avant garden. Shaped by our exhibition history, it includes works by Modern Masters displayed intimately throughout the Club quarters, graced by interiors designed by Mies van der Rohe.
We’re thrilled to welcome guests on the first Saturday of each month for an exclusive tour of the collection on the second floor of the Club, which is typically restricted for use by members and their guests. Visitors will learn not only about the works in the collection but also about how the Club has been a site for experimentation, exploration, and creativity for artists and their supporters throughout the last century.
All tours are free, but reservations are required.
For her Garden Project “garden/ruinate”, artist Eliza Myrie will open a gate to The Arts Club, hosting monthly gatherings within the transformed garden space. This series of programs, under the heading “Tie Up”, will explore the nature of extended invitations, caring, community, and existence mediated by both built and imagined structures. Programming will include conversation, sound, and poetry, among other things, so feel free to drop by and hang out. If you’re late to your plans later on, you can just let your friends know you got “tied up” hanging out in the garden.
On Saturday we’ll be celebrating the new season with a kickback in the Garden. DJ Major Taylor will be spinning some reggae tunes, the gate will swing open for all visitors, and some light refreshments will be provided. Enjoy the project space for the new exhibition in the gallery when you stop on by!
Free and Open to All.
About Eliza:
Eliza Myrie, b. 1981, New York. Myrie is a sculptor working in Chicago, IL. She received her MFA from Northwestern University and BA from Williams College and was a participant at The Skowhegan School. Myrie has been in residence at Yaddo, Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, The MacDowell Colony, and Arts + Public Life at The University of Chicago. Myrie is a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is a co-founder of The Black Artists Retreat [B.A.R.]. She has received grants from The Propeller Fund and 3Arts. Exhibitions include Gallery 400, Chicago; Vox Populi, Philadelphia; Shane Campbell, Chicago; Roots and Culture, Chicago; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago; New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; Hyde Park Arts Center, Chicago; Davidson Contemporary, New York.
Commissioned by The Princeton Center for Architecture, Urbanism, and Infrastructure in partnership with The Arts Club of Chicago, multi-disciplinary artist Olivier Tarpaga’s new work for dance features a team of artists from Burkina Faso, France, and the United States. “I Guess You Solved the Question” depicts one of the most violent, mysterious, and repressed stories in modern architectural history, the story of Julian Carlton’s massacre and destruction of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin.
This tragic and compelling narrative will be delivered by dancers from Baker and Tarpaga Dance Project, a transnational company based in Burkina Faso and Philadelphia through dramatic movement, words, sound, and images.
Olivier Tarpaga is the Artistic Director of Nomad Express International MultiArts Festival in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso and a Lester Horton award-winning musician and choreographer. He is currently a dance lecturer at the Lewis Center for the Arts and a music lecturer at the Department of Music, Princeton University.
This program is in collaboration with the Chicago Architecture Biennial. As we have limited space for this program, reservations are required.
Since 1916, The Arts Club of Chicago has been a preeminent exhibitor of international art, a forum for established and emerging artists, and a celebrated venue for performers from around the world. For over 100 years, The Arts Club has opened its membership to artists and patrons of the arts, and its exhibitions to the public. At its inaugural meeting, the mission of the Club was defined as: “to encourage higher standards of art, maintain galleries for that purpose, and to promote the mutual acquaintance of art lovers and art workers.”
Performances by Restroy from 6:15 – 7:45
Assembling works from materials sourced in both Chicago and Michoacán, his ancestral home in the West of Mexico, artist Abraham Cruzvillegas meditates on the nature of rootedness and drift in The Ballad of Etc. Fabricated on site, the constructions draw upon traditional Mexican lacquer technique known as “maque” to produce new imagery that is juxtaposed with found materials and products made by Chicago’s skilled workers. Chicago experimental jazz ensemble Restroy joins Cruzvillegas performing interpretations of the artist’s texts throughout the public reception.
To support and participate in the Natalia Goncharova retrospective mounted by the Tate Modern in 2019, The Arts Club of Chicago loaned a significant work from its permanent collection: a Goncharova screen made in 1927-28. This video documents the extensive conservation work done to the screen in advance of its exhibition and travel to Europe, while telling the story of who The Arts Club commissioned the work by Goncharova.
This video was created by The Arts Club of Chicago and On the Real Film.
