John Neff’s photographs, currently on display at the Renaissance Society, grasp at a strange, wistful history.
Tag Archive for Renaissance Society
The Keeper
by Hannah Fullmer •
Susanne Ghez began working at the Renaissance Society on January 29, 1973, a date she can recall as easily as others know their birthdays. However, amid the celebrations toasting to a forty-year devotion to the Renaissance Society—a non-collecting contemporary art…
Passing Through
by Claire Withycombe •
Visitors at Sunday’s Renaissance Society opening of “Passing Through the Opposite of What It Approaches, Chapter 25” walked right up to the paintings, their noses nearly brushing wood.
Condensed Milk
by Nandini Ramakrishnan •
Danh Vo says, “I’m not so much concerned about things; I try not to categorize myself.” The audience nods, “mhhmm-ing” and smiling. It is, in a way, endearing. Vo sits on the stage, his legs crossed, wearing a grey shirt,…
Capturing Community
by Meaghan Murphy •
Dawoud Bey’s portraits have a habit of staring you down. You get sucked in, ensnared by the subject’s eyes and attitude. “Charita, 2002,” like many of Bey’s portraits featured in the Renaissance Society’s Picturing People, hits you full on. Direct…
Forces in Focus
by Tyler Leeds •
“Riffs” is a collection of the artist’s photographs and films. Together, the images swirl around the singular subject of life in Northern Africa, a place where colonizers came for raw resources, the Rolling Stones for drugs, and now European corporations for profit.
Do Not Touch
by Julia Silverman •
Just before last Sunday’s opening of Cathy Wilkes’s exhibit “I Give You All My Money,” Renaissance Society staff briefly convened to determine where the installation’s borders were supposed to lay. One staff member suggested that gallery-goers should be permitted to…
Saturn Ascends
by Nausicaa Renner •
An otherworldly drone wavers in and out of audible range, welcoming visitors to the show, “In a Saturnian World.” The exhibit’s walls set up a loosely circular trajectory, throwing visitors into orbit as they enter the University of Chicago’s Renaissance Society.
