Displaying items by tag: school of the art institute of chicago

At first blush, Edward Gorey's popularity might seem something of a puzzle. The prolific author and artist reveled in hermetic scenes of stiff, upper-crust figures in quasi-Edwardian garb and sometimes eyebrow-raising story lines about childhood calamities and grisly murders.

But what might have been limitations to his works turned out to be their very strengths, because of the originality of his vision, his comfortable embrace of absurdity and—perhaps most important—his wonderful, quirky sense of humor.

Who else could create an A-to-Z book about varied disasters befalling children and make it seem charming? Yet he does just that in "The Gashlycrumb Tinies; or, After the Outing" (1963), through his clever, darkly witty turns of phrase and the appealing ridiculousness of the whole thing.

A pair of exhibitions now at the Loyola University Museum of Art—the first ever of this scope in Chicago—offers an exhaustive, fascinating look at this endearing master of the gently spooky or what he called the "mildly unsettling."

The Whitney Biennial is one of the art world’s most anticipated events. Started as an annual exhibition of contemporary American art in 1932, the show became a biennale in 1973. Over the course of the past forty years, the Whitney Museum of American Art has not only had their own staff members curate the show, but the institution has invited outside curators, including Europeans, to organize the Biennial.

For the upcoming 2014 Biennial, museum staff members chose three non-Whitney curators to organize the show. Former art dealer and current Whitney curator, Jay Sanders, and Elisabeth Sussman, both of whom organized the renowned 2012 Biennial, will oversee the process. The three curators, Stuart Comer, film curator at London’s Tate Modern; Anthony Elms, an associate curator at Philadelphia’s Institute of Contemporary Art; and Michelle Grabner, a professor and the chairwoman of the painting and drawing departing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, will each be given their own floor of the museum to create a compelling exhibition.

This will be the last Biennial to take place in the Whitney’s Marcel Breuer building as the museum will be moving to a new Renzo Piano-designed building in the meatpacking district in 2015.