Lumpen #137: Artists Run Chicago

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Issue 137 of Lumpen joins the Hyde Park Art Center’s Artists Run Chicago 2.0 exhibition in celebrating the city’s artist-driven projects. The magazine was a chance to not only honor but also to research and to hear out from the artists and organizers running platforms for other artists and communities in the city. 

In the spirit of cooperation that marks artist-run culture thrive in Chicago, Lumpen 137 is a collaborative initiative undertaken by Public Media Institute in partnership with Hyde Park Art Center and Sixty Inches From Center.

In interviews and essays with artists who run galleries and cultural spaces in Chicago, Lumpen 137 gives us profiles, characteristic histories, and pieces of advice from the community. Two maps compare the spaces that were part of the first “Artists Run Chicago” show, in 2009, and those that make up the exhibition this year. A comprehensive directory lists over two hundred artist-run projects that operate in Chicago invites the reader to begin to explore beyond the cultural sites they may know, and venture into second bedrooms or basements with exhibitions of exciting, experimental work hosted by the city’s artist communities. 

Lumpen also draws a picture of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on artist-run Chicago. With graphs and quotations, the results of a survey completed by forty-three spaces between May and August of 2020.

To coincide with the physical launch of Lumpen 137, Public Media Institute is also launching artistrunshicago.com - which features a map and directory of artist-run platforms in Chicago. The map currently shows over two-hundred artist-run spaces and projects that are currently active or have recently ended in Chicago. But this is just the start: we hope to get many more through the online form where anyone can submit a new space to the map.

Contributions by: Agitator Gallery, Allison Peters Quinn, Annette LePique, Bad at Sports, Brandon Alvendia, Cecília Resende Santos, Christina Nafziger, Dan Gunn, Gareth Kaye, Hyde Park Art Center, James Schenck, Lori Waxman, Maddy Stocking, Margaret Welsh, S. Nicole Lane, Noah Hanna, Public Access, Terrain, Yollocalli

Research by: Cecília Resende Santos, Maddy Stocking, Mána Taylor Hjörleifsdóttir

Lead Editor: Marina Resende Santos

Edited by: Mairead Case. Nora Catlin, Ed Marszewski, Maddy Stocking, Nick Wylie

Creative Direction & Design: Some All None / Jeremiah Chiu & Itsyana Campa

Cover: Itsayana Campa