Guests at the opening of Peter Wächtler, Secrets of a Trumpet in Feb 2016
The Renaissance Society invites students from Chicago-area institutions to join our new membership program. Membership is free and open to undergraduate and graduate students in all areas of study.
Sign up now for:
Kevin Beasley, Your face is/is not enough (detail), 2016. Courtesy of the artist and Casey Kaplan, New York. Photo: Tom Van Eynde.
Dear friend,
We’ve always felt that the Renaissance Society is at its best when it serves as an engine for artistic production. By that measure, 2016 has been an incredible year, with every exhibition featuring a new commission, from Peter Wächtler’s Secrets of a Trumpet to Sadie Benning’s current installation, Shared Eye.
Kevin Beasley, whose performance and installation, Your face is/is...
Students at the Ren
The Renaissance Society is located on the fourth floor of Cobb Hall, where we present contemporary art exhibitions along with a regular program of events and publications. Founded in 1915 by a group of University of Chicago faculty members, we are an independent, non-collecting museum that combines a flexible, experimental ethos with focused, rigorous inquiry.
The Ren’s Student Committee is...
Hamza Walker in Renaissance Society offices in 1994, the year he joined the institution
Hamza Walker, the Renaissance Society’s longtime Director of Education and Associate Curator, has been appointed Executive Director of LAXART in Los Angeles. LAXART is a 10-year-old independent, non-profit art space presenting experimental exhibitions and public art initiatives. Walker will begin his new post there on October 1, 2016.
Hamza joined the Ren in 1994 where his curating, writing,...
Rodney Graham, School of Velocity and Parsifal notebook sketch, 1995.
Rodney Graham’s 1995 Renaissance Society exhibition featured two time-based musical installations, School of Velocity (1993) and Parsifal (1990). The former combined the piano exercise of the same name with Galileo’s equation of the acceleration of falling objects to create a piano piece that grows progressively slower. Based on a few bars of music from Wagner’s composition of the same name,...
Kevin Beasley, Your face is/is not enough (detail), 2016. Commissioned by the Renaissance Society for Between the Ticks of the Watch, Apr 24–Jun 26, 2016. Courtesy of the artist and Casey Kaplan, New York. Photo: Tom Van Eynde
We are delighted to announce that the Renaissance Society has received three leading gifts to its Next Century Fund, a campaign to underwrite the production of ambitious new artworks.
The Edlis Neeson Foundation, the Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation, and the Zell Family Foundation have each pledged $500,000 for a total of $1.5 million. These donations represent the largest gifts in the...
Today, December 1st, the Renaissance Society is participating in #GivingTuesday, joining thousands of individuals and organizations around the world in a global movement that celebrates and supports giving.
Over our 100-year history, the support of our community has been crucial to making the Renaissance Society the platform for ambitious contemporary art that it is today. This...
Photo, Jarrod Turner; art direction, Ria Roberts; styling, Bettina Yung
We’ll have a selection of Renaissance Society publications new and old available next weekend at Medium Cool, a temporary gift shop featuring “a cornucopia of thoughtfully designed objects and printed matter.”
Saturday, November 21, 12-6PM
Sunday, November 22, 11AM-5PM
Prairie Productions, 1314 W. Randolph St., Chicago, IL 60607
Other exhibitors include: Amigos Publishing, Candor Arts,...
Yutaka Sone, Snowballs (Homage to David Hammons), 2005.
Please note that the Renaissance Society’s will be closed for the holidays on the following dates:
Nora Schultz, Parrot’s Mind Model Magazine (1), 2014
During Parrot’s Mind Model Magazine—Performance, which took place in February 2014 on the final day of Nora Schultz’s solo exhibition at the Renaissance Society, the artist produced a series of unique works that are available to purchase this week at EXPO CHICAGO.
Working with five assistants, Schultz repurposed materials from her installation by pulling individual elements into an...
