The Donna & Howard Stone Film, Video & New Media Gallery at the Art Institute of Chicago

["Best of Chicago Art Magazine" re-post. Originally appeared 5/28/10]

Roxanne Samer

One year ago, on May 16th, 2009, the Art Institute of Chicago opened the doors to its newest addition, a state of the art Modern Wing designed by Renzo Piano.  The additional 264,000 square feet, which made the art museum the second largest in the United States, provided for the first time adequate space to display the institute’s impressive post-1900 collection of painting, sculpture, photography, film, video and new media. The Donna and Howard Stone Gallery, located on the ground floor, was built and designed specifically for the last three of these media, and since the wing’s inception it has lived up to its goal of providing a permanent space dedicated to the exhibition of some of the newest forms of artistic expression.

The History of Film, Video & New Media at the Art Institute

The Art Institute has been collecting film since 1966 and video since 1974.  In 1966 the museum acquired George Segal’s The Truck, a multi-media installation piece, which included a film component, and with the purchase its collection of moving image work began to grow. In the 1970s, as well-known artists such as Bruce Nauman, Richard Serra and Robert Morris began incorporating film and video into their oeuvres, the Art Institute was quick to acquire such works into their permanent collection. The 1980s and 90s brought acquisitions of works by Nam June Paik, Bill Viola, William Kentridge and Gary Hill. Unfortunately, however, the space and means of exhibiting such work was limited. While the museum did dedicate a space in the Lower Morton Wing to the display of moving image works from its growing permanent collection, it was a small converted gallery space that could only accommodate certain pieces.

Designing a New Modern Wing

The museum’s collection of film, video and new media pieces now numbers over eighty-five works and continues to grow each year. As many of these pieces had never been on view in the museum for want of appropriate resources, it became clear from the beginning planning stages of the Modern Wing that a dedicated space for this material was crucial. The Donna and Howard Stone Film, Video and New Media Gallery resulted. It is significantly larger than the space the museum had previously and is fully outfitted with new equipment targeted to the works in the collection. According to Assistant Curator Lisa Dorin, it was also designed to be as flexible as possible with power supply and data outlets throughout the space. These as well as other design decisions will allow the space to adapt to ever-changing technologies and their manifestations at the hands of fine artists.

Current and Upcoming Programming

Since the opening of the Modern Wing last May, the museum’s staff has put the Donna and Howard Stone Gallery to good use, highlighting previously undisplayed major works from the permanent collection, including Steve McQueen’s Girls, Tricky, 2001, and Zarina Bhimji’s Out of Blue, 2002. Most often, a single work by a single artist is on display at one particular time. Currently on display is Inigo Manglano-Ovalle’s Always After (The Glass House), 2006, a recent acquisition to the collection. While it is atypical for the work in the gallery to be connected to other exhibitions in the museum, the museum does have plans to program the space in conjunction with an upcoming exhibition of work from the collection of the Chicago donors Donna and Howard Stone, who alongside naming the gallery gave a significant gift of 15 video works to the collection in 2007.

From the end of June through October 2010, the Art Institute will be showing a work by French artist Pierre Huyghe, called Les Grands Ensembles, 1994/2001, which was given as part of the Stone gift. Beginning in February 2011, the museum will also be presenting a major slide installation work by Swiss artists, Fischli & Weiss, titled Questions, 1981/2002-03, in conjunction with a loan show of the same artist’s photographic work. In between the two major exhibitions, the museum will be presenting a selection of films by Tom Palazzolo, an artist who has been instrumental to Chicago’s experimental film scene. In this last case, the works being shown are not in the permanent collection but instead will be on loan from the artist for the period of the exhibition.

Planning Your Visit

For more information about programming in the Donna and Howard Stone Film, Video, and New Media Gallery, visitors should consult the museum’s website pages dedicated to current or upcoming exhibitions. Visitors can also search the permanent collection for artists, filmmakers and pieces of particular personal interest.