Driehaus Museum

2025

Sphenophyllum and Chains on view at Driehaus Museum, IL; photo credit: Bob (Robert Chase Heishman and Robert Salazar

The Driehaus Museum is characterized by a rich history and an impressive wealth of architectural styles. The site of the Museum, the Gilded Age-era Samuel Nickerson Mansion, offers a rare opportunity to map important and often overlooked histories and genealogies. While the unique design and architecture of the Mansion have been documented and studied, A Tale of Today: Materialities  proposes to investigate more deeply the materials that comprise the very fabric of the building.                                                                                                   

Materialities  invited artists to select a specific material from the Driehaus Museum to engage in a new materialist dialogue with it. In conversation with guest curator Dr. Giovanni Aloi, the artists researched histories of their chosen material and produced integrated response designed to uncover hidden cultural, historical, and ecological networks that bind the very fabric of the house to distant shores, peoples, skill sets, traditions, ideologies, and economic forces.  

Artists included: Rebecca Beachy, Jonas Becker, Olivia Block, Barbara Cooper, Richard Hunt, Industry of the Ordinary, Beth Lipman, Luftwerk, Dakota Mace, Bobbi Meier, Laleh Motlagh, Ebony G. Patterson, Jefferson Pinder, Edra Soto

Sphenophyllum and Chains, detail, on view at Driehaus Museum, IL; photo credit: Bob (Robert Chase Heishman and Robert Salazar