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.
Recent Comments