Two for the road - Arts Club of Chicago holds exhibitions of Daniel Buren and Richard Pettibone

Art in America, Sept, 1995 by Susan Snodgrass

This spring the 79-year-old Arts Club of Chicago, along with several other important architectural and cultural institutions, lost its home to the ominous commercial development that is rapidly changing the face of Chicago's Magnificent Mile. In its place will sprout a $100-million retail and entertainment complex, spearheaded by developer John Buck, leaving little, if any, of Daniel Burnham's original 1909 plan intact [see A.i.A, April'95].

Housed within Philip B. Maher's Erskine-Danforth Building, the Arts Club had been a mainstay of North Michigan Avenue since it moved to 109 East Ontario Street in 1951. The Arts Club facility contained a suspended staircase, gallery, salon, administrative offices and dining room-all designed by Mies van der Rohe and the only example of an interior designed by him a building he did not create. Efforts by the Arts Club and the Landmark Preservation Council of Illinois to save the building or have it designated historic landmark were unavailing.

Shortly after evacuating its former premises in late March, the Arts Club announced with little fanfare that local architect John Vinci win build its new home at 201 East Ontario Street, one block east of Michigan Avenue near the present site of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA). The new two-story building, whose construction costs were estimated at $6 million, will be clad in brick and include a gallery, salon/auditorium and dining room, and is to face west onto an outdoor garden. The 18,000-square-foot facility, again as large the original is scheduled for completion in late 1996 to coincide with the Arts Club's 80th anniversary, the same year the MCA plans to unveil its new building on the former site of the Chicago Avenue National Guard Armory [see A.i.A., July '93]. In the interim, exhibitions and programming will be presented at 222 West Superior Street, a temporary space in the heart of the River North gallery district.[1]

Vinci, trained in the modernist tradition at the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT), was chosen from over 40 architects who submitted letters of interest to the Architectural Selection Committee, made up of James N. Wood, director and president, Art institute of Chicago; Carter Manny, Jr., architect and director emeritus, Graham Foundation; and Myron Goldsmith, architect and professor at IIT. Vinci is a somewhat curious choice; he has established his reputation mainly as a renovator of existing spaces rather than a builder in his own right. His selection was based on his previous accomplishments, rather than a specific design for the new site. Vinci's other projects include the renovation of Louis Sullivan's Stock Exchange Trading Room at the Art Institute (1980) and the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio (1987), as well as designing gallery and exhibition spaces for the Art Institute, the Centre Canadien d'Architecture, the Carnegie Museum and the Walker Art Center.

Little information has been released concerning Vinci's plans. One hopes that he will design a building that is more than merely compatible with the city's architectural legacy, another modernist box in a sea of them. Vinci's somewhat covert pus met with insider opposition when it was revealed this past summer that the architect will include Mies's floating staircase in the new building. Dirk Lohan, Mies's grandson and himself a prominent architect, was joined by Franz Schulze, a critic and Mies's biographer, in challenging the decision on "aesthetic, moral and legal grounds," claiming that the staircase should not be used, as it was designed specifically for its original setting. However, Vinci stands by his design: "The staircase is an important work in Mies's career, it is itself a work of art I have used the staircase in the same way it was used in the other space in order to create the same impact. It is a tradition of both the Arts Club and society to bring a part of its past to the present." The design will be unveiled to the public in a special exhibition, "The Arts Club of Chicago: Designs for the New Building, Vinci/Hamp Architects, Inc." [Sept. 22-Oct. 28, 19951, which will open simultaneously with the groundbreaking for the new building.

The Arts Club, anticipating the eventual loss of its home, recently organized two exhibitions that examined its purpose and history: "Rigidity/Flexibility in the Grid: Situated Works by Daniel Buren" [Nov. 2-Dec. 10, 1994] and Richard Pettibone: Sculpture" [Jan. 31-Mar. 11, 19951. Buren's installation directly commented on Mies's modular interior. Known for his in situ interventions, in which he reduces painting to a system of mechanically produced vertical stripes overlaid onto specific sites, Buren creates environments that fuse the two-dimensional the sculptural and the architectural. Devoid of expressive content illusionistic references and uniqueness, Buren's work derives its meaning from its relationship to context. Here, Buren examined the Arts Club as an architectural structure, merging his signature stripe with Mies's ubiquitous grid.