School of the Art Institute of Chicago history

The first CAD reception and exhibition was held on December 22, 1867.

Pickle, Chicago Tribune, March 2, 1868, 2; “Chicago Academy of Design: First of a Series of Lectures by Professor Antrobus,” Chicago Tribune, February 11, 1868, 4.

An image of the building may be found in “Chicago Academy of Design,” American Builder and Journal of Art, November 1870, 243.

The opera house gallery opened another show on February 20, 1871.

“The Lazy Artists,” Chicago Tribune, March 9, 1872, 5.

A thorough review of the stages of the formulation and execution of the exposition, with several images and plans, can be found in “Exposition,” Chicago Tribune, September 25, 1873, 5.

“Academy of Design,” The Daily Inter Ocean, December 23, 1874, 8; “Beauty and Art,” Chicago Times, December 23, 1874, 5; “Art: Beautiful Pictures from East- ern Artists in the Academy Exhibition,” Chicago Tribune, December 27, 1874, 2; “New Paintings.

Carr footnotes this entry with two articles: “Art Notes,” New York Evening Post, February 16, 1875, 2; and “Academy of Design,” Chicago Evening Journal, March 6, 1875, 6.

On May 4, 1876, “It was decided to create a [non-artist] Board of ten trustees.”86 Sources contemporary to the period do not list the names of these ten men.

CAD Minutes, 9; “Art Notes,” The Daily Inter-Ocean, March 10, 1877, 8.

“Academy of Design: The Trustees-Elect,” Chicago Tribune, January 30, 1878, 8; CAD Minutes, 11; “Academy of Design: Its Reorganization,” Chicago Tribune, May 12, 1878, 8; Volk Memoirs, 62–63.

“The City,” Chicago Tribune, March 5, 1879, 8; “Auction Sales,” advertisement, Chicago Tribune, March 6, 1879, 8.

A CAD school was reopened in early 1880, but by late March there was not enough money to pay teacher salaries, and by June the school was closed.150 The last exhibition the CAD ever held was on June 9, 1880.

Also in “Dearborn Park,” The Daily Inter-Ocean, November 19, 1881, 4.

The trustees of the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts had earlier voted on April 27, 1882, to change their name.

By 1885, when the museum’s first quarters were built, by John Wellborn Root of the firm (Daniel) Burnham and Root, the name had changed to The Art Institute of Chicago.

“The Dearborn Park Bill,” Chicago Tribune, February 9, 1887, 4; “The Dearborn Park Bill,” Chicago Tribune, February 13, 1887, 8.

The matter was settled when the city council passed an ordinance authorizing construction of the library, as long as it included space for a memorial hall and meeting rooms for the soldiers; see “Dearborn Park Chosen,” Chicago Tribune, April 29, 1890, 1.

The Art Institute officially opened on December 8, 1893.

CAD Minutes, May 3, 1900, n.p., August 2, 1900, 242, November 23, 1900, n.p; “By-Laws of the Chicago Academy of Design,” printed pamphlet, 1900, unpaginated, Ryerson and Burnham Archives.

The Ryerson and Burnham libraries were added in 1901, confirming the institution’s educational and archival commitment.

The Sharp Building, previously known as both the Powers and the Champlain Building, was built in 1902.

Built in 1904, the Holabird & Roche-designed building is an early example of the famed Chicago School of Architecture.

In 1906, on the recommendation of the American Impressionist Mary Cassatt, the museum paid $40,000 for El Greco’s Assumption of the Virgin, a 13-foot-high canvas dated 1577 that went a long way towards establishing the museum’s reputation.

The MacLean Center, which is now an academic facility, was built in 1908 to house the Illinois Athletic Club with a full gymnasium with a pool, racket ball courts, and leisurely dining areas.

French’s most significant action was organizing the International Exhibition of Modern Art (also known as the Armory Show) in 1913, a show intended to introduce modern European art to the relatively unreceptive Chicago audience.

About 1919 she was named head of the photograph and lantern-slide department of the Ryerson Library of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The 162 Residences was built from a combination of the original 1924 Butler Building and a modern addition.

Martin Antoine Ryerson, who served as vice-president of the Art Institute and who has been called the single greatest benefactor of the museum, died in 1932, willing his diverse collection to it.

A second edition of Art Through the Ages, greatly expanded, appeared in 1936; the first two editions sold more than 260,000 copies.

When he took over as director in 1938, he vowed to strengthen the museum’s educational programs and its curatorial staff.

In 1947, the museum held the first major Georgia O’Keeffe retrospective, and in similar exhibits it helped broaden the canon of Western Art.

Such obstacles appear not have interfered with the museum’s successful campaign of 1951-52, during which $2 million was raised.

Daniel Catton Rich also saw the importance of diversifying the type of art on exhibition; the Department of Primitive Art (which would later be renamed the Department of Africa, Oceania, and the Americas) opened in 1957.

The growth of the professional staff led to the completion of the first major new structure in more than 20 years in 1958: the B. F. Ferguson Memorial Building.

The Morton Wing, erected in 1962 to the south of the Michigan Avenue Building, was designed to house the expanding modern art collection and restore symmetry to the complex.

Expansion of another kind continued as James N. Wood became director of the Art Institute in 1980 and made it his mission to broaden the historical scope of the Art Institute’s exhibition program, moving beyond the now-familiar strengths of the European painting collection.

A general review of the exposition’s history is found in Stefan Germer, “Pictures at an Exhibition,” Chicago History 16, no.1 (1987): 5–21; “Department ‘A.’ Fine and Liberal Arts.

In 1988, SAIC purchased the Sharp Building to house additional classrooms, studios, and offices.

The Japanese government presented the Art Institute with $1 million in 1989, a gift that assisted in the remodeling of the Galleries of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Art, and in the construction of an unusually serene gallery for Japanese screens, which was designed by Tadao Ando.

Also during this time, the museum followed a national trend of catering to children with the Kraft General Foods Education Center designed, according to the Institute, “to present accessible art experiences to young people”; the center opened in time for the first day of school in the fall of 1992.

In 1993, a totally reconstructed Kraft Education Center opened to serve students, teachers, and families.

Gerald L. Carr, Frederic Edwin Church: Catalogue Raisonné of Works of Art at Olana State Historic Site (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 393–94.

Whatever else Wood accomplished as director, it is likely that he will be best remembered for the Claude Monet retrospective of 1995.

American museums welcomed 225 million visitors in 1997.

Chicago’s premier cultural institution and one of the greatest art museums in the world, The Art Institute of Chicago welcomed more than 1.7 million visitors in 1998.

In 1999, The Art Institute of Chicago announced plans for a sculpture garden and another expansion, to be designed by internationally famous architect Renzo Piano.

Working with the Renzo Piano Building Workshop, the museum broke ground on the site of the Goodman Theater in 2005 to build the Modern Wing, directly facing Millennium Park.

In 2007, when Carson Pirie Scott filed for bankruptcy, the building was sold to Joseph Freed and Associates and converted into retail and office space.

In the fall of 2010, the Roger L. and Pamela Weston Wing and Japanese Art Galleries opened, elegantly reconceptualizing the display of ancient through contemporary works of Japanese art.

Fall 2012 brought the Mary and Michael Jaharis Galleries of Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Art, a suite of galleries that encircle McKinlock Court with artworks that trace the development of Western art from the dawn of the third millennium BC to the time of the great Byzantine Empire.

On Volk, see “Abraham Lincoln Life Masks,” Abraham Lincoln Online, accessed December 28, 2018, http://www.abrahamlincolnonline .org/lincoln/resource/masks.htm.

SAIC is a top graphic design school in 2020—Graphic Design USA