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5 Things You (Probably) Didn’t Know about the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago Celebrating 100 Years of Groundbreaking Contemporary Art By Anna Searle Jones This year, the Renaissance Society celebrates its 100th anniversary. Begun in 1915 by a group of UChicago academics, the Renaissance Society has grown into an important voice in the international contemporary art world. This Centennial anniversary presents a critical opportunity to imagine the Ren’s possible futures, but it is also a time for a fond look back at some key contributions, notable achievements, and remarkable facts from its past 100 years.
2. The Ren hasn’t always been located in Cobb Hall. Other UChicago sites have served as home to the Renaissance Society, including Wieboldt Hall (1930–1938) and Goodspeed Hall (1938–1978). The Ren also collaborates with institutions nationally and internationally to co-commission and tour exhibitions (for instance, Pierre Huyghe’s 2000 film The Third Memory was produced in partnership with Centre Pompidou, Paris). Jordan Stein, Curator of Special Projects at the Renaissance Society and curator of Let Us Celebrate While Youth Lingers and Ideas Flow: Archives 1915–2015, noted that “in our former Goodspeed Hall gallery, for example, hundreds of incredible artworks were shown in what is currently a series of piano practice rooms. Although the physical layout of the space has changed, just being there holds a significant charge. Let Us Celebrate embodies the Ren’s past not just by displaying neat, old stuff, but by encouraging visitors to walk through the different buildings that have housed the institution over the years.” 3. While maintaining close ties to the University of Chicago, the Ren is formally independent of the University. Though founded by UChicago faculty members in 1915 to “stimulate love of the beautiful, and to enrich the life of the community through the cultivation of the arts” (according
4. The Ren has only had women directors. Female figures in the arts and the academy have been central to the Renaissance Society’s success since its founding. Eva Watson Schütze, artist and director from 1929 until her death in 1935, was responsible for establishing the Renaissance Society’s mission as a “laboratory” for art and ideas. Susanne Ghez (1974–2013) expanded the institution’s scope with landmark Conceptual Art exhibitions. Director Øvstebø, who took over in 2013, is focused on developing the museum’s commissioning and publishing activity. 5. The Renaissance Society helped establish Doc Films, a staple of UChicago campus culture. The Ren presented a series of films in partnership with International House throughout the early 1930s, which, as stated on an invitation to a film series that took place over the summer of 1934, included “foreign talking films, travel pictures, and science motion demonstrations.” The student film society formalized in 1940 as the International House Documentary Film Group, later shortened to Doc Films, and continued to collaborate with the Ren into the 1980s.
In celebration of its Centennial, the Renaissance Society presents a special program of exhibitions, events, and collaborations across campus and beyond this fall. Find details on Centennial happenings here in the 2015 Fall UChicago Arts Guide or online at renaissancesociety.org.
of Nuremberg’s Supplement to Hrabanus Maurus Tue, Oct 27, 4:30pm Cochrane-Woods Art Center, Room 157 Free. Presented by the Department of Art History. Visible Theology: Diagrams and Dynamics of Medieval Thought Fri, Oct 23 6pm; Mon, Oct 26 and Tue, Oct 27, 4:30pm Endowed in memory of Louise Smith Bross, PhD’94, every three years the lectures bring a distinguished scholar of pre-1800 European art and architecture to campus. The lectures are subsequently published by the UChicago Press. Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Harvard University Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and Culture, will deliver the Department of Art History’s Louise Smith Bross Lectures. In these lectures, Hamburger considers the uses of diagrams as instruments of the divine in theology and biblical exegesis before focusing on one of the most elaborate and extensive examples to have survived from the medieval period. Diagram as Paradigm: The Diagrammatic Mode in Medieval Art Fri, Oct 23, 6pm Art Institute of Chicago, Fullerton Hall (111 S Michigan Ave) From Cross to Crucifix: Rereading Hrabanus Maurus’s In Honor of the Holy Cross in the Late Thirteenth Century Mon, Oct 26, 4:30pm Cochrane-Woods Art Center, Room 157 Marian Diagrams and Dominican Devotion: Berthold
Painting and Its Humors: Infrastructures for the Comedic Symposium Fri, Oct 30, 9:30am–6pm Midway Studios, Logan Center Room 203, and Logan Center Performance Penthouse This day-long fling will let fresh air back into art after the much ballyhooed “Death of Painting.” The symposium examines painting as a site of theoretical improvisation and artistic slapstick in an effort to create alternate itineraries for thinking about aesthetic experience. Participants include Lauren Berlant, Zachary Cahill, Jessica Campbell, Vitaly Komar, David Leggett, William Pope.L, Michael Portnoy, Jacob Proctor, David Robbins, Suellen Rocca, Jan Verwoert, Scott Wolniak, and Molly ZuckermanHartung. Complete schedule at neubauercollegium.uchicago.edu/events. Free. Presented by the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society. Oriental Institute Lecture Series Wednesdays, Nov 4 and Dec 2, 7–9 pm Oriental Institute, Breasted Hall The Oriental Institute Lecture Series is a unique opportunity to learn about the ancient Middle East from world-renowned scholars. Lectures are open to the public thanks to the generous support of Oriental Institute Members. Nov 4 Taking Care of Color in Persepolis: New Research on Painters, Palaces and Polychromies in Achaemenid Persia, c. 520–330 BCE Speaker: Alexander Nagel, Research Associate, Smithsonian Institution, Museum of Natural History. Dec 2 Unlocking Stories from Objects: Some Ancient Near Eastern Case-Studies Based on New Research at the British Museum Speaker: St. John Simpson, Senior Curator, British Museum. Free. Registration required (oimembersevents.eventbrite.com). Presented by the Oriental Institute Museum.
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1. In its 100-year history, the Renaissance Society has presented 511 exhibitions and hundreds of lectures, discussions, and presentations from renowned artists and scholars. In its early years the Ren hosted such important figures as Laredo Taft, Oriental Institute founder James Henry Breasted, Gertrude Stein, and Zora Neale Hurston, while more recent program contributors have included poet and performer LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs and musician C. Spencer Yeh. Exhibitions presented over the years have ranged from exhibits of avant garde works in the 1930s to student and member shows during the 1950s to internationally-significant shows since the 1980s, though there has always been a focus on art as a crucial way to understand and interpret the present.
to the invitation to the society’s first meeting in 1915), the Ren became financially and legally independent in the 1970s. According to Solveig Øvstebø, Executive Director and Chief Curator, “being at the University is absolutely at the core of who we are and what we do. We frequently draw on the amazing people and resources here, and we in turn aim to contribute to the academic and creative community around us. At the same time, our independence gives us the freedom to be bold and uncompromising in the way we can support artists.”
