Mies Van Der Rohe, 1952

Harry Callahan

4 1/2"x3 1/4" Modern gelatin silver print from The Sandor Family Collection

 

This photograph of Mies Van Der Rohe (holding a cigar in his right hand) was taken in front of the commissioned staircase he designed (1948-1951) for the Arts Club of Chicago at its 109 E. Ontario location. The staircase was moved in 1997 to the Club's current location at 201 E. Ontario.

Chicago City Search Editorial Review: The Arts Club sponsors five free exhibitions each year in its gallery, which is open to the public and offers a bright if austere exhibition space with expanses of windows. In recent years, shows by such important figures as sculptor Louise Bourgeois and environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy have filled the void left by the art market crash of 1989, which caused the closing of many forward-looking galleries.

In the early 1920s, the only place in town (and in some cases all of America) where you could see the work of radicals such as Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brancusi was not the Art Institute but the Arts Club of Chicago. In the 1930s, with visionaries such as Isamu Noguchi and George Grosz, it was the same story. In the 1940s it was the likes of Jackson Pollock and Berthe Morisot who were introduced at the Arts Club. In 1997 they moved to a new building off Michigan Avenue, a freestanding structure designed (rather conservatively) by John Vinci and including the entire transplanted stairwell by Mies van der Rohe that anchored the club's last home on Ontario Street.