Art Institute has a Rockwell OH REALLY!
Thanks to the generosity of former Governor Bruce Rauner the Art Institute has its first Norman Rockwell painting. Sarah Kelly Oehler, the Art Institute curator for American art, was quoted as saying: “I had been thinking for years that it would be wonderful to get a Rockwell for our collection.” My how attitudes have changed over those years, if in fact they have.
Chicago’s art highbrows never liked Norman Rockwell and he knew it. He often mentioned a visit he made to the Art Institute in 1949, only months after the Dugout was used on a Saturday Evening Post cover, a student from the School of the Art Institute came up and asked if he was Norman Rockwell. When he confirmed he was indeed Norman Rockwell, the student said: “my teacher says you sink!” A sentiment no doubt shared by the curators and administrators of the Art Institute. In 1973 the Art Institute passed on exhibiting a retrospective of Rockwell art so it was displayed at the Museum of Contemporary Art. When another retrospective was offered in 2000, both museums passed so the exhibition had to settle for the Chicago History Museum in Lincoln Park.
Norman Rockwell was disdained by Chicago’s art Illuminati because he was a “commercial” artist and he was probably the most admired artist of his time by the unwashed masses. And now they have a painting for their collection. The saddest element to this story is that while Rockwell was the most poplar commercial artist of his time , there was a large colony of similar artists in Chicago nearly as popular as Rockwell who created icons of popular art who were just as disdained as Rockwell; so their art is now in collections far far away, lost to the city where they were begot.
ART INSTITUTE’S NEW DIRECTOR
New City, the small twice monthly free zine, published an interview with the new director of the Art Institute of Chicago as its lead article in the March 1-15 edition. The visual arts’ community in Chicago gets little attention with the exception of New City which is often alone in covering art news. Still the timing could not have been worse. It seems there was to be an election later in March and everyone’s attention was on either the State’s Attorney race or some South Side black democrat who had had the audacity to challenge his white boss.
The article did not garner much attention but it did highlight new traditions and certified some old traditions. The new director of the Art Institute is James Rondeau who was the past curator in the modern and contemporary art gallery of the Art Institute. Traditionally, the Art Institute promotes from within, yet one of the abiding traditions of the 20th century was the disputes within the institution between the advocates of modern art and the traditionalists of academic art. With the ascension of a modernist to the top of the hierarchy, the schism Chicago was once known for has been bridged.
Still other traditions remain. James Rondeau waxed eloquent on the relationship between the Art Institute of Chicago and the City of Chicago: “The identity of the city of Chicago and the identity of this museum are inextricably interwoven. ….We are a civic institution, so I see our connection to the history of Chicago, Chicago’s present and Chicago’s future, as one and the same.” And yet, there is no mention of connections to Chicago’s art community only with Chicago and its other endowed institutions; nor of the one genre of art where Chicago artists have achieved the greatest success: commercial art. So the tradition remains, Chicago’s greatest institution of art has little relation to the art of Chicago.
To learn more about Chicago’s history in the popular visual arts especially the checkered relationship between the Art Institute and the artist community read: Chicago’s Visual Arts available in digital at most ebook sites or in print on Amazon.
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