Blog
The Nickerson Series: John Gardner Low
August 26, 2020When the Nickersons commissioned their Chicago mansion, Low Art tiles, founded by John Gardner Low, were featured prominently throughout the interior decoration.
The Nickerson Series: George Washington Maher
July 13, 2020Visitors often cite the Maher Gallery as their favorite space in the Museum. It is the only room in the mansion that was altered in 1901 when the second owner Lucius George Fisher, Jr. hired George Washington Maher to create his trophy gallery. Maher's addition included the room's impressive stained-glass dome and lacquered cherry bookcases for Fisher's rare book collection. A massive wood-burning fireplace was installed and decorated with an Art Nouveau glass mosaic mantle facing of iridescent, opalescent and metallic luster glass.
The Chap-Book: Chicago’s “Little” Magazine (1894-1898)
June 30, 2020The Chap-Book followed in the tradition of the cheap small pamphlets or book of tales, short stories, ballads, poems, illustrations, and advertisements sold on the street of most significant cities in England and France since the eighteenth century. But it was also more...
The Nickerson Series: William August Fiedler
June 12, 2020While Burling and Whitehouse were the architects for the Nickerson’s home (built from 1879-1883), the elaborate interiors were the combined work of the highly skilled Chicago-based designers R. W. Bates & Co. and August Fiedler, along with some work by George A. Schastey & Co. Fiedler’s impeccable attention to the smallest elements of style shine in the marble and woodwork throughout the Nickerson Mansion.
The Nickerson Series: Edward J. Burling
May 27, 2020Edward J. Burling was, arguably, the first great architect in Chicago – a city of great architects. Along with his partner Francis M. Whitehouse, he was also the architect of the Nickerson Mansion.
Victorian Parlor Games & Puzzles for a Pandemic
April 28, 2020Parlor (or parlour) games were popular during the Victorian era in Great Britain and the United States. Many of the games involved logic, word-play, dramatics, and simple creativity without the use of any equipment that would not be readily available in the parlor. Feel free to throw on your best hat, make some tea and finger sandwiches, and unplug from the 21st century for a while with a parlor game…it’s great fun!
A Tale of Today: Emerging Artists Fellowship - Darrell McKinney and Luis Rodríguez Rosario
July 22, 2019The Driehaus Museum has launched A Tale of Today: Emerging Artists Fellowship as a two-year pilot program that will engage with four Chicago-based artists of color each year to promote their careers and expand their networks using the Museum’s resources and its home, the Nickerson Mansion, as a springboard. Learn a little more about two of the Fellows in our inaugural class, Darrell McKinney and Luis Rodríguez Rosario.
Reflections on Opening Weekend
July 08, 2019The Driehaus Museum's A Tale of Today: Emerging Artist Fellows reflect on the events of the opening weekend of A Tale of Today: Yinka Shonibare CBE, four months ago. The event marked the museum's inaugural contemporary art exhibition and the announcement of the Fellowship.
A Tale of Today: Emerging Artists Fellowship - Brittney Leeanne Williams & Jeffly Gabriela Molina
June 10, 2019The Driehaus Museum has launched A Tale of Today: Emerging Artists Fellowship which engages with four Chicago-based artists of color each year to promote their careers and expand their networks using the Museum’s as a springboard. Learn a little more about two of the Fellows in our inaugural class, Jeffley Gabriella Molina and Brittney Leeanne Williams.
Halloween: From Ancient Britain to Gilded Age America
November 23, 2017Although people around the world view Halloween as a thoroughly American holiday, it has a far more complicated story than that. In fact, Halloween is a mash-up of ancient Celtic paganism, early Roman Catholicism, nineteenth-century American immigration, modern suburbanism and commercialism, and much, much more.
Poster Maniacs: Collectors of the Belle Époque
October 04, 2017The Belle Époque posters adorning the galleries of the Driehaus Museum right now shouldn’t, by all rights, exist. They are more than a century old, printed on flimsy paper, with inexpensive inks. Some were once even displayed outside, where the wind, rain, and sun of Paris in its various seasons beat down on them.
Japonisme
September 20, 2017In 1853, an event in the world of foreign relations and commercial trade transformed Western art forever: Japan opened its borders. Wares from this once heavily isolated island in the Far East began to flow into Europe for the first time since 1633.
The Poster Evolution
August 15, 2017In Paris in the nineteenth century, Jules Chéret and the other grand masters of the lithographic poster—Alphonse Mucha, Théophile-Alexandre Steinlen, Eugène Grasset, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec—took the medium from mere informational advertising to high art, causing the medium’s popularity to skyrocket.
Tragedy & Brilliance: The Life of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
July 05, 2017There is perhaps no other artist as closely associated with Paris’s ‘Beautiful Age,’ the Belle Époque, than Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. His art of the late 19th century captured the colorful whirlwind of a raucous, modernizing city, from raunchy cabaret promotions to provocative brothel scenes. He was drawn to the avant-garde performers and prostitutes at very edge of society; an outsider himself, his own experiences informed his subjects.
Marissa Davis, Events Coordinator
June 23, 2017Our staff is always asked about their backgrounds and how they came to work at the Driehaus Museum. So we wanted to share some of our amazing team with everyone. And, as always, let us know if you have any other questions.
The Sensuous Smoker
April 20, 2017This poster for Joseph Bardou Company, or JOB, a Parisian manufacturer of cigarette papers, unabashedly celebrates the sensuous delights of smoking. The young woman’s eyes are closed with pleasure as the lighted cigarette sends a smoky arabesque curving around the image. Her hair cascades around her shoulders and arms, dominating the picture frame. Her white dress, low-cut and gently loose around her body, communicates a freedom only a few women would have enjoyed in the 1890s.
Jules Chéret and the History of the Artistic Poster
March 14, 2017The history of the poster starts with black-and-white broadsides in the 1600s, which evolved in the wake of the printing press.
‘Divine Sarah’: The Great Star of the French Poster
February 01, 2017Young and stunning, with sculpted eyebrows and a head of rich brunette curls, French actress Sarah Bernhardt first captured the ardor of Paris’s theatre-going elite in the 1870s. The rest of the world’s attention inevitably followed. Admiring critics, resorting to poetic metaphor, likened her voice to pure gold, a nightingale, silver dawn, the stars and moon, and murmuring water.
Gilded Age New Year’s Traditions: Champagne and Celebrations
December 29, 2016During the Gilded Age, the American traditions of New Year’s Eve started to transition from the folk celebrations of immigrants to the elaborate soirees we are more familiar with today, especially for those of a certain class.
Favorite Holiday Traditions at the Driehaus Museum
December 09, 2016This time of year we all have our favorite holiday traditions that help us get into the spirit of the season. Below, we are happy to share with you some of the experiences that those of us who are a part of the Driehaus Museum enjoy most! We hope you enjoy and wish you a very Happy Holiday Season!
Puck, Anthony Comstock, & the “Suppression of Vice” in Chicago
November 15, 2016“The object, purpose, and aim in view of the Society and its branches, as set forth in the constitution and in the brief but pointed talk which followed the making of the report, were to put down the vile traffic in obscene books, pictures, etc., by prosecuting those responsible for it either under the Revised Statutes or the State laws. The extent of the evil, which has shown its ugly head with peculiarly refreshing boldness of late, was dwelt upon to some extent, and the movement met with the unqualified moral and financial support of all present. The constitution was unanimously adapted…”
World’s Fair Puck
November 01, 2016In 1893, Chicago put on a fair that would awe the world. The World’s Columbian Exposition, so called in honor of the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World, displayed the most fascinating innovations and arts of the period in one grand place. The fair organizers envisioned a 630-acre park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted of New York Central Park fame, filled with bone-white neoclassical buildings by such eminent architects as Henry Ives Cobb, Richard Morris Hunt, Charles McKim, and Louis Sullivan.
“The Most Perfect and Beautiful of All Wall Decorations”
October 16, 2016Standing on the shoulders of the Industrial Revolution, the Gilded Age spawned an astounding number of inventions that profoundly changed life inside the American household. Those last few decades of the 19th century will always be known as a great era of invention.
Industry News: National Museum of African American History & Culture
September 24, 2016Via The New York Times: The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture opens on Sept. 24 in Washington after a long journey.
New York’s Historic Puck Building
September 01, 2016This post is part of a series exploring the stories behind the Driehaus Museum’s latest exhibition, With a Wink and a Nod: Cartoonists of the Gilded Age.
The Manners of the Edwardian Era
May 16, 2016Queen Victoria’s son, Edward VII, had a brief reign from 1901 to 1910, but it was a decade marked by peace and prosperity at the height of the British Empire. The Edwardian period was indeed a “Gilded Age,” both in England and America.
Richard, Membership & Volunteer Coordinator
April 28, 2016Our staff is always asked about their backgrounds and how they came to work at the Driehaus Museum. So we wanted to share some of our amazing team with everyone. And, as always, let us know if you have any other questions.
The Story of the Fishers
March 30, 2016In the early decades of the 20th century, the fictional Crawley family of Downton Abbey® hosted grand dinners and fretted about the Great War. At the same time, the real Fisher family was doing the same—right here in this Gilded Age mansion the Driehaus Museum calls ‘home.’
Changing Times: A Cultural Snapshot of the Edwardian Era
March 14, 2016When you see the fashions on display in Dressing Downton™: Changing Fashion for Changing Times, you step into a broader cultural tale about the vast changes sweeping the world in the first decades of the 20th century.
[You Asked] What is Afternoon Tea?
February 12, 2016Today’s blog is part of an occasional series dedicated to answering visitors’ questions.
Corie, Museum Store Manager
January 04, 2016First name? Corie-ann What is your title and what role does your position play at the Driehaus Museum? Museum Store Manager – My job is to ensure the day to day running of the Museum Store. I also choose and buy all of the merchandise and set up all of our displays.
Emily, Museum Guide
December 02, 2015Our staff is always asked about our backgrounds and how they came to work at the Driehaus Museum. So we wanted to share some of our amazing team with everyone. And, as always, let us know if you have any other questions.
[You Asked] What’s the Story with the Crappers?
October 16, 2015You Asked… What’s the Story with the “Crapper” Toilets in the Driehaus Museum Bathrooms? Today’s blog post is part of an occasional series dedicated to answering visitors’ questions.
Laura-Caroline, Collections & Exhibitions Manager
September 14, 2015Our staff is always asked about our backgrounds and how they came to work at the Driehaus Museum. So we wanted to share some of our amazing team with everyone. And, as always, let us know if you have any other questions.
[From the Archives] Didn’t This Building Used to be Black?
August 25, 2015Today’s blog is part of an occasional series dedicated to answering visitors’ questions.
Claire, Museum Guide
August 10, 2015Our staff is always asked about our backgrounds and how they came to work at the Driehaus Museum. So we wanted to share some of our amazing team with everyone. And, as always, let us know if you have any other questions.
[New Acquisition] Mr. Vanderbilt’s House and Collection
July 30, 2015Mr. Vanderbilt’s House and Collection (1884), a beautifully bound two-volume set that brings to life William H. Vanderbilt’s monumental “Brownstone Twins” and their contents on New York’s Fifth Avenue, is now on view in the Sculpture Gallery at the Driehaus Museum.
Lindsay, Marketing Manager
July 17, 2015Our staff is always asked about our backgrounds and why we ended up working for the Driehaus Museum. So we wanted to share some of our amazing team with everyone. And, as always, let us know if you have any other questions.
Get Out and About in Chicago
July 06, 2015It’s finally summer in Chicago and you’ve done the usual: baseball game, boat tours, street festivals and so forth. It’s time to check out some of the gems of the city, some of which a lot of people don’t realize are right near them. We are going back through the archives of the Driehaus Museum Blog to suggest some great places to bike or take the train over and explore!
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Nature in Early 20th-Century Art Jewelry
June 22, 2015Art, according to John Ruskin, the influential writer of the British Arts and Crafts movement, is most beautiful when its forms are derived from nature.
New Fashion, New Jewelry
May 24, 2015Every piece of art jewelry on view in the Driehaus Museum’s latest exhibition, Maker & Muse: Women and Early 20th Century Art Jewelry, is a stunner in its own right. But this is not art in a vacuum; not jewelry for jewelry’s sake.
[From the Archives] Featured Designer: John Gardner Low
May 18, 2015John Gardner Low was a ceramics artist of about 41 when he approached the crowded exhibitions in Philadelphia at the 1876 Centennial Exposition. He was a Massachusetts man and had traveled far, like the millions of others, to see the first U.S. world’s fair.
Christina M. Reade and the Lilac Festival Crown
May 06, 2015The elegant circlet is repossé silver, crafted from melted silver spoons donated by the women of Lombard, Illinois, in 1930. It was created as a symbol of Lilac Time, the annual springtime celebration in this west-suburban village. The crown adorned the first Lilac Festival Queen—whose name and the names of several other early Queens are etched in the crown’s interior—and continues to be an integral part of the festivities today.
Anniversary of the Tragic Ending for The Ship of Dreams
April 15, 2015As we reflect today on the 103-year anniversary of a tragedy that shook an entire culture’s belief in its own bright, progressive destiny, some American teens have supposedly been surprised to discover that the RMS Titanic’s sinking was, in fact, real. (“I never knew titanic actually happened,” one tweeted. “Always thought it was just a film,” wrote another.)