Driehaus Museum: A Tale of Today: Materialities
Sphenophyllum and Chains, installation view, Materialities at the Driehaus Museum. Photo credit: Robert Salazar and Robert Chaise Heishman, Bob.
Sphenophyllum and Chains (2019) is featured in A Tale of Today: Materialities, a group exhibition curated by Giovanni Aloi at the Driehaus Museum in Chicago. The exhibition invites viewers to discover the history and architectural richness of the Museum through the eyes of fourteen artists rooted in the Midwest. Generated by guest curator Dr. Giovanni Aloi and organized by the Driehaus Museum, this dynamic, three-floor exhibition includes works from artists 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, and Edra Soto, working across a variety of disciplines.
The works in the exhibition each respond to a material in the Nickerson Mansion, home to the Museum, producing a site-specific dialogue that connects the fabric of the building to distant shores, traditions, and ideologies. Featuring intimate displays and large-scale interventions, A Tale of Today: Materialities reflects upon the significant role of material histories in the creation of the current social, cultural, and ecological environments.
The works connect the past and present of the Nickerson Mansion in original and compelling ways, such as Olivia Block’s haunting video projections of animals, which reference the absent taxidermy trophies that once populated the first and second floors of the building during the early 20th century. Beth Lipman responds to glass – a prominent material across the Nickerson Mansion – with a sculpture representing Sphenophyllum and Chains, a genus of plants that went extinct 251 million years ago, as a way of reflecting on the fragility of life. Works such as Block and Lipman’s represent shifts in attitude about the natural environment from the mansion’s early inhabitants to the present.
Conceived in 2019, the A Tale of Today series fulfills the Museum’s mission to help audiences understand the relevance of the past—particularly the history of the Gilded Age—through different lenses, and to see the present with new eyes.
A Tale of Today: Materialities is part of Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that highlights the city's artistic heritage and creative communities. A Tale of Today: Materialities is funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art.
A Tale of Today: Materialities is on view February 7- April 27, 2025.