Water Tower Arts District: Chicago's Oldest New Arts District
Mar 12, 2019
The Graham Foundation is pleased to announce its partnership in the launch of the Water Tower Arts District. The District convenes fifteen of Chicago’s renowned cultural organizations, all located within walking distance of the historic Chicago Water Tower on Michigan Avenue, in a unique cultural coalition and includes:
(1) The Arts Club of Chicago, (2) Broadway in Chicago’s Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place, (3) City Gallery in the Historic Water Tower, (4) Graham Foundation, (5) International Museum of Surgical Science, (6) Lookingglass Theatre Company, (7) Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA), (8) Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), (9) the Newberry Library, (10) Poetry Foundation, (11) Porchlight Music Theatre, (12) Richard Gray Gallery, (13) the Richard H. Driehaus Museum, (14) the Ruth Page Center for the Arts, and (15) the Society of Architectural Historians.
The coalition brings synergy to the group’s creative efforts, strengthens the cultural vigor of the community, and encourages citizens and visitors to enjoy and explore the multitude of diverse cultural opportunities in the area.
Inspired by the resilience of the Chicago Water Tower—built in 1869 and one of the only buildings to survive the Great Chicago Fire of 1871—the Water Tower Arts District extends the legacy of the area which thrived in the early twentieth century as Towertown, an epicenter of the arts akin to Greenwich Village in New York or the Latin Quarter in Paris. Today, the District offers world-class programming in architecture, art, dance, design, film, history, literature, music, performance, and theater. “This important partnership of arts organizations reveals Chicago’s rich cultural diversity available to residents and visitors,” said Mayor Rahm Emanuel. “The Water Tower Arts District will bring new energy and attention to our local cultural institutions, which are vital to the cultural tourism of our city and state.”
In its first collective effort, the District commissioned Chicago-based artist Assaf Evron to create photographic portraits of all member organizations which feature on the website, designed by Michael Savona and Tobey Albright and Mollie Edgar of Hour, all also local to Chicago. The website features a hotlinked map to all of the organizations, with descriptions and upcoming activities. Each cultural organization brings support and resources to the coalition which, in turn, provides new collective opportunities to serve Chicago and extend and strengthen their educational outreach in the community. Water Tower Arts District members look forward to exploring opportunities that will fuel collaborative creative efforts and activities to further enhance cultural enrichment for the City of Chicago. Follow @watertowerarts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and visit watertowerarts.org to learn more.
The upcoming partnership with Graham Foundation and Poetry Foundation to present “Near/Miss: Bollingen Prize Poetry Reading,” an evening with American poet Charles Bernstein, represents the initiative to develop integrated programming and special events across member organizations. In the April 16, 6 p.m. program at the Madlener House, Bernstein, recipient of 2019 Bollingen Prize for American Poetry—the premier prize for lifetime achievement in poetry, administered by Yale University—will read poems from Near/Miss (University of Chicago Press, 2018), honored by the prize, and more recent work. Presented on the occasion of the Graham’s current exhibition Eternal Gradient: Arakawa and Madeline Gins, Bernstein will also read works relating to the work of Arakawa and Gins that reflect his decades-long friendship with the artists.