The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA) is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in the Near North Side community area of Chicago, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary art venues. The museum's collection is composed of thousands of objects of Post-World War II visual art. The museum is run gallery-style, with individually curated exhibitions throughout the year. Each exhibition may be composed of temporary loans, pieces from their permanent collection, or a combination of the two.
The museum has hosted several notable debut exhibitions, including Frida Kahlo's first U.S. exhibition and Jeff Koons' first solo museum exhibition. Koons later presented an exhibit at the museum that broke the museum's attendance record. The current record for the most attended exhibition is the 2017 exhibition of Takashi Murakami's work. The museum's collection, which includes Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, Kara Walker, and Alexander Calder, contains historical samples of 1940s–1970s late surrealism, pop art, minimalism, and conceptual art; notable holdings also include 1980s postmodernism, as well as contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation, and related media. It also presents dance, theater, music, and multidisciplinary arts.
The current location at 220 East Chicago Avenue is in the Streeterville neighborhood of the Near North Side community area. Josef Paul Kleihues designed the current building after the museum conducted a 12-month search, reviewing more than 200 nominations. The museum was initially located at 237 East Ontario Street, which was originally designed as a bakery. The current building is known for its signature staircase leading to an elevated ground floor, which has an atrium, the full glass-walled east and west façades giving a direct view of the city and Lake Michigan.
History
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA) was created as the result of a 1964 meeting of 30 critics, collectors and dealers at the home of critic Doris Lane Butler to bring the long-discussed idea of a museum of contemporary art to complement the city's Art Institute of Chicago, according to a grand opening story in Time. It opened in fall 1967 in a small space at 237 East Ontario Street that had for a time served as the corporate offices of Playboy Enterprises. Its first director was Jan van der Marck. In 1970, he invited Wolf Vostell to make the Concrete Traffic sculpture in Chicago.Mercedes Vostell, Vostell – ein Leben lang, Siebenhaar Verlag, 2012, .
Initially, the museum was conceived primarily as a space for temporary exhibitions, in the German kunsthalle model. However, in 1974, the museum began acquiring a permanent collection of contemporary art objects created after 1945. The MCA expanded into adjacent buildings to increase gallery space; and in 1977, following a fundraising drive for its 10th anniversary, a three-story neighboring townhouse was purchased, renovated, and connected to the museum. In 1978, Gordon Matta-Clark executed his final major project in the townhouse. In his work Circus Or The Caribbean Orange (1978), Matta-Clark made circle cuts in the walls and floors of the townhouse next-door to the first museum.
In 1991, the museum's Board of Trustees contributed $37 million ($ million today) of the expected $55 million ($ million) construction costs for Chicago's first new museum building in 65 years. Six of the board members were central to the fundraising as major donors: Jerome Stone (chairman emeritus of Stone Container Corporation), Beatrice C. Mayer (daughter of Sara Lee Corporation founder Nathan Cummings) and family, Mrs. Edwin Lindy Bergman, the Neison Harris (president of Pittway Corporation) and Irving Harris families, and Thomas and Frances Dittmer (commodities). The Board of Trustees then weighed architectural proposals from six finalists: Emilio Ambasz of New York; Tadao Ando of Osaka, Japan; Josef Paul Kleihues of Berlin; Fumihiko Maki of Tokyo; Morphosis of Santa Monica, Calif.; and Christian de Portzamparc of Paris. According to Chicago Tribune Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic Blair Kamin, the list of contenders was controversial because no Chicago-based architects were included as finalists despite the fact that prominent Chicago architects such as Helmut Jahn and Stanley Tigerman were among the 23 semi-finalists. In fact, none of the finalists had made any prior structures in Chicago. The selection process, which started with 209 contenders, was based on professional qualifications, recent projects, and the ability to work closely with the staff of the aspiring museum.
In 1996, the MCA opened its current museum at 220 East Chicago Avenue, which was the site of a former National Guard Armory between Lake Michigan and Michigan Avenue from 1907 until it was demolished in 1993 to make way for the MCA.Eds. Grossman, James R., Keating, Ann Durkin, and Reiff, Janice L., 2004 Encyclopedia of Chicago, p. 39. The University of Chicago Press, The four-story building designed by Josef Paul Kleihues, which was five times larger than its predecessor, made the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago the largest institution devoted to contemporary art in the world. The physical structure is said to reference the modernism of Mies van der Rohe as well as the tradition of Chicago architecture. The museum opened at its current location June 21–22, 1996, with a 24-hour event that drew more than 25,000 visitors.
Exhibitions Past In its first year of operation, the museum hosted the exhibitions, Pictures To Be Read/Poetry To Be Seen, Claes Oldenburg: Projects for Monuments, and Dan Flavin: Pink and Gold, which was the artist's first solo show. In 1969, the museum served as the site of Christo's first building wrap in the United States. It was wrapped in more than of tarpaulin and rope. The following year, it hosted one-person shows for Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol.
The MCA has also played host to the first American and solo exhibitions of prominent artists, such as Frida Kahlo, in 1978. Other exhibition highlights include the first solo museum shows of Dan Flavin,His first solo show was at the Judson Gallery, New York, in 1961. (Diacenter.org ) in 1967, and Jeff Koons,His first solo exhibition was a 1980 window installation at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York in 1988. In 1989, the MCA hosted Robert Mapplethorpe, The Perfect Moment, a traveling exhibition organized by the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. Additional highlights of exhibitions organized or co-organized by the MCA include:
Enrico Baj (1971) Chuck Close (1972) Lee Bontecou (1972) Richard Artschwager (1973) Thomas Kovachevich (1973) Robert Irwin (1975) Frida Kahlo (1978) Vito Acconci (1980) Magdalena Abakanowicz (1982) Lorna Simpson (1992) Beverly Semmes (1995) Mona Hatoum (1997) Tom Friedman (2000) Gary Simmons (2002) John Currin (2003) Rudolf Stingel (2007) David Bowie (2014) Doris Salcedo (2015) Kerry James Marshall (2016) Takashi Murakami (2017) Virgil Abloh (2019) Nick Cave (2022)
Recent In 2006, the MCA was the only American museum to host Bruce Mau's Massive Change exhibit, which concerned the social, economic, and political effects of design. Additional 2006 exhibitions featured photographers Catherine Opie and Wolfgang Tillmans as well as Chicago-based cartoonist Chris Ware. The 2008 Koons retrospective broke the attendance record with 86,584 visitors for the May 31 – show of September 21, 2008. This was the culminating exhibit of the 2008 fiscal year, which celebrated the 40th anniversary of the museum.
In 2009, the MCA presented Jeremy Deller's exhibition It Is What It Is: Conversations About Iraq. The exhibition was organized by the New Museum, and it was a new commission by the New Museum, New York; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles.
Co-organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Wexner Center for the Arts, the MCA presented Luc Tuymans from October 2010 – January 2011. Susan Philipsz: We Shall Be All was presented at the MCA February – June 2011. The Turner Prize-winning artist's sound exhibition featured protest songs and drew from Chicago's labor history. The exhibition Eiko & Koma: Time is Not Even, Space is Not Empty was the first series of stage performances and a gallery exhibition presented at the MCA. The Japanese-born choreographers and dance artists performed and exhibited from June – November 2011.
In 2014, the MCA was the only US venue to mount the David Bowie Is exhibition, which broke previous attendance records for the museum. To date, the most attended exhibition is the 2017 Takashi Murakami: The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg exhibit, which broke the David Bowie Is record set in 2014 with over 193,000 attendees.
Following David Bowie Is, the MCA debuted the critically acclaimed exhibition Kerry James Marshall: Mastry in 2016. Mastry later traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2017, the MCA curated a show by the Japanese artist Takashi Murakami which set attendance records, and in 2019, the museum launched a mid-career retrospective for the work of the American designer Virgil Abloh, a sometime collaborator of Murakami's.
In 2020, the MCA opened Duro Olowu:Seeing Chicago, a curated exhibition by Duro Olowu of over 350 artworks from Chicago which marked the first time the museum had hired a guest art curator.
In 2022, the MCA presented Nick Cave: Forothermore, the Chicago artist’s first career-spanning retrospective.
Recurring programs After a 10-year run, the exhibition series UBS 12x12: New Artists/New Work is moving from the second floor to the third floor, into a larger gallery space and will change its name to Chicago Works. The exhibition series will still feature Chicago-area artists. Rather than each artist being displayed for one month, each exhibition in the series will now be displayed for three months.
Starting in 2002, the MCA began commissioning artists and architects to design and construct public art for the front plaza. The goal of the program is to link the museum to its neighboring community by extending its programmatic, educational, and outreach functions. While artists have been exhibited intermittently on the MCA plaza since 2002, the summer 2011 plaza exhibit showcasing four works by Miami-based sculptor Mark Handforth marks a revitalization of the plaza project.
From October through May, the MCA hosts monthly Family Days, which feature artistic activities for all ages. Each summer, the museum hosts Tuesdays on the Terrace, a jazz performance series, and a Farmers Market on the MCA plaza on Tuesdays from June through October.
Performance The MCA Stage has featured local, national, and international theater, dance, music, multimedia, and film performances. It is known as the "most active interdisciplinary arts presenter in Chicago" and partners with local community organizations for the co-presentations of performing arts.
Notable MCA Stage appearances include performances by Mikhail Baryshnikov, eighth blackbird, Peter Brook, Marie Chouinard, Merce Cunningham, Philip Glass, Martha Graham, Akram Khan, Taylor Mac, and Twyla Tharp.
In September 2022, the MCA Stage hosted the first annual Chicago Performs, a two-day festival of experimental dance, music, and theater that included admission to the museum and other related programs. The festival spotlighted three local artists whose multi-disciplinary performance pieces were shown within the museum in a series of ticketed and non-ticketed performances.
Every spring, MCA presents an annual suite of live, digital, and durational performance works in its On Stage series. Both Chicago Performs and On Stage are yearly programs at the Museum.
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