The Richard H. Driehaus Museum

06/04/2021

Today is National Cognac Day! Cognac is an aged brandy distilled from wine grapes in the Cognac region of France. Our traditional view of cognac is an after-dinner sipper served neat in a bowl-shaped snifter, enjoyed by captains of industry like Samuel Nickerson or Lucius Fisher here in the Driehaus Museum Smoking Room. However, in the 19th century cognac was also a very common base for punches and cocktails! In our “Live from the Drawing Room” series, the “Cocktail Guy” Greg Shutters shows how to make two historic cognac drinks: the Stinger (https://youtu.be/Es6oAnTRYzw?t=2000) and Punch Grassot (https://youtu.be/MyQGBZ0iIVo?t=3143).

Also, check out the book “Hennessy: A Toast to the World's Preeminent Spirit” in our online store, chronicling the history of the venerable cognac distillery from its 18th century roots through its 19th century prominence to its resurgence in modern hip hop culture: https://shop.driehausmuseum.org/hennessy Happy National Cognac Day!

Featured images: 1.) Hennessy cognac magazine advertisements, c. 1930s. Jas Hennessy & Co.; 2.) Jules Chéret (French, 1836-1932), Le Punch Grassot, 1895. Lithograph on paper. The Collection of Richard H. Driehaus, Chicago.

05/25/2021

ON THE BLOG - Goblet Designed by Tiffany & Co. to Honor Andrew Carnegie

The Driehaus Museum has several fascinating items in its collection that aren't always on display. This month, we opened the vault to present a gilt bronze commemorative goblet in the shape of a Scottish thistle. Produced by Tiffany & Co., it was presented at a dinner in 1907 in honor of Scottish-American industrialist Andrew Carnegie who had donated funds to build a new twelve-story clubhouse in Manhattan for the prestigious Engineers Club of New York.

Read more at https://driehausmuseum.org/blog/view/goblet-designed-by-tiffany-co.-to-honor-andrew-carnegie

Goblet, designed 1907, Tiffany & Company. Cast gilt bronze, 19.5 x 11 cm (7 11/16 x 4 5/16 in.), Marks: On underside: stamped TIFFANY & CO; on side of base: stamped TIFFANY & CO, Inscription: Cast on side of base: THE ENGINEERS : CLUB : DECEMBER : 9th : 1907, Collection of the Richard H. Driehaus Museum, Chicago.

05/19/2021

“Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages — welcome to the Greatest Show on Earth!” On this day in 1884, Chicago-born Albert C. Ringling and four of his six brothers (Otto, Charles, Alfred, and John) founded the circus that would bear their names. The second-generation German-American brothers were performers themselves, and created and starred in vaudeville-style shows across the small towns of Wisconsin starting in 1882. After two years, the brothers founded their circus in Baraboo, Wisconsin, quickly becoming a national presence. In 1895 they relocated their headquarters to Chicago, and in 1907 acquired the venerable Barnum & Bailey Circus. By the 1910s, Ringling Bros. touring company had over 1,000 employees, 335 horses, 26 elephants, 16 camels, and various other animals shuttled across the continent on 92 railcars. The “Greatest Show On Earth” performed for audiences across the world for an incredible 133 years until its final show in 2017. Happy birthday to the “Big Top”!

“Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages — welcome to the Greatest Show on Earth!” On this day in 1884, Chicago-born Albert C. Ringling and four of his six brothers (Otto, Charles, Alfred, and John) founded the circus that would bear their names. The second-generation German-American brothers were performers themselves, and created and starred in vaudeville-style shows across the small towns of Wisconsin starting in 1882. After two years, the brothers founded their circus in Baraboo, Wisconsin, quickly becoming a national presence. In 1895 they relocated their headquarters to Chicago, and in 1907 acquired the venerable Barnum & Bailey Circus. By the 1910s, Ringling Bros. touring company had over 1,000 employees, 335 horses, 26 elephants, 16 camels, and various other animals shuttled across the continent on 92 railcars. The “Greatest Show On Earth” performed for audiences across the world for an incredible 133 years until its final show in 2017. Happy birthday to the “Big Top”!

05/07/2021

The Driehaus Museum is open this Saturday and Sunday, for Mother’s Day.

The origins of Mother’s Day trace back to a 19th-century Sunday school teacher named Ann Reeves Jarvis. In an effort to reduce infant mortality and the spread of disease, Jarvis organized Mother’s Day Work Clubs in Virginia to educate young mothers as well as to provide aid and heal to help unify the country in the days after the Civil War.

Her daughter Anna, at age 12, heard her mother pray “…that someone, sometime, will found a memorial Mother’s Day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life. She is entitled to it.”

On May 10, 1908, Anna Jarvis organized the first official Mother’s Day celebration, in honor of her mother. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared the second Sunday of May a national holiday called Mother’s Day to celebrate the mothers of our country.

Tickets available at DriehausMuseum.org/Visit

Image: Woodrow Wilson, seated posed on swing on porch, facing front, with his wife and three daughters, c. 1912. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

The Driehaus Museum is open this Saturday and Sunday, for Mother’s Day.

The origins of Mother’s Day trace back to a 19th-century Sunday school teacher named Ann Reeves Jarvis. In an effort to reduce infant mortality and the spread of disease, Jarvis organized Mother’s Day Work Clubs in Virginia to educate young mothers as well as to provide aid and heal to help unify the country in the days after the Civil War.

Her daughter Anna, at age 12, heard her mother pray “…that someone, sometime, will found a memorial Mother’s Day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life. She is entitled to it.”

On May 10, 1908, Anna Jarvis organized the first official Mother’s Day celebration, in honor of her mother. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared the second Sunday of May a national holiday called Mother’s Day to celebrate the mothers of our country.

Tickets available at DriehausMuseum.org/Visit

Image: Woodrow Wilson, seated posed on swing on porch, facing front, with his wife and three daughters, c. 1912. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

05/06/2021

EXTENDED! - Through August 29, 2021

PAN: Prints of Avant-Garde Europe, 1895-1900 explores a new era of printmaking and the transition from the more conservative art of the 19th century towards the progressive ideas of the 20th as revealed through the pages of the Berlin-based art and literary magazine, PAN.

William H. Bradley and The Chap-Book from the Collection of Richard H. Driehaus features the work of one of the most successful magazine cover and poster artists of the era – William H. Bradley. Printed in Chicago from 1894-98, The Chap-Book was Chicago’s answer to the art and literary magazine trend.

BUY TICKETS --> DriehausMuseum.org/Visit

SCHEDULE A PRIVATE TOUR --> https://bit.ly/33nl5vm

Images: Franz Von Stuck (German 1863-1928), PAN cover illustration for Prospekt Buch (Prospectus), c. 1895. Woodcut. William H. Bradley (American, 1868-1962) The Chap-Book: The Pipes, June 1895. Lithograph on paper. The Collection of Richard H. Driehaus, Chicago.

EXTENDED! - Through August 29, 2021

PAN: Prints of Avant-Garde Europe, 1895-1900 explores a new era of printmaking and the transition from the more conservative art of the 19th century towards the progressive ideas of the 20th as revealed through the pages of the Berlin-based art and literary magazine, PAN.

William H. Bradley and The Chap-Book from the Collection of Richard H. Driehaus features the work of one of the most successful magazine cover and poster artists of the era – William H. Bradley. Printed in Chicago from 1894-98, The Chap-Book was Chicago’s answer to the art and literary magazine trend.

BUY TICKETS --> DriehausMuseum.org/Visit

SCHEDULE A PRIVATE TOUR --> https://bit.ly/33nl5vm

Images: Franz Von Stuck (German 1863-1928), PAN cover illustration for Prospekt Buch (Prospectus), c. 1895. Woodcut. William H. Bradley (American, 1868-1962) The Chap-Book: The Pipes, June 1895. Lithograph on paper. The Collection of Richard H. Driehaus, Chicago.

05/04/2021

Tea is Served! with Leslie Goddard, Ph.D. | Driehaus Museum

Thank you to Rebellious Magazine for mentioning our Tea is Served! program as a way to honor your mom this weekend.

On Saturday at 3 p.m. actress, author and scholar, Leslie Goddard, Ph.D. will discuss the history and etiquette of high tea.

Tickets available below.

The Richard H. Driehaus Museum explores the art, architecture, and design of the late 19th-century with a focus on the Gilded Age. The Museum is located just steps from the Magnificent Mile within the meticulously restored Nickerson Mansion, renowned as Gilded Age Chicago’s “Marble Palace.”

04/30/2021

A Tale of Today: Nate Young and Mika Horibuchi

LAST CHANCE! - This weekend is your last chance to experience A Tale of Today: Nate Young and Mika Horibuchi!

See the Driehaus Museum's second contemporary art exhibition featuring two Chicago-based artists, Nate Young and Mika Horibuchi, whose works respond to the architecture and history of the 1883 Nickerson Mansion, the Museum's home.

Buy Tickets Now --> driehausmuseum.org/visit/

Experience the Exhibition at Home --> https://bit.ly/3uIcbEz

04/29/2021

We are immensely proud of A Tale of Today: Emerging Artists Fellowship alum, Brittney Leeanne Williams as she presents How Far Between and Back, now on view at Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago.

Repost @moniquemeloche on Instagram

Brittney Leeanne Williams: How Far Between and Back
⠀
Williams’ figures are shapeshifters, each one represents a multitude of women: the artist, the mother, the daughter. The figures become architectural forms, yet also grounding landscape through which resonances of Williams’ childhood terrain in Southern California are captured in red planes.⠀
⠀
In response to the classical Eurocentric depiction of the nude female form, Williams presents a series of nude figures in various states of transformation. Rather than a fixed pose – the seductive recline, the pudica, the contrapposto – each figure evokes fluidity, physical yet beset by emotional or psychological entanglements. The landscape and the body adjoin through the surreal; defying the boundaries of ground and figure, gravity and reason. Each scorching figure is grounded in a terrain of grief, the desolate topography presenting a manifestation of psychological and emotional experiences. Space in the work often evokes notions of internal psychological and spiritual distance from the external, physical world. The bridging of these interior and exterior distances is part of Williams’ investigation of the spiritual. ⠀
⠀
Call 312.243.2129 or email [email protected] to make an appointment.⠀
⠀
Image:
Brittney Leeanne Williams⠀
The Break of a Curse, 2021⠀
oil on canvas⠀
60 x 42 in⠀
152.4 x 106.7 cm⠀
.⠀
.⠀
.⠀
.⠀
#BrittneyLeeanneWilliams #moniquemelochegallery #chicagogalleries

We are immensely proud of A Tale of Today: Emerging Artists Fellowship alum, Brittney Leeanne Williams as she presents How Far Between and Back, now on view at Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago.

Repost @moniquemeloche on Instagram

Brittney Leeanne Williams: How Far Between and Back
⠀
Williams’ figures are shapeshifters, each one represents a multitude of women: the artist, the mother, the daughter. The figures become architectural forms, yet also grounding landscape through which resonances of Williams’ childhood terrain in Southern California are captured in red planes.⠀
⠀
In response to the classical Eurocentric depiction of the nude female form, Williams presents a series of nude figures in various states of transformation. Rather than a fixed pose – the seductive recline, the pudica, the contrapposto – each figure evokes fluidity, physical yet beset by emotional or psychological entanglements. The landscape and the body adjoin through the surreal; defying the boundaries of ground and figure, gravity and reason. Each scorching figure is grounded in a terrain of grief, the desolate topography presenting a manifestation of psychological and emotional experiences. Space in the work often evokes notions of internal psychological and spiritual distance from the external, physical world. The bridging of these interior and exterior distances is part of Williams’ investigation of the spiritual. ⠀
⠀
Call 312.243.2129 or email [email protected] to make an appointment.⠀
⠀
Image:
Brittney Leeanne Williams⠀
The Break of a Curse, 2021⠀
oil on canvas⠀
60 x 42 in⠀
152.4 x 106.7 cm⠀
.⠀
.⠀
.⠀
.⠀
#BrittneyLeeanneWilliams #moniquemelochegallery #chicagogalleries

04/23/2021

If you could bring back something from a past era into the present, what would it be? (Tell us in comments below.)

In this sculptural work by Nate Young looks are deceiving; the artist has engineered the mechanics of the clock to run backward.

Aptly titled, Time Travel, Young uses the clock as a metaphor to explore traveling into the past to unearth fragmented experiences in order to make them alive for us today.

See A Tale of Today: Nate Young and Mika Horibuchi before it closes May 2!

TICKETS --> driehausmuseum.org/visit

Time Travel by Nate Young installed in Mrs. Nickerson’s Bedroom at the Richard H. Driehaus Museum, Chicago. Photograph by Michael Tropea, 2020.

If you could bring back something from a past era into the present, what would it be? (Tell us in comments below.)

In this sculptural work by Nate Young looks are deceiving; the artist has engineered the mechanics of the clock to run backward.

Aptly titled, Time Travel, Young uses the clock as a metaphor to explore traveling into the past to unearth fragmented experiences in order to make them alive for us today.

See A Tale of Today: Nate Young and Mika Horibuchi before it closes May 2!

TICKETS --> driehausmuseum.org/visit

Time Travel by Nate Young installed in Mrs. Nickerson’s Bedroom at the Richard H. Driehaus Museum, Chicago. Photograph by Michael Tropea, 2020.

04/21/2021

ON THE BLOG - Interiors of the Aesthetic movement, often referred to as artistic interiors, incorporated various historical styles of architecture and decorative arts. The Japanesque – reflecting the influence of the arts of Japan – was particularly in evidence. The Driehaus Museum’s mantel clock, with its Japanesque tiles, embodies the characteristics of an artistic house.

Read more --> https://bit.ly/3gB6gNs

Mantel Clock, designed c. 1884, tiles by J. and J.G. Low Art Tile Works, Chelsea, Massachusetts. Works attributed to New Haven Clock Company, New Haven, Connecticut. Glazed earthenware, brass, 12 1/16 x 9 3/4 x 5 7/8 in., Collection the Richard H. Driehaus Museum, Chicago. Photograph by Alex Brescanu, 2021.

ON THE BLOG - Interiors of the Aesthetic movement, often referred to as artistic interiors, incorporated various historical styles of architecture and decorative arts. The Japanesque – reflecting the influence of the arts of Japan – was particularly in evidence. The Driehaus Museum’s mantel clock, with its Japanesque tiles, embodies the characteristics of an artistic house.

Read more --> https://bit.ly/3gB6gNs

Mantel Clock, designed c. 1884, tiles by J. and J.G. Low Art Tile Works, Chelsea, Massachusetts. Works attributed to New Haven Clock Company, New Haven, Connecticut. Glazed earthenware, brass, 12 1/16 x 9 3/4 x 5 7/8 in., Collection the Richard H. Driehaus Museum, Chicago. Photograph by Alex Brescanu, 2021.

04/16/2021

Closing Sunday - Inspired by their year-long fellowship experience with the Driehaus Museum, our four A Tale of Today: Emerging Artists Fellows have contributed new work to a pop-up exhibition currently on view in the third-floor Historic Ballroom.

Learn more about the work you'll see as two of the Fellows, Devin T. Mays and Maryam Tavghavi, explore the process of presenting their work at the Driehaus Museum on our blog.

ON THE BLOG - https://bit.ly/3slwXYN
TICKETS - DriehausMuseum.org/Visit

Photographs by Michael Tropea.

Closing Sunday - Inspired by their year-long fellowship experience with the Driehaus Museum, our four A Tale of Today: Emerging Artists Fellows have contributed new work to a pop-up exhibition currently on view in the third-floor Historic Ballroom.

Learn more about the work you'll see as two of the Fellows, Devin T. Mays and Maryam Tavghavi, explore the process of presenting their work at the Driehaus Museum on our blog.

ON THE BLOG - https://bit.ly/3slwXYN
TICKETS - DriehausMuseum.org/Visit

Photographs by Michael Tropea.

04/15/2021

A Tale of Today: Nate Young and Mika Horibuchi closes May 2.

As part of her contributions to the exhibition, Mika Horibuchi has created six paintings which mimic the Driehaus Museum’s informational signage. These educational signs include historical photographs and object images as well as provide visitors with contextual information to better understand our galleries and collection objects.

Here, one of Horibuchi's signs depicts a portrait of the Nickerson Mansion’s original owner, Samuel M. Nickerson, and is currently on display in his former bedroom. A series of gray rectangles, where the sign's text is usually expected, beckons the viewer to use their imagination and create their own story about the subject shown.

If we were going to complete the text on the sign, it might begin:
Samuel M. Nickerson played an important role in the early days of Chicago’s industrial and civic life. He will be most remembered for…

How would you finish the story? Answer in the comments below.

Samuel Mayo Nickerson, 2020 by Mika Horibuchi installed in Mr. Nickerson’s Bedroom at the Richard H. Driehaus Museum, Chicago. Photograph by Michael Tropea, 2020.

A Tale of Today: Nate Young and Mika Horibuchi closes May 2.

As part of her contributions to the exhibition, Mika Horibuchi has created six paintings which mimic the Driehaus Museum’s informational signage. These educational signs include historical photographs and object images as well as provide visitors with contextual information to better understand our galleries and collection objects.

Here, one of Horibuchi's signs depicts a portrait of the Nickerson Mansion’s original owner, Samuel M. Nickerson, and is currently on display in his former bedroom. A series of gray rectangles, where the sign's text is usually expected, beckons the viewer to use their imagination and create their own story about the subject shown.

If we were going to complete the text on the sign, it might begin:
Samuel M. Nickerson played an important role in the early days of Chicago’s industrial and civic life. He will be most remembered for…

How would you finish the story? Answer in the comments below.

Samuel Mayo Nickerson, 2020 by Mika Horibuchi installed in Mr. Nickerson’s Bedroom at the Richard H. Driehaus Museum, Chicago. Photograph by Michael Tropea, 2020.