Initiatives in Art and Culture has carefully crafted its next Conference on the Arts & Crafts Movement after hosting a virtual event in 2020. This year’s conference, Chicago and Environs, will include talks, site visits and collections tours that will allow attendees to immerse themselves into the world of Chicago arts. Each component considers how “Chicago’s architects, artists and artisans developed a design vocabulary specific to the region, creating work completely new while at the same time thoroughly rooted in tradition.”
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), Wingspread, Wind Point, interior, 1938-39, for the Herbert Fisk Johnson Jr. Family.
The conference will run September 23 through 26, and it kicks off with a welcome reception on September 22 from 6 to 8 p.m. that allows participants to meet and greet prior to the outings. Formal opening sessions will happen at the Glessner House, designed by Henry Hobson Richardson between 1885 and 1886 and completed the following year.
There will be a number of tours as part of this year’s conference including to the Fine Arts Building (also known as the Studebaker Building), which was designed by Solon Spencer Beman between 1884 and 1885. While walking the halls, visitors will see murals by Frederic Clay Bartlett, Frank Xavier Leyendecker and Bertha Sophia Menzler-Peyton that date to its renovation in 1898. A stop at the Chicago Cultural Center includes looks at the architectural design that includes rare, imported marbles, polished brash, mosaics of Favrile glass and mother-of-pearl and colored stone. The world’s largest stained glass Tiffany dome, which was resorted in 2008, is found in the building’s south side.
Frank Lloyd Wright (1867-1959), Arthur Heurtley House, 1902.
Frank Lloyd Wright architectural gems are noteworthy during this conference. One highlight is a trip to his Johnson Wax Headquarters in Racine, Wisconsin, that includes the Johnson Wax Administration Building and the Johnson Wax Research Tower. They were designed for the company’s president Herbert F. “Hib” Johnson. In 1939 Wright also designed Johnson’s personal residence Wingspread, where a luncheon and lecture will take place. There also will be an exclusive opportunity to visit Wright’s Heurtley House, 1902. Commissioned by banker Arthur Heurtley, this is one of the architect’s greatest residential designs and is located nearby his own home and studio in Oak Park.
H. H. Richardson (1838-1886), Glessner House (Exterior), 1887. Photo courtesy Glessner House.
Other sites visited will include the Holy Trinity Orthodox Cathedral to view the Healy & Millet stained glass; the Old St. Patrick’s Church, which is the oldest standing church in the city; the University Club in the Michigan Room where a private lunch will be held; and Pullman, the first industrial planned community in the United States.
Guest lecturers or guides participating include Susan S. Benjamin, co-author of Modern in the Middle: Chicago Houses, 1929-1975; Stuart Cohen, who wrote Inventing the New American House: Howard Van Doren Shaw, Architect and Frank L. Wright and the Architects of Steinway Hall: A Study of Collaboration; and Rima Lunin Schultz, who wrote Women Building Chicago 1790-1900: A Biographical Dictionary. Preservationist and architect John Vinci will also be on hand, as well as William Tyre, executive director and curator at the Glessner House; independent historical, write and editor Annie Stewart O’Donnell; Harboe Architects president T. Gunny Harboe; and Richard Guy Wilson, Commonwealth Professor Emeritus of Architectural History at the University of Virginia.
For complete details on tickets and how to attend, visit the Initiatives in Art and Culture website. —
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