Sadie Benning, Shared Eye, sequence 6, #18, 19, 2016. Courtesy of the artist and Susanne Vielmetter Los Angeles Projects. Photo: Chris Austin.
The Renaissance Society is a place where audiences can encounter new works of art for the very first time, and we are often asked what happens to the projects that we commission. As a non-collecting museum, the art we help to produce belongs to the artist. These works frequently enter into private or public collections and can be seen again in other exhibitions.
We are thrilled to share the...
Jochen Dehn’s Intermissions performance, Arches and Avalanches, August 2017. Photo: Meg T. Noe.
Students in the Chicago area can get a free membership to the Renaissance Society. Just sign up here to receive our monthly student newsletter, invitations to special student events, and a 20% discount on our publications. Student membership is open to undergraduate and graduate students of all disciplines.
Our first student members event will be on Wednesday, October 11...
Danh Vō, Gustav’s Wing, 2012, installation view in Uterus at the Renaissance Society. Photo: Tom Van Eynde.
Peruse Renaissance Society publications and more at three off-site events this fall. We’ll have some of our most recent titles available for purchase, including Mathias Poledna: Substance, Irena Haiduk: Seductive Exacting Realism by Marcel Proust 12, and Ben Rivers: Ways of Worldmaking.
EXPO CHICAGO takes place at Navy Pier in Chicago September 13-17. At our booth we’ll have a selection of...
Guests at the opening of Peter Wächtler, Secrets of a Trumpet in Feb 2016
The Renaissance Society invites students from Chicago-area institutions to join our new membership program. Membership is free and open to undergraduate and graduate students in all areas of study.
Sign up now for:
Kevin Beasley, Your face is/is not enough (detail), 2016. Courtesy of the artist and Casey Kaplan, New York. Photo: Tom Van Eynde.
Dear friend,
We’ve always felt that the Renaissance Society is at its best when it serves as an engine for artistic production. By that measure, 2016 has been an incredible year, with every exhibition featuring a new commission, from Peter Wächtler’s Secrets of a Trumpet to Sadie Benning’s current installation, Shared Eye.
Kevin Beasley, whose performance and installation, Your face is/is...
Students at the Ren
The Renaissance Society is located on the fourth floor of Cobb Hall, where we present contemporary art exhibitions along with a regular program of events and publications. Founded in 1915 by a group of University of Chicago faculty members, we are an independent, non-collecting museum that combines a flexible, experimental ethos with focused, rigorous inquiry.
The Ren’s Student Committee is...
Hamza Walker in Renaissance Society offices in 1994, the year he joined the institution
Hamza Walker, the Renaissance Society’s longtime Director of Education and Associate Curator, has been appointed Executive Director of LAXART in Los Angeles. LAXART is a 10-year-old independent, non-profit art space presenting experimental exhibitions and public art initiatives. Walker will begin his new post there on October 1, 2016.
Hamza joined the Ren in 1994 where his curating, writing,...
Rodney Graham, School of Velocity and Parsifal notebook sketch, 1995.
Rodney Graham’s 1995 Renaissance Society exhibition featured two time-based musical installations, School of Velocity (1993) and Parsifal (1990). The former combined the piano exercise of the same name with Galileo’s equation of the acceleration of falling objects to create a piano piece that grows progressively slower. Based on a few bars of music from Wagner’s composition of the same name,...
Kevin Beasley, Your face is/is not enough (detail), 2016. Commissioned by the Renaissance Society for Between the Ticks of the Watch, Apr 24–Jun 26, 2016. Courtesy of the artist and Casey Kaplan, New York. Photo: Tom Van Eynde
We are delighted to announce that the Renaissance Society has received three leading gifts to its Next Century Fund, a campaign to underwrite the production of ambitious new artworks.
The Edlis Neeson Foundation, the Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation, and the Zell Family Foundation have each pledged $500,000 for a total of $1.5 million. These donations represent the largest gifts in the...
Today, December 1st, the Renaissance Society is participating in #GivingTuesday, joining thousands of individuals and organizations around the world in a global movement that celebrates and supports giving.
Over our 100-year history, the support of our community has been crucial to making the Renaissance Society the platform for ambitious contemporary art that it is today. This...
