The Renaissance Society is a non-collecting contemporary art museum

Museum

A museum is an institution that cares for a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance and makes them available for public viewing through exhibits that may be permanent or temporary. Most large museums are located in major cities...

 in Chicago, Illinois. It is located on the campus of the University of Chicago

University of Chicago

The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...

, although it is a fully separate entity.

Overview

The Renaissance Society is a non-collecting museum founded in 1915 to encourage the growth and understanding of contemporary art. The Society presents four or five exhibitions each year, featuring both internationally and locally renowned artists. Located on the campus of The University of Chicago in Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

, Illinois

Illinois

Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...

, it is one of the nation's oldest museums devoted exclusively to contemporary art

Contemporary art

Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...

.

History

From 1929 to 1935, the Society was led by important photographer and artist Eva Watson-Schütze

Eva Watson-Schütze

Eva Watson-Schütze was an American photographer and painter who was one of the founding members of the Photo-Secession.-Life:...

, who helped create groundbreaking exhibitions of modernists including Braque, Arp

Jean Arp

Jean Arp / Hans Arp was a German-French, or Alsatian, sculptor, painter, poet and abstract artist in other media such as torn and pasted paper....

, Brancusi, Miró

Joan Miró

Joan Miró i Ferrà was a Spanish Catalan painter, sculptor, and ceramicist born in Barcelona.Earning international acclaim, his work has been interpreted as Surrealism, a sandbox for the subconscious mind, a re-creation of the childlike, and a manifestation of Catalan pride...

, and Picasso. Important one-person exhibitions organized by the Society included Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter...

 (1930); Alexander Calder

Alexander Calder

Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.-Childhood:Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton,...

 (1934); Fernand Léger

Fernand Léger

Joseph Fernand Henri Léger was a French painter, sculptor, and filmmaker. In his early works he created a personal form of Cubism which he gradually modified into a more figurative, populist style...

 (1936); László Moholy-Nagy

László Moholy-Nagy

László Moholy-Nagy was a Hungarian painter and photographer as well as professor in the Bauhaus school. He was highly influenced by constructivism and a strong advocate of the integration of technology and industry into the arts.-Early life:...

 (1939); John Sloan (1942); Käthe Kollwitz, Paul Klee

Paul Klee

Paul Klee was born in Münchenbuchsee, Switzerland, and is considered both a German and a Swiss painter. His highly individual style was influenced by movements in art that included expressionism, cubism, and surrealism. He was, as well, a student of orientalism...

 (1946), Mies van der Rohe (1947); Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera

Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...

 (1949); José Clemente Orozco

José Clemente Orozco

José Clemente Orozco was a Mexican social realist painter, who specialized in bold murals that established the Mexican Mural Renaissance together with murals by Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and others...

 (1951); Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall Art critic Robert Hughes referred to Chagall as "the quintessential Jewish artist of the twentieth century."According to art historian Michael J...

 (1958); Réné Magritte

René Magritte

René François Ghislain Magritte[p] was a Belgian surrealist artist. He became well known for a number of witty and thought-provoking images...

 (1964) and Henry Moore

Henry Moore

Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art....

 (1967). A distinguished history of educational programs featured luminaries such as Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Prokofiev

Sergei Sergeyevich Prokofiev was a Russian composer, pianist and conductor who mastered numerous musical genres and is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century...

, Alfred Barr, Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...

, Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein was an American writer, poet and art collector who spent most of her life in France.-Early life:...

, Zora Neale Hurston, and Paul Tillich.

Since 1974, Executive Director Susanne Ghez has led the Society to explore every major avant-garde art movement since the mid-70s, introducing Chicago audiences to leading contemporary artists such as Robert Smithson

Robert Smithson

Robert Smithson was an American artist famous for his land art.-Background and education:Smithson was born in Passaic, New Jersey and studied painting and drawing in New York City at the Art Students League of New York....

, Louise Bourgeois

Louise Bourgeois

Louise Joséphine Bourgeois , was a renowned French-American artist and sculptor, best known for her contributions to both modern and contemporary art, and for her spider structures, titled Maman, which resulted in her being nicknamed the Spiderwoman...

, Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer is a German painter and sculptor. He studied with Joseph Beuys and Peter Dreher during the 1970s. His works incorporate materials such as straw, ash, clay, lead, and shellac...

, Georg Baselitz

Georg Baselitz

Georg Baselitz is a German painter who studied in the former East Germany, before moving to what was then the country of West Germany...

, Daniel Buren

Daniel Buren

Daniel Buren is a French conceptual artist.- Work :Sometimes classified as an abstract minimalist Buren is known best for using regular, contrasting maxi stripes to integrate the visual surface and architectural space, notably historical, landmark architecture.Among his chief concerns is the...

, On Kawara

On Kawara

is a Japanese conceptual artist living in New York City since 1965. He has shown in many solo and group exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale in 1976.-Early life:After graduating from Kariya High School in 1951, Kawara moved to Tokyo...

, Gunther Forg

Günther Förg

Günther Förg is a prominent German painter, graphic designer, sculptor, and photographer. His abstract style is influenced by American abstract painting.- Vita :...

, Juan Muñoz

Juan Muñoz

Juan Muñoz was a Spanish sculptor, working primarily in paper maché, resin and bronze. He was also interested in the auditory arts and created compositions for the radio. He was a self-described "storyteller"...

, Hanne Darboven, Jean-Marc Bustamante, Thomas Struth

Thomas Struth

Thomas Struth is a German photographer whose wide-ranging work includes depictions of detailed cityscapes, Asian jungles and family portraits. He is one of Germany's most widely exhibited and collected fine art photographers...

, Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Félix González-Torres

Felix Gonzalez-Torres was an American, Cuban-born visual artist."For Felix it was much more powerful to assume that the gay and straight audience was the same audience, that being a Cuban-born American is the same as being an American. And being American was something he was extremely proud of."...

, Kara Walker

Kara Walker

Kara Walker is a contemporary African American artist who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence and identity in her work. She is best known for her room-size tableaux of black cut-paper silhouettes, such as The Means to an End--A Shadow Drama in Five Acts.-Biography:Walker was born in...

, Arturo Herrera

Arturo Herrera

Arturo Herrera is a Venezuelan visual artist who exhibits internationally, known for his melding of cartoons and collage. He has had one-person exhibitions at Centre d’Art Contemporain, Dia Center For The Arts, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Whitney Museum of American Art, UCLA Hammer...

, Darren Almond

Darren Almond

Darren James Almond is an artist based in London. He graduated from Winchester School of Arts in 1993, with a BA degree in Fine Arts.-Life and career:...

, Thomas Hirschhorn

Thomas Hirschhorn

-Life and works:In the 1980s, Hirschhorn worked in Paris as a graphic artist. He was part of the group of Communist graphic designers called Grapus. These artists were concerned with politics and culture, displaying impromptu creations and posters on the street mostly using the language of...

, and Mark Manders.