Chicago’s first art galleries elevated the city’s image, but created barriers

What started as a small trading post turned into a busy industrial hub. This was Chicago in the 1840s. Modes of transportation were horse, water and rail, new buildings were quickly going up and the city’s burgeoning meatpacking industry earned its reputation as “Hog Butcher for the World.”

“We know that we're known for lumber and stockyards, but you know we have art too,” said Diane Dillon, scholar in residence at the Newberry Library. “Chicago is finally declaring to the world, ‘We are not just your hog butcher.”

Even before the 1893 Columbian Exposition put Chicago on the map, wealthy homes, county fairs and trade shows displayed original art by both local and international artists. Accordingly, by the mid-1800s, the city was looking to update its image.

Today, experiencing art in Chicago is merely a matter of stepping outside to see a beautiful mural or visiting institutions like the Art Institute or the DuSable Museum. This got one artist and Curious City listener wondering about the very beginnings of art on display in Chicago. What was the city’s first art gallery?

Answering this question requires a journey back to 1840s Chicago, to understand what was considered a gallery then and who was included in those spaces.

19th-century art spaces were exclusive

Naming Chicago’s first art gallery depends on what one considers a gallery at all. Today, we think of it as a space where the public can see art pieces for sale, with blank white walls as the backdrop.

In the 1840s, exclusive spaces opened, many of which called themselves galleries. According to Anne Helmreich, director of the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution, these were often places for patrons to see expensive art for sale, such as an auction house or an art dealer. Many focused on fine art, like sculptures, paintings and prints. The exhibitions were often marketed to a formally educated, middle- to upper-class audience. Entry often cost 50 cents, which Helmreich said was “not entirely cheap.”

Daguerreotype photography was invented in the 1830s. It wasn’t considered art until the 20th century, but some of the most prominent Chicago photographers displayed both their own photos and paintings, as well as works of other artists, in their galleries at least as early as 1849.

John Carl Frederik Polycarpus von Schneidau made what was considered the first photograph of Chicago. It captured a disastrous 1849 flood, which earned him the nickname “Chicago’s First Photographer.” But historical records show he called his space a studio, not a gallery.

S. Copeland, William Gunnison Chamberlain and Alexander Hesler were other famous photographers with studios they considered galleries. Hesler photographed presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln and created iconic panorama-style images of Chicago. He employed painters and photographers and hosted exhibitions in his gallery.

But it wasn’t until 1865 that Chicago saw the modern idea of a commercial art gallery: Crosby's Opera House and Art Gallery. The space was immense in size and scope, complete with 18-foot ceilings and a skylight. Artists taught free classes at the opera house for a brief time.

Pamela Bannos, professor in the Department of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University, said Crosby’s may have been Chicago's first cultural institution with both a gallery space and a music enterprise.

“This basically establishes the beginning of Chicago's cultural, and specifically art, entry into the world, at least into the States,” she said.

Six years after opening, Crosby’s burned down during the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, along with many studios and gallery spaces in Chicago.

The city’s art scene had to be rebuilt. In 1879, a group of artists established the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, which would later become the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Bannos said this was one of the first instances of artists defining their own education and presentation democratically. It was considered a more progressive institution, welcoming women to study and display art. The Academy was founded with the goal of affordable art education and prioritizing artists’ financial interests.

Who was allowed gallery space?

Most 19th-century art in commercial galleries was created by wealthy white men with access to art supplies and education. There were many other artists whose work wasn’t displayed in galleries, often because of their race and class.

Native artists in the Great Lakes region made intricate beadwork and wove black ash baskets, bandolier bags and other designs. But these works were often displayed at fairs as artifacts, not art, according to Lois Taylor Biggs, the Rice Curatorial Fellow in Native American Art at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Middle- and upper middle-class Chicagoans traded these works and displayed them in their homes. Still, they regarded Native art as ethnographic evidence of the “Dying Native.”

“When you look at collections from this period, the artists are unnamed, and sometimes that’s because the belongings are looted, stolen,” said Biggs, who is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and of White Earth Ojibwe descent.

Indigenous artists were also creating paintings using modern materials, according to Jacqueline Lopez, Indigenous Chicago researcher at Northwestern University. However, they were prohibited from displaying it, as it deviated from the primitive stereotype fair organizers perpetuated.

Black Chicagoans also struggled to have their art prominently displayed. The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition had the potential to exhibit contributions and achievements of Black people nearly 30 years after the end of slavery. But fair organizers refused to allow Black people a voice in the development of the exposition. Leaders like Ida B. Wells and Frederick Douglass distributed protest pamphlets, countering the negative stereotypes on display. Still, Black artist Henry Ossawa Tanner was able to show his paintings at the fair where he was invited to speak at a forum held by the Congress on Africa.

In 1895, painter William A. Harper broke some barriers becoming one of the first Black students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where his art was displayed.

In 1920, the Arts Club of Chicago featured the watercolor paintings of Indigenous artist Awa Tsireh (also known as Alfonso Roybal).

Later in the ‘20s, Hull House exhibited art by immigrants, Black artists and women. Simultaneously, Black photographers opened several galleries that not only displayed their art but strengthened community ties.

A century later, Chicago’s art scene is still not perfect; some institutions continue to exclude people on the basis of race, class and gender. But more progressive art centers, founded in spite of exclusive 19th-century show spaces, also continue creating space for the dynamic art Chicago has to show. Helmreich said this is vital for artists, not just because they can show and sell their work: “They make the work to have those conversations, to be in dialogue with others — and the exhibition is the platform.”