A Forgotten Art Region

by Joel S. Dryer

Few scholars, dealers and collectors realize the Art Institute of Chicago was the largest school of fine art in the U. S. Going back to as early as 1868, under the Chicago Academy of Design, the school has educated tens of thousands of artists. It is no wonder a large and thriving art community was found in Chicago and the rest of Illinois.

The Illinois Historical Art Project is writing A History of lllinois Painters 1850-1950, the first ever comprehensive and scholarly reference book on Illinois artists. This is a nonprofit effort to advance scholarship on the history of Illinois art.

The book will be in two parts:

A. The front section will encompass essays on the forty most important artists of all time who were closely attached to Illinois throughout their career. This list has been refined during the past four years based upon input from the scholarly community. Factors such as creativity of style, influence among artists, success within a career and outright artistic capability have been closely studied and considered. Each essay will describe an artist's life in detail and place the artist within the context of his or her relationship to the art community in Illinois; one or several color plates will accompany the essays. Contributing authors to this section include museum curators, university professors, private art scholars and family members with a proclivity for research and writing.

B. The back section will contain a biographical dictionary with detailed timeline summaries of over 1,200 artists who were born before 1900. The birth year was chosen because this is an historical study which does not attempt to address aspects of contemporary art or artists. Each timeline will include information which will provide a valuable outline to scholars for further in-depth research and will be significantly more detailed than text found in standard art reference books.

Headings within the timelines include:

ˇ Birth/Death/Marriage ˇ Membership s / Organizations ˇ One Person Exhibitions ˇ Education and Training ˇ Awards and Honors ˇ Institutional Collections ˇ Art Employment ˇ Group Exhibitions ˇ Interesting Notes ˇ Teaching

Hundreds of timeline biographies cover artists not found in published reference books. Materials incorporated in this study include those of the major Illinois libraries and museums, historical societies, art associations and regional museum libraries. All of the daily newspapers are being read for art related material from 1870 to 1950. The art project has located numerous artist scrapbooks which have proven invaluable for information on them and their colleagues and provide extensive unpublished original source documentation.

The project has created a computerized database for all of this material. This database may be searched for any number of qualitative characteristics and can quickly show the many relationships between artists, exhibitions, institutions and art organizations. The computerized project library includes over four thousand entries encompassing over one-half million pages of materials relating specifically to Illinois art and is open to scholars by appointment. The project has contributed its resources for several studies of American art and helped scholars unlock answers to many perplexing issues and questions.

The project plans to donate almost one thousand copies of the book to American museum libraries and Illinois public libraries. Project completion of this 1,400 page book is scheduled for the year 2000.

Joel S. Dryer of Golf, Illinois is the Director of the Illinois Historical Art Project for further information call 847-486-8866 or e-mail: illart@enteract.com

ŠThe Fine Arts Trader 2009