It was wall-to-wall bodies at the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s longtime digs in the Santa Fe Building last week, for the opening of its “Shanghai Transforming” exhibit—which prompted some thoughts about the upcoming transformation of the CAF itself, which has been growing like Shanghai. Last month its board got the final results of a feasibility study for a bricks-and-mortar Chicago Architecture Center, expected to be the first of its kind in the country. The study gave the idea a green light, and the board approved a plan entailing a capital campaign.
Founded in 1966 to save Glessner House (which became its first home) and then transformed into an educational organization, the CAF has been renting in the Santa Fe, 224 S. Michigan, since 1992. “It’s a fabulous location,” Osmond says, but “we’re bursting at the seams.”
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They currently fill 20,000 square feet in the century-old building with their popular gift shop, two exhibit spaces (including one in the building’s atmospheric atrium), a lecture hall, a docent library, offices, and a single classroom. “We’re a lot more than a boat tour,” Osmond says, adding that many people don’t know that the CAF has educational programs for both elementary and high school students, or that it conducts teacher training workshops nearly every weekend.
Osmond notes that although there’s nothing in this country on the scale they’re planning, “Beijing and Shanghai have renowned urban centers, and we’re seeing a lot of centers for the built environment and architecture in Europe.” Unlike museums, these centers are not collection-based. They feature scale models, programs, and exhibits that explore architecture and urban planning issues. Osmond expects the CAF to kick-start the trend in the U.S. “We know that Chicago is a center for architecture and urban innovation, we know that people from around the world come to Chicago to see our architecture, so we have a chance to lead or to follow. We believe that Chicago, being the city of architecture, should lead. As a 42-year-old institution, talking about architecture and design in the city, we have that mandate.”
“Even in Chicago, we might have to remind people that there was an artistic counterpart to the 1960s black power movement,” says former Chicagoan Margo Crawford, now a professor of African-American studies at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst and coeditor of the book New Thoughts on the Black Arts Movement. Crawford will interview her father, photographer Bob Crawford, about his part in that arts movement—which, in Chicago, also included poets Haki R. Madhubuti and Gwendolyn Brooks and the group of painters known as AfriCobra, who created the Wall of Respect.
Tee says he’s been touched by the response. The Field and Chicago History museums offered immediate rescue and recovery help, and worked with volunteers to salvage what they could. The National Museum of Mexican Art formed a committee of 28 Chicago museums and cultural institutions, and organized a benefit that will feature a Chinese and Mexican dinner and traditional Chinese music and dance. It’s Wednesday, October 29, 6 PM, at the NMMA, 1852 W. 19th. Tickets are $50; call 312-433-3909 for reservations. Everything’s been donated, so every dollar will go toward rebuilding.v
