A Quick History of Chicago Gallery Districts
Sam Isenstein
On April 15, 1989, a devastating fire raged through a seminal River North gallery building. No one was injured, but hundreds of irreplaceable works of art were lost. This was before the centralized digital recording of art and client lists, these pieces now exist only in the memories of the artists and their patrons. Nine galleries occupied the Brunswick Balke-Collender factory complex at the time of the blaze. The conflagration burned so quickly that even 180 firefighters couldn’t make a dent in the encroaching wall of flame. Representing a certain ‘death’ for the area, many consider the River North fire to be a turning point, ushering artists into other areas of the city.
Gentrification: the dirtiest of words. Conjuring forth images of chain coffee houses, irony and spiritual degeneration, the wealthy overrun original residents in a mad rush to caphitalize on perceived credibility. It’s not all bad – gentrification can lead to property stabilization, fewer vacancies and increased profits for local business. However, as developers move in like so many crows circling a carcass, the art community is often expelled from the very areas they popularized. It’s easy to demonize developers and speculators, but the process of gentrification is intrinsically grafted to expansion and growth. Art changes and artists move. City economics, natural disasters, artistic movements – these can profoundly influence the artistic community in a given area. Chicago saw a move from the gallery heavy district of River North partially because of forced or engineered gentrification. The Podmajurskis in Pilsen, development in Bucktown and Wicker Park– once a certain working formula falls into place, the instinct is to attempt to replicate it. Looking back we can see a pattern of forced gentrification in an attempt to replicate the artist colony or gallery district – reaching back to Michigan Avenue and Ontario in the late 60’s the community was attempting to emulate the district galleries of Chelsea and SoHo.
Artists are continually looking for cheap studio and living space. These requirements are traditionally met in lower income urban areas. In the 1960’s Chicago’s burgeoning industrial complex slowed as companies moved production out of the city to cheaper locales. Much of the manufacturing space in the city became obsolete, opening opportunities for artists looking to live and work. Huge loft rooms were readily available, connected by enormous freight elevators and factory infrastructure. An animal can only grow as large as its tank, and artists were receptive to reduced limitations and parameters. Roberta Lieberman and Robert Zolla were among the first to adapt this new space for display purposes, using their gallery to exhibit larger works by artists such as Andy Warhol, Robert Morris and Deborah Butterfield. Lieberman and her contemporaries helped to open the River North gallery floodgates, sparking a decade of unprecedented artistic growth and international attention.
Neighborhoods such as Pilsen, Wicker Park, the Ukrainian Village, Bridgeport and the West Loop played host to a new wave of artists and galleries. Though different neighborhoods, they all were relatively cheap during the initial migration. A cadre of artists with kids moved to Oak Park, Evanston and , leaving the immediate Chicago area to colonize the suburbs and to get away from the not-always-sterling Chicago public school system. The gallery life, verve and overall health of these communities is another story, but it cannot be denied that they play an important role in perpetuating Chicago art.
It’s interesting to watch the expansion, the flow of the neighborhoods and the ebb of the artistic fervor in certain areas. Certainly not unique to Chicago, all cities boast a similar equation: artists+cheap space = gentrification and a continued cycle. Self-explanatory and simplistic maybe, but fortunes have been made and lost on property and collective speculation centered on the art scene. Though one artist may be small, the community drives economic growth in Chicago in a real and traceable way.
