Join James Rondeau, President and Eloise W. Martin Director of the Art Institute of Chicago, as he discusses the newly reopened galleries of contemporary art featuring the recently unveiled largest gift in the Art Institute’s 136-year history: the Edlis/Neeson Collection, 44 iconic works by artists such as Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jasper Johns. Under Rondeau’s curatorial leadership, the contemporary galleries have been reinstalled with a more global and diverse narrative to accompany this new gift. The installation transforms the museum’s presentation of contemporary art, bringing new depth and perspective that makes this collection the strongest of any encyclopedic art museum in the world.
Over the course of his tenure, Rondeau has organized and contributed to some of the most groundbreaking exhibitions and installations in the Art Institute’s history, including: Charles Ray: Sculpture, 1998–2015 (with Bernhard Mendes Bürgi, Kunstmuseum Basel), 2014–15; Steve McQueen (with Maja Oeri, Schaulager, Basel), 2012; Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective (with Sheena Wagstaff, Tate Modern, London—toured to National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris), 2012; Cy Twombly, The Natural World, Selected Works, 2000–2007, 2009; Jasper Johns: Gray 1955–2005 (with Douglas Druick—traveled to Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Voted Best Monographic Exhibition Nationally in 2008 by the American Section of the International Art Critics Association/AICA), 2007. Additionally Rondeau oversaw the Chicago presentations of Christopher Wool: A Retrospective, 2014 (organized by Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum) and Jeff Wall (organized by Museum of Modern Art, New York, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art), 2007.
Rondeau has published and lectured extensively, with 13 exhibition catalogues to his credit, numerous essays and articles, and talks from Basel to Madrid and from New York to San Francisco. He has been awarded many professional honors and has served on various advisory councils and boards, including the Poetry Foundation in Chicago, and as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute for Museum and Library Services. He served as commissioner and co-curator of the US Pavilion at the 49th Venice Biennale featuring artist Robert Gober.
Presented by SAIC’s Office of the Dean of Faculty.
