Exhibition at the Block Museum explores Chicago architecture and the modern city

EVANSTON, IL.- “Drawing the Future: Chicago Architecture on the International Stage, 1900–1925,” the main gallery exhibition at Northwestern University’s Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art this spring, examines the role Chicago architects played in shaping ideas about the modern city in the United States, Europe and Australia.

Free and open to the public, “Drawing the Future” runs from April 19 to Aug. 11, at the Block Museum, 40 Arts Circle Drive, on the University’s Evanston campus. The exhibition highlights the scope, ambition and reach of Chicago’s early 20th-century architects.

Curated by Northwestern’s David Van Zanten, Mary Jane Crowe Professor in Art and Art History, “Drawing the Future” explores the dialogue between Chicago-based architects Frank Lloyd Wright, Walter Burley Griffin, Marion Mahony Griffin and their European counterparts through more than 50 drawings, large-scale architectural renderings, plans, sketches and rare books. Some of the items have never been on display before.

Rudolph M. Schindler, Bird’s Eye View Looking Toward Public Library, 1914; ink, watercolor, and crayon on paper, 24 ¾ x 15 in.; Art, Design and Architecture Museum, University of California, Santa Barbara.

At the time, architects were engaged in international conversations about building the modern city. New practices and designs reflected their emerging ideas about conceiving cities holistically and integrating them into their natural surroundings. “Drawing the Future” provides new perspectives on this critical juncture in architectural history and highlights Chicago’s leadership in these architectural and design innovations. The exhibition includes works from the holdings of Northwestern University’s Block Museum and the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections as well as from the Art, Design and Architecture Museum at the University of California, Santa Barbara, the Art Institute of Chicago and the Chicago History Museum.

Block’s second spring exhibition, “Blacklisted: William Gropper’s Capriccios,” April 19 to Aug. 11, in the Ellen Philips Katz and Howard C. Katz Gallery, looks at a portfolio of 50 lithographs that have not been shown together since their creation in the 1950s. Through the work of one artist, William Gropper who was blacklisted and called before the House Un-American Activities Committee in the early 1950s, the exhibition shows the hypocrisy and folly of mid-20th-century society and politics in much the same way that Goya’s series of etchings, “Los Caprichos,” revealed the culture of Spain in the late 18th-century. Gropper’s “Capriccios” will be displayed in their entirety for the first time in nearly 60 years. “Blacklisted” is curated by John Murphy, Block Museum Graduate Fellow 2012-13. Support is provided by the Ellen Philips Katz and Howard C. Katz Endowment, Norton S. Walbridge Fund, Louise E. Drangsholt Fund, and Illinois Arts Council, a state agency. The Block Museum is grateful to Evelyn Salk for her gift of the Gropper portfolio in memory of her husband, Erwin A. Salk.

Block’s ongoing exhibition, “Theo Leffmann: Weaving a Life into Art,” in the Theo Leffmann Gallery, re-opens from April 19 through Aug. 11.

Related posts:

1. Ikon.5 architects Selected for International Architecture Award by Chicago Athenaeum
2. The Center for Architecture Hosts an Exhibition that Explores the Fusion of Solar Technology and Industrial Design
3. Art Institute of Chicago’s Modern Wing Awarded Silver LEED Certification
4. Innovative exhibition explores the hotel as defining structure of the modern age
5. MoMA explores Henri Labrouste’s work as a key milestone in the evolution of architecture