For over 95 years, The Arts Club has opened its membership to artists and art patrons, and its exhibitions to the public. The mission of The Arts Club, defined at its inaugural meeting, is “to encourage higher standards of art, maintain galleries for that purpose, and to promote the mutual acquaintance of art lovers and art workers.”
Many of the 20th century’s most celebrated visual artists received their first solo exhibitions in the United States, or the Midwest, at The Arts Club: Constantin Brancusi (installed by Marcel Duchamp), Georges Braque, Alexander Calder, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, Jean Dubuffet, Arshile Gorky, Marsden Hartley, Fernand Léger, Robert Motherwell, Isamu Noguchi, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, August Rodin, Georges Seurat, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Continuing the tradition of innovation and presenting work that is not exhibited elsewhere in Chicago, The Arts Club hosts three to four free public exhibitions annually. Recent exhibitions have included installations by Marcel Broodthaers and General Idea; paintings, drawings, and notebooks of Paul Thek; the personal art collection of and works by the architect Bertrand Goldberg; works on paper by Chris Ofili and Robert Ryman; drawings by Alice Neel; paintings by Sigmar Polke, David Hockney, Peter Doig, George Grosz, Jörg Immendorff, Alex Katz, Guillermo Kuitca, Francis Picabia, and Andy Warhol; the textiles and projects of Alighiero e Boetti; and sculptural installation work by John Baldessari, Stephan Balkenhol, Louise Bourgeois, Daniel Buren, James Lee Byars, Richard Deacon, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Andy Goldsworthy, Per Kirkeby, Yayoi Kusama, Wolfgang Laib, Charles LeDray, Sherrie Levine, Maya Lin, Mario Merz, Cornelia Parker, Jaume Plensa, Richard Pettibone, Markus Raetz, Keith Sonnier, Richard Tuttle, and Not Vital. The Arts Club’s collection, acquired from its exhibitions or donated by members and artists, includes works by modern masters: Georges Braque, Alexander Calder, Natalia Goncharova, Paul Klee, Henri Matisse, Joan Miró, Henry Moore, Isamu Noguchi, Francis Picabia, and Pablo Picasso, among others. Recent contemporary acquisitions include Stephan Balkenhol, Malcolm Morley, Paul Thek, Alex Katz, Richard Artschwager, Yayoi Kusama, Peter Doig, and Sigmar Polke. In conjunction with the opening of its new building in 1997, The Arts Club published a scholarly catalogue, The Arts Club of Chicago: The Collection 1916-1996, edited by current Club President Sophia Siskel, with essays by museum curators and art historians on the works in the collection. This catalogue, and catalogues for previous exhibitions, are available for purchase in The Arts Club’s office, or by mail. Please contact the office at 312.787.3997 for details. The Arts Club has had a total of eight locations, with interiors all designed by Chicagoans. The Fine Arts Building at 401 S. Michigan Avenue (on two different floors 1916-18), 610 S. Michigan Avenue (1918-24), and the Wrigley Building’s north tower (1924-36), were each created by architect Arthur Heun along with interior designer and then Club President Rue Winterbotham Carpenter. The Wrigley Building’s south tower (1936-47) was designed by Heun and then Club President Elizabeth “Bobsy” Goodspeed Chapman, with the dining room by interior designers Samuel Marx and Noel Flint. 109 E. Ontario Street (1951-95), designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, was the only interior space executed by the architect for a building that he did not design. 222 W. Superior Street (1995-97) was the interim space while the current Club was being built. The Club’s current building at 201 E. Ontario Street, designed by Vinci/Hamp Architects, Inc., opened in 1997. It is the first building owned by The Arts Club, and houses the famous Mies van der Rohe-designed steel staircase preserved from the demolition of the 109 E. Ontario Street site.
