News

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, 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’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,...

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...

We’ll have a selection of Renaissance Society publications new and old available next weekend at Medium Cool, a temporary gift shop featuring “a cornucopia of thoughtfully designed objects and printed matter.”

Saturday, November 21, 12-6PM
Sunday, November 22, 11AM-5PM
Prairie Productions, 1314 W. Randolph St., Chicago, IL 60607

Other exhibitors include: Amigos Publishing, Candor Arts,...

During Parrot’s Mind Model Magazine—Performance, which took place in February 2014 on the final day of Nora Schultz’s solo exhibition at the Renaissance Society, the artist produced a series of unique works that are available to purchase this week at EXPO CHICAGO.

Working with five assistants, Schultz repurposed materials from her installation by pulling individual elements into an...

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new website that showcases the Renaissance Society’s exhibition, event, and publishing activity both past and present. We’ve worked with Project Projects, a New York-based design firm, to develop a site that we hope is a resource for those interested in learning more about our program, researching our history, or planning a visit.

The website is one...

If you’re on our mailing list, you’ll soon be receiving our Centennial program booklet, the first piece of print in our new visual identity designed by New York-based Project Projects, winner of the Cooper Hewitt’s 2015 National Design Award for Communication Design.

We’re also hard at work on a new website, which we’re excited to share with you in early September. Check back then, or sign up...

Just arrived: the second of our two Josef Strau publications, The New World 2, Travels in Turtle Island. This volume features texts by Jay Sanders, Bernadette Van-Huy, Stefan Tcherepnin, Antek Walczak, Fernando Mesta, José Rojas, Solveig Øvstebø, and Josef Strau, plus full color images documenting the exhibition.

Visit our online bookshop to purchase it for $35, or with The New World 1,...