Washington Park (0021) Events - Festival of Arts - Fashion shows, 1971
1 2024-12-16T21:37:37+00:00 Chicago Collections 431f9dab59736c3ae79a00931c36c75244c10b48 532 1 Four women standing in front of a banner that reads "2nd Annual Festival of Arts" at the Washington Park fieldhouse in 1971. The Festival was sponsored by the Chicago Parks District at multiple locations throughout the city. plain 2024-12-16T21:37:37+00:00 cgp_spe_p00001_103_019_003 Special Collections, Chicago Public Libraries Chicago Collections 431f9dab59736c3ae79a00931c36c75244c10b48This page is referenced by:
-
1
2024-12-16T21:37:37+00:00
About the Exhibit
1
About the Exhibit
plain
2024-12-16T21:37:37+00:00
Since the opening of the 57th Street Art Fair in 1948, Chicago has served as host to hundreds of art fairs and visual arts festivals; by 1965 the Chicago Defender reported “cultural calendars list well over 50 art fairs in Chicagoland from May to September.” Some of these events have long histories, while others occurred once and faded away. This exhibit is not a comprehensive survey of art fairs in Chicago, but instead attempts to showcase a broad cross-section of art fairs that took place throughout the city, and that are represented in the current archival holdings of Chicago Collections Consortium (CCC) member institutions.
The art fairs and visual arts festivals included in this exhibit are widely varied but, with the exception of Art Chicago, the exhibit is focused on non-profit, artist-centered, community-sponsored events at which artists select, display, and market their work.Although a number of neighborhood festivals, such as Fiesta del Sol and the Square Roots Festival, now feature art and craft sales alongside other programming, we have focused on festivals that are either artist directed or highlight the visual arts as the primary purpose of the fair. We also distinguished art fairs - which require the presence of the artist and encourage interaction between artists and the public - from exhibitions, so we have excluded events such as Black Esthetics and the Hispanic Festival of the Arts.
We have selected objects from our member collections that we hope illustrate some of the key questions faced by Chicago’s art fairs: why does the neighborhood need an art fair? Who is permitted to show their art and under what terms? What happens when the festival outgrows the neighborhood, or when the local artists being featured can no longer afford to live in the neighborhood? Much remains to be discovered about Chicago’s art fairs and visual-arts festivals, and we hope this exhibit provides an entry point for additional research on related topics in our members' collections.
