The Thompson Center – What Will The State Do With 150+ Art Objects?

The Gov says the “Monument with Standing Beast” will be moved to the “new” State Office Building.

Phew. Problem solved!

Not so fast. What about the other 150+ art works inside the building? What happens to them?

Did you know they are there? How about this:

As opposed to Dubuffet’s work, this one is specific to the building. According to the John Henry Sculpture site, “Bridgeport was commissioned by the State of Illinois Art in Public Places Program for the ground floor interior of the State of Illinois Center. Bridgeport, at that time was the largest sculpture commission in Illinois’ History.”

The State of Illinois Art in Public Places Program. Did you know such a thing exists?

“Recognizing the importance of art in the lives of Illinois citizens, Governor James R. Thompson, on August 3, 1977, signed into law Public Act 80-241. This Act created the “% for Art Program”, which sets aside a 1/2 a percent of the total monies appropriated for construction of state-funded public buildings to be used for the purchase of art. . . . Since July 1, 1978, the state has obtained more than 600 works of art, varying in size, shape, and medium, for 25 projects located throughout Illinois. The James R. Thompson Center has the largest single collection of contemporary Illinois art, with more than 150 displayed works, which exhibit the exceptional talents of our state’s artists and restake Chicago’s claim as the cultural hub of the Midwest.”

This information comes from the James R. Thompson Center’s “Permanent Art Collection” page on the state’s Central Management System website (https://www2.illinois.gov/cms/About/JRTC/Pages/ArtCollection.aspx) That page has a list of the art works in the center. It is not up to date, but it’s close enough for us to understand the sheer size and importance of the art collection in the Center.

Unfortunately, since the events of September 11, 2001, the upper levels of the Center are inaccessible to the public except through a security system, which allows entry only to the place in the building where one has legitimate business. The original idea of the building’s design – that the body politic should be able to see its government’s business actually being done – was also the idea of the art collection: that it constituted a public gallery to which the public could always have access. I remember a conversation I had with the late Richard L. Gray, who, along with his wife Mary Lakritz Gray, was of significant importance in Chicago’s arts community. Richard had been a member of a committee that oversaw the Thompson Center collection. I told him that the collection had become, for the most part, inaccessible to the public. He was quite surprised and dismayed because he subscribed wholeheartedly to the idea of total public access to that collection.

In recent times the Thompson Center art that the general public could view freely varied between 12 and 15 works. Of course, the Dubuffet “Monument,” standing outside, is one, as is “Bridgeport,” shown above, in the main lobby. If you use the up escalator on the east side of the lobby and walk all the way around the mezzanine almost to the down escalator, you’ll encounter Richard Hunt’s “Illinois River Landscape.”

In the same area is an entrance to a conference area. It is usually open to the public. It contains as many as ten works. The number varies depending upon whether or not one or more of the objects has been lent for exhibitions elsewhere. Included in this mini-exhibit are paintings by Karl Wirsum and Gladys Nilsson of Hairy Who fame and Phyllis Bramson and Eleanor Spiess-Ferris, both often included in the discussion of “Chicago Imagists.” Sadly, some of the art is not in good repair. The Phyllis Bramson, “Innocent Diversions,” is a multimedia work of painting and ceramics. It should have 4 pottery objects atop its frame. Two are missing. At the entrance of the conference center, near the Karl Wirsum painting “Public Squeaker #1,” are two lamps designed for the governor’s office in the Center. Designed by Deborah Newmark and Stephen Wierzboski, AIA, they are called “Rain Cloud Lamp” and “Sun Cloud Lamp.”

They are indeed art objects – each one of a kind, each distinctive. Sadly, “Sun Cloud Lamp” is missing its glass table. It’s as if these lamps, one of them damaged like the Bramson painting, were shoved in a closet, never to be plugged in again. And, in fact, as a curator in the State Art Museum space formerly on the other side of the mezzanine (closed by the Rauner administration) once told me, the works in this conference area are there because state employees did not want them in their offices. So this mini-gallery is a place for the rejects – and so much the better for the public!

The art in just this limited space is worth visiting and revisiting. But it soon will have to go elsewhere, as will the entire collection, 150+ important works of art that, in the best of all possible worlds, will become available to the public again. I’m not confident, given the office buildings that will house employees leaving the Thompson Center. It does not seem that anyone has given thought to the John Henry, the Richard Hunt, the Karl Wirsum, never mind the Terry Karpowitz, the Ray Yoshida, the William Conger on the other floors. They are supposed to be ours to see. How will that happen again?

Edmund J. McDevitt
July 2022