Chicago’s independent visual art scene between 2009–2019
September 1–November 1, 2020
Hyde Park Art Center is proud to celebrate the work of fifty artist-run spaces and organizations that fuel Chicago’s independent art scene in the upcoming exhibition Artists Run Chicago 2.0. For the first time since 2006, all six galleries in the Art Center will be dedicated to one major exhibition on view from September 1 until November 1, 2020.
To mark the ten-year anniversary of the original Art Center exhibition; Artists Run Chicago (2009), this upcoming exhibition examines the core motivations, trajectories, and philosophies that have made the past decade generative for new models of artist-run initiatives to exist throughout the city and suburbs. For decades, artists-run spaces have continued to transform storefronts, apartments, warehouses, garages, and nomadic existences into environments in which art can be experienced at its most experimental and intuitive stage. In response to the current climate, artist-run spaces have also found a heightened criticality. Despite taking on a multitude of forms and models, these spaces have come to represent a merge between artistic practice and social engagement in which their small, independent, and hyperlocal status affords them the adaptability necessary to authentically serve the neighborhoods they call home, whether through online art-centered forums or by engaging with local activists in support of justice and equity. In a time when institutions are reevaluating their missions and relevance in a rapidly destabilized world, artist-run initiatives have found themselves at the forefront of change by challenging conventional expectations of exhibition, discourse, and community, while inserting new models, ideas, and faces into our understanding of what experiencing and making art can look like.
Artists Run Chicago 2.0 includes contributions from fifty artist-run spaces including: 062, 4th Ward Project Space, 65Grand, ACRE Projects, Adds Donna, AMFM, Annas, Apparatus Projects, Bad@Sports, Blanc Gallery, Boundary, Chicago Art Department, Chuquimarca, Cleaner Gallery, Clutch, Co-Prosperity Sphere, Comfort Station, Compound Yellow, D Gallery, Devening Projects, Document, Experimental Sound Studio, F4F, The Franklin, Heaven Gallery, Iceberg Projects, Ignition Projects, Julius Caesar, Lawrence and Clark, LVL3, Mujeres Mutantes, Nightingale Cinema, Ohklahomo, Practise, Prairie, Roman Susan, Roots and Culture, Rootwork Gallery, The Silver Room, Slow, The Suburban, Sweet Water Foundation, table, Terrain Exhibitions, Tiger Strikes Asteroid, TRQPITECA, Trunk Show, VGA Gallery, Wedge Projects, and Western Pole
Visitors are requested to reserve free tickets in advance of their visit. Click here to schedule your visit.
Free online public programming accompanies this exhibition, including Thursday night performances, workshops, and artist and curator-led Art Center tours. Hyde Park Art Center has partnered with Public Media Institute and Sixty Inches from Center to produce a special Artists Run Chicago 2.0 edition of Lumpen magazine for its 136th volume, distributed for free at Hyde Park Art Center and through Lumpen’s website.
Artist Run Chicago 2.0 is organized by Noah Hanna and Allison Peters Quinn with support and contributions from Andi Crist, and Max Guy. Logo provided by JNL design, Chicago.
About Artists Run Chicago (2009)
Chicago has long been known for cultivating a strong entrepreneurial/Do-It-Yourself spirit in business and the arts. Art organizations like Randolph Street Gallery, N.A.M.E., and the Uncomfortable Spaces in the 1980s and 1990s provided respected role models for independent art initiatives that followed. The 38 artist-run venues that participated in Hyde Park Art Center’s 2009 exhibition curated by Britton Bertran and Allison Peters Quinn were responsible for transforming storefronts, sheds, apartments, lofts, industrial warehouses, garages and roving spaces into contemporary art galleries testing the notion of “exhibition” while complicating the definition of art. Coinciding with the Hyde Park Art Center’s 70th anniversary, Artists Run Chicago reconnected the Art Center to its beginnings as an artist-run space through collaborations with spaces that demonstrated a similar dedication to fostering new projects by new artists.
About the Hyde Park Art Center
Founded in 1939, Hyde Park Art Center is a unique resource that advances contemporary visual art in Chicago by connecting artists and communities across the city’s diverse landscape in unexpected ways. As an open forum for exploring the artistic process, the Art Center fosters creativity through making, learning about, seeing, and discussing art—all under one roof.
