160 Years of Making...Waves: Jane Heap
School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) alums have been making history over the last 16 decades. In our “160 Years of Making” series, we’re celebrating the people who shaped the School, Chicago, and the art world at large. Watch for more profiles as we honor this historic anniversary.
“Making no compromise with the public taste.” This was the motto of The Little Review, a groundbreaking avant-garde magazine helmed by alum Jane Heap (SAIC 1902–1905). Born in Topeka, Kansas, Heap lived much of her life between New York and London, but not before she studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), where she likely found an early affinity with the School’s iconoclastic spirit.
A publisher, literary impresario, and openly queer woman, Heap helped introduce American audiences to literary modernism as co-editor of The Little Review. The magazine was founded in 1914 by Heap’s friend and lover Margaret Anderson just blocks from SAIC’s campus in Chicago’s historic Fine Arts Building. In operation until 1929, The Little Review brought together a transatlantic group of literary, artistic, and political voices, publishing work by Ernest Hemingway, Emma Goldman, William Butler Yeats, André Breton, and many more.
In 1920, disaster struck: the U.S. Postal Service seized and burned four issues of The Little Review due to their inclusion of James Joyce’s Ulysses. Heap and Anderson were soon charged with obscenity for publishing Joyce’s literary masterpiece. At trial, their attorney called on witnesses to testify to the novel’s artistic merit and the stellar reputation of The Little Review. Still, Heap and Anderson were found guilty, fined $100, and ordered to cease publication of Ulysses.
Courtesy Newberry Library
Heap never stopped championing difficult, experimental, and uncompromising ideas—later in life, she became a key proponent of the Russian mystic George Gurdjieff. In 2006, Heap was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame. Her legacy lives on at SAIC in the School’s continued commitment to free inquiry, creative risk, and freedom of expression. Like Heap, SAIC artists, writers, and makers are encouraged to question inherited ideas, challenge public taste, and imagine new forms of culture before they are widely understood.
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago has announced the appointment of Rob Reddy as the next vice president of enrollment management.
