In this review for Hyperallergic, critic Lori Waxman highlights two concurrent exhibitions at University of Illinois Chicago’s on-campus museums—Jane Addams Hull-House Museum and Gallery 400. Both exhibitions focus on the radical social and political possibilities of progressive art education in Chicago. 

“Art is for everyone, and the best way for it to get there is through the kind of pedagogical experiments that have taken place since 1889 in Chicago. That was the year that Jane Addams, Ellen Gates Starr, and Mary Keyser moved into a stately residence on the Near West Side to open a settlement house…Art making and exhibiting belonged at the Hull-House settlement because its founders believed that art was a fundamental aspect of being human, and therefore a real need of the immigrant, working-class families whose humanity they existed to serve. The other great need, then as now, is for the children of under-resourced city neighborhoods to be emboldened and enriched by all that art has to offer.”— Lori Waxman 

Read the review in Hyperallergic. 

See Learning Together: Art Education and Community at UIC Gallery 400 through December 14, 2024. 

Radical Craft: Art Education at Hull House, 1889-1935 continues through July 27, 2025 at Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.