Radical Craft, an exhibition, catalog, and workshop series, celebrates the work of immigrant artists and reformers at the country’s most important social settlement. The exhibition showcases Hull-House’s rarely exhibited textile collection, drawn from a wide array of immigrant traditions. Also included are handbound books from Ellen Gates Starr’s bookbindery, newly restored paintings by Alice Kellogg Tyler, and a new selection of ceramics from the historic Hull-House Kilns. The exhibition is accompanied by a unique clothbound exhibition catalog, designed by Hour Studio, and a special edition created in collaboration with The Weaving Mill.
The exhibition illuminates a network of local beginnings and international influences upon Hull-House’s approach to the practice and experience of art. By the turn of the century, Hull-House had become a nexus for educators who envisioned the arts as a tool for social reform in the immigrant communities on the Near West Side. Through paintings, textiles, metalwork, pottery, and books—largely from Hull-House’s own collection—the exhibition shows how the arts at Hull-House provided immigrant neighbors with opportunities to experience the “restorative power in the exercise of a genuine craft,” in the words of Hull-House co-founder Jane Addams (1860-1935). Radical Craft gives attention to Hull-House’s lesser-known co-founder, Ellen Gates Starr (1859-1940), who was committed to the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement and believed that art should be accessible to everyone. Notably, the exhibition also sheds new light on immigrant artists who came to Hull-House for art classes and demonstrated their heritage crafts.
Radical Craft extends Hull-House’s commitment to access to the arts for all. The Museum hots a series of workshops in ceramics and textiles in the historic Residents’ Dining Hall in partnership with Red Line Service, an arts organization led by people experiencing homelessness, and Firebird Community Arts, which offers arts instruction to people living on the South and West Sides. The workshops with shared meals take place in Fall 2024 and Spring 2025.
Radical Craft is presented in partnership with UIC Gallery 400 and its exhibition, Learning Together: Art, Education, and Community, which centers the progressive art pedagogy of a diverse group of Chicago artist educators from the mid-1960s through the 2010s, highlighting the unique teaching practices of educators working across Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods.
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An initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art in partnership with artists and organizations across the city, Art Design Chicago is a series of events and exhibitions that highlight the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities.
