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Feature Article

Fine Arts Building Gallery
410 S. Michigan, Ste 433
Chicago, IL 60605-1300
tel.: 312-913-0537
http://www.fabgallery.com

Twenty committed artists, by August 1st. That's what it will take to preserve the Fine Arts Building Gallery, one of Chicago's last remaining cooperative galleries and since 1995 the heart of the historic Fine Arts Building on Michigan Avenue. With a new owner for the building, and the rising costs of real estate in Chicago, the member-funded gallery is finding itself faced either with tripling its dues to be able to sign to the commitments of a new three-year lease -- or closing altogether.

If it did, it would signal the end of over a decade of representation for artists in a location with a singular history. The Fine Arts Building Gallery is not simply a gallery -- it is a community of artists in a building dedicated to artists and the arts for over one hundred years. A historically significant, engagingly antiquarian building, no less, a Chicago and national landmark whose architectural features include the original murals dating to 1898 and the fully-restored Beaux-Arts elegance of its turn-of-the-century construction. The building is as well a historically important cultural venue, whose continuous contribution to Chicago's literary and artistic achievement dates back to well over a century. It takes only a little digging to reveal just how remarkable the building's past is, and how singular it is to have such a structure remain intact and true to its mission today -- and how the Fine Arts Building Gallery, as an artist's cooperative in an all-artist colony, has fit in so well with that mission.

The dilemma

But first, the dilemma. The Fine Arts Building, 410 South Michigan Avenue, was purchased in March 2005 from owner Tom Graham and his partner by real estate entrepreneur Robert Berger. Selling the building was a difficult choice, according to Tom and his wife Mary, herself founder of the Fine Arts Building Gallery; Tom had owned the building for twenty-six years, and both partners had long babied the vintage construction, with Tom restoring it to its former glory when he purchased it in 1980. Aside from regular operations costs and maintenance, there was the ongoing necessity of keeping the vintage 121-year-old building current with Chicago's evolving building codes. As a benefit, however, ownership made them able to keep rents low. As both are artists, and themselves keep a studio in the Fine Arts Building as well as being gallery members, there was a definite interest during their long tenure in maintaining this all-artist colony (whose denizens also include musicians, writers, architects, and professional craftspeople related to the visual and performing arts) as it had always been. As part of that mission, the Fine Arts Building Gallery was founded in 1995 by Mary Graham and a group of twelve artists; throughout the years it has hosted monthly exhibitions of works by its member artists as well as hosting invitationals and juried exhibitions showcasing national and international artists of merit.

Now, one year into the building's new ownership, the Fine Arts Building Gallery's lease has come up for renewal. The Gallery faces an August 1st deadline for the November 1st lease (which also ties in with preparing the coming year's exhibition schedule). Professing the need to bring the building's revenues in line with current maintenance costs, new owner Berger is standing firm on lease terms which include a rent triple that of the Gallery's current rent for the first year, with a further 50% hike in the second year of the lease, and another 50% increase in the third. As a member-funded cooperative gallery, there's only one way for the Fine Arts Building Gallery to meet that financial challenge: raise the members' monthly dues a corresponding amount. That would mean an increase from $50 to $150 a month for the first year alone. It is a deep dig into the pocket, for any artist.

The problems facing the Fine Arts Building Gallery are symptomatic of pressures on the affordability of artists' spaces all over Chicago as the development boom continues to flourish and real estate prices rise ever higher. According to Mary Graham, research into relocating the Gallery reveals that at current Chicago prices, the rents would be the same or even more than Berger's offer -- and not even at this premium Michigan Avenue location, but in the comparatively far-flung West Loop area. At the same time, internal issues face the Gallery: the new owner has restricted ground-level signage, meaning the Fine Arts Building Gallery's presence, up and at the back of the fourth floor, no longer receives the prominent representation it once had down where pedestrians and passers-by make the pavement the place where all the action is. (At the time of this writing, the Gallery had a single street-level sign posted in the building's south entrance archway.) Artists, naturally, were concerned. Chicago visitors, more than its natives, are the main source of art sales in the city. Walk-ins from foot traffic have long been one of the mainstays of the Gallery's ability to garner interest and make sales: the location is well situated to gather in those on foot heading to or from the Art Institute, sightseers attracted to the dramatic sculptures nearby at Congress and Michigan, or those simply walking the length of downtown Chicago's most famous and visible promenade. A further concern for the cooperative was the lack of key leadership, now that Tom and Mary are retiring. The position is open for a strong leader to bring order to the cooperative and continue its mission; the individual wishing to fill those shoes has yet to step forward.

Robert Berger, it may be recalled, made the news in Chicago's art scene in 2001 with his intention to mount cameras in the hallways of the Flat Iron Building, 1579 N. Milwaukee Ave., another Chicago all-artist studio building and one of the central venues of the annual Around The Coyote fall art fair. Berger, who had purchased the Flat Iron in 1993, wished to broadcast the feeds as a kind of reality TV, both on the internet and on a large screen mounted at the intersection of Milwaukee, North and Damen, stating it would bring international attention to the resident artists and their work. After a great deal of controversy, the idea was eventually dropped. With a stated intent of keeping things mainly as they are at the Fine Arts Building (despite a concurrent wish to make it "the future site of 'Chicago's answer to Motown'", according to the Chicago Reader), changes seem to have been minimal to date. The local and national landmark status of the Fine Arts Building require any owner to preserve specific features, including the facade, lobby, staircase and murals; other areas of the building may be altered, if desired, but have been left intact to date. As to web cams, the building's slick new web site at http://www.fineartsbuildingchicago.com/ (also linked at http://fineartsbuilding.tv/), replacing the old http://www.fineartsbuildingchicago.com/index.html, features four, which appear to be static, relatively unintrusive feeds from two exterior and two interior cameras (they may be live, but neither Safari nor Firefox browsers would activate the 'play' commands).

Faced with a sharp increase in dues, a new three-year commitment (previously, membership was annual), loss of visibility, and lack of key leadership, when the new terms were put before the current cadre of Fine Arts Building Gallery member artists, twenty of twenty-four declined to renew. As Tom Graham noted, the raise in rent might have been more palatable had it been instituted more gradually; according to him however, Berger's representative stands firm on the offer, insisting it is a rock-bottom figure. Unless new members can be found to replace those who have pulled out -- or some new permutation of funding, grants, or sponsorship can be devised -- the cooperative gallery will dissolve.

Eleven years of excellence

And that would be a shame: the Fine Arts Building Gallery has long hosted exhibitions of excellence. The Gallery was founded by Mary Graham in August 1995 as a for-profit cooperative endeavor, with an initial group of twelve member artists. A juried application process was put in place, to keep the quality of the cooperative's artistic endeavor held to standards of excellence. Members are required to live within 50 miles of Chicago, both keeping the constituency local, and as a necessity to fulfill the requirement that members, as part of their cooperative agreement, also serve as gallery staff. Through the years there have been as many as 50 members at a single time. Although the Gallery focuses primarily on exhibitions of its participating member artists, it has also hosted national and international invitationals. The gallery space has further permitted of a permanent rotating exhibition by member artists, ensuring that in addition to the current exhibition, there is always a variety of work to see by those whose careers one might follow. The Gallery's space itself was expanded within the past several years to add a third room, allowing the hosting of two concurrent exhibitions as well as the permanent exhibition at any one time. The Gallery focuses primarily on visual fine arts, although it does include other media as well. It also maintains a web site, http://www.fabgallery.com, which includes a full roster of member artists and images of their work, and links to individual artists' web sites.

The Fine Arts Building Gallery has also been able to offer extended support to artists resident in the building, over and above its core of members. The Fine Arts Building Management had already been an active patron in the arts from 1992-1995, sponsoring an annual Artists in Residence Group Exhibition in Curtiss Hall on the 10th floor. Originally held over a single weekend, it gradually increased to a ten-day event. Once the Fine Arts Building Gallery was established, the Building Management continued to sponsor the Annual Exhibition, but moved it from Curtiss Hall to the Gallery and extended the show from ten days to 4-6 weeks. With the building management's continued support, participating artists were charged a modest fee of $25. Through the years as many as 50 building artists joined this annual event, in addition to the Gallery artists. (In 2006, the new building management declined to be a sponsor; the Artists in Residence Exhibition went on as planned, but the per-artist fee increased to $50.)

The Fine Arts Building Gallery has been instrumental in giving artists the type of exposure that launches careers. A cooperative gallery has freedoms many commercial galleries do not. At a time when many River North and West Loop galleries are pulling back, retrenching into conservative stable shows of art already in their holdings, The Fine Arts Building Gallery continues to encourage the exposure of new work by its member artists. The Gallery's guidelines for an exhibition specify that exhibited work "is new, completed within two years and not shown previously". That ensures that there is something always new to see, no matter what the commercial currents -- and something new to see is what brings in the interested viewers, and buyers, keen to experience the latest in Chicago art. It further allows the Gallery to exhibit art based on the endeavors of its artists, rather than merely that following the popular commercial trend of the moment. As a cooperative gallery, the Fine Arts Building Gallery is one of the last in Chicago, the other being ARC on Milwaukee Avenue. ARC, however, is a women-only gallery (according to their web site, membership is limited to women, though art by both men and women is shown in its exhibitions); so the Fine Arts Building Gallery may well be the last co-ed cooperative in Chicago.

Architectural history

But even other cooperatives would not have the unique setting the Fine Arts Building Gallery has: the Fine Arts Building itself, with its 100-year history, maintained to this day, as a home to the visual, literary, and performing arts. The Fine Arts Building was built in 1885 and was originally constructed as a carriage factory and showroom for the Studebaker Corporation. Its original name, "Studebaker Building", is still incised into the center of the red-granite facade. At the time, Studebaker was among the largest manufacturers of horse-drawn carriages in the world, with annual production of 75,000 and sales topping $2 million in 1887. From 1885-1896, carriages were assembled on the upper floors of the building, displayed on the first four floors, and driven out through the massive granite archways that now lead the visitor into deep entrance hall now inscribed with a passage inspired by A.H. Dobson's poem Ars Victrix. The eight-story building was designed by Chicago architect Solon S. Beman (1853-1914), most well known for his role in designing Pullman, Illinois, the planned industrial community organized by George Pullman. The multiple bays, sweeping arches, and weightiness of the granite and limestone elements are characteristic of the Richardsonian Romanesque style. Studebaker's presence is still felt in a feature which no doubt delights artists with studios on the first several floors -- the unusually large-scale windows, a relic of the days when these floors served as the carriage showrooms, and an architectural marvel in a building with load-bearing granite walls.

In 1896, when the Studebaker Corporation moved to larger quarters on Wabash Avenue, Beman was brought in again to retrofit the building as a center for the arts. The top floor was removed and three extra stories were added, making the building eleven stories high and giving it its eclectic look: the first seven stories retain the original Romanesque arches and monumental weight, while the top floors, though following the layout of window bays, have a distinctively more modern appearance. Renovations were completed in 1898. Rechristened the Fine Arts Building, the building was reopened as an artist's colony. Its spaces included two theaters on the ground floor, with the rest of the building given over to performance spaces, artist's studios and offices for musicians, writers, architects and the like. Many of the building's original features remain today, including the sweeping drama of the vaulted, nationally landmarked lobby, the vintage hand-run brass elevators, and the Art Nouveau murals by American artists on the tenth floor. Noted names among the mural artists include Chicago muralist Frederic Clay Bartlett, who, among other works, also directed the painting of the murals in the Fourth Presbyterian Church on Michigan Avenue; Charles Francis Browne, whose paintings are also represented in the holdings of the Art Institute; Chicago portrait artist Ralph Clarkson; Oliver Dennett Grover, one of the "Duveneck boys" who studied with Whistler in Venice; and illustrator Frank X. Leyendecker, younger brother of The Saturday Evening Post cover illustrator J.C. Leyendecker and whose own credits include magazine covers for Vanity Fair, Vogue, and Collier's. Several of the artists also maintained studios in the building.

A civilizing influence

There are further 'notable names' associated with the Fine Arts Building. As significant as the visible pleasures of the building's architecture is its central role as an edifice housing the literary and artistic ambitions of turn-of-the-century Chicago. To call it a 'renaissance' is not, strictly speaking, correct; there was no rebirth, but rather, an attempt to introduce to this brawny city the elements of refinement with which older and more established cities were infused as a matter of course. Until the late 1800s Chicago had been built primarily on industry, politics and commerce. East Coast cities such as New York, Boston and Philadelphia already had an established cultural heritage (and even then, their residents traveled to Europe to cities even more deeply steeped in literature and fine arts, to imbibe the heights of human intellectual achievement). Chicago was a cultural wilderness. In this cultural outpost, social activists such as Jane Addams (who saw in art and literature a necessary moral force, a civilizing influence), and writers, artists, poets and musicians gathered in clubs and organizations. In part they came together for a necessary sense of community of intellectual life; and in part, they were spurred by the desire to enrich Chicago culturally with literature and the arts. And, in many cases, where they gathered was the Fine Arts Building.

Harriet Monroe's Poetry magazine was produced here, the magazine which first introduced the works of Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and e.e. cummings to American audiences. It was only later they were recognized as literary giants; at the time, only an alternative press such as Poetry would publish authors so far beyond mainstream tastes. The Dial, the celebrated literary magazine, also had its offices here. The building was home to several prominent clubs and organizations, including the social club The Little Room (1890s-1931), which counted among its members Jane Addams, Chicago sculptor Lorado Taft, author Theodore Dreiser, and other noted writers, musicians and artists who met in a studio in the Fine Arts Building to discuss problems of art, aesthetics, and social responsibility. The Little Room also published a literary digest entitled "The Little Review". The Caxton Club, a gathering of rare book devotees founded in 1895, had its private club rooms in the Fine Arts Building from 1899-1918. Lorado Taft also had a studio here (room 1038), as did, on a less literary note, the author of The Wizard of Oz, L. Frank Baum.

Chicago's turn-of-the-century cultural boom lasted until the 20s and 30s. Most of the institutions from that time have vanished. The Fine Arts Building remains. Only rarely is a building so steeped in history still a working edifice, still open to the public, and still fulfilling its original mission.

'The Soul of the Building'

In both mission and location, the Fine Arts Building Gallery is a part of this heritage of bringing arts and culture to Chicago. As Mary Graham noted, the Gallery has been considered by many to be "the soul of the building". As the building's premium gathering-spot, one can easily see this being the case. An artist's studio is for the most part a private affair. He may invite others, or see visitors by appointment, but for the most part it is a self-contained workspace, and solitary. Not only does the Fine Arts Building Gallery's cooperative structure involve the involvement of a group of member artists, it serves, as well, to invite the participation of the public. Even non-artist tenants have enjoyed joining in the monthly exhibition openings, where conversation flows over wine and cheese in the presence of new art. If there is a common thread running through the century of experiences in this all-artist building, it is community. Few other locations can still boast artist's studios with such lineage, in the same edifice as a member-run gallery many of whose participants are also resident in the building. And that the Fine Arts Building Gallery, and the Fine Arts Building, continue the mission of preserving art and culture begun over a century ago is a singular happening.

But Chicago has long been known for cannibalizing its foremost architectural treasures. And, as the recent announcement of the closure of the Three Arts Building, joining the Terra Museum as yet another Chicago arts institution devolving itself from a physical reality to a grant-funding entity, reveals, venerability is no safeguard. And times do change. Artists have alternatives in 2006 they did not have in 1995. The Internet, for one, which can bring an artist's work not just to a handful of visitors, but theoretically, to the world. And yet -- that's still not community, something rapidly dwindling in today's computer-isolated age, and something the Fine Arts Building Gallery has been excellent in maintaining, for its members, its resident artists, and for the newcomer or the staid follower of Chicago's art world who finds in these places a valuable opportunity to interface with living artists, to participate in the forefront of art as it is being made, not merely what the commercial trends dictate. The need to maintain the 'civilizing influence' of the fine arts is as vital today as it was in Jane Addams' day, and perhaps even more so.

"All passes - art alone endures." It is axiomatic that change is inevitable. It is true as well that times such as these, of ferment and transformation, are also those of the greatest opportunity. What is adaptable survives. Whatever is to come, one must thank the Grahams for their longtime stewardship of this unique vintage building, and for nurturing a gallery which for over a decade has enriched Chicago's artistic community considerably with its exhibitions, in a building both symbolically and literally involved for over a century with Chicago's cultural aspirations. And in the meantime, one may hope devoutly for a new generation of the Fine Arts Building Gallery's cooperative effort. Twenty committed artists, by August 1st, to keep its mission alive.

The Fine Arts Building Gallery is located at 410 S. Michigan Avenue, on the fourth floor of the Fine Arts Building. The gallery is currently featuring two exhibitions by member artists, Andrea Harris, In The Forest: Recent Paintings and Roger Bole, Recent Works: Paintings and Giclee Prints, both from July 6-29, 2006. The gallery's hours are Wednesday through Saturday, 12p-6p. A casual closing reception for the exhibitions will be held Saturday, July 29, 1-4p.

--Katherine R. Lieber

Katherine R. Lieber has edited ArtScope.net's Visual Arts reviews since 1998. Ms. Lieber is Editor and Associate Producer for ArtScope.net.

Editorial Note: Books mentioned in www.artscope.net reviews, may be purchased through this site's Amazon.com link.

Austin Henry Dobson (1840 - 1921), English poet, Ars Victrix: "All passes. Art alone / Enduring stays to us; / The Bust outlasts the throne, / The Coin, Tiberius."