Traveling Exhibitions

There are no traveling exhibitions at the moment.

Past Exhibitions

Past Exhibition

Glass to Garden: Tiffany Inspired Floral Designs

November 30, 2023- January 7, 2024

This exhibition will showcase commissioned floral design installations from local floral designers in dialogue with work by Louis Comfort Tiffany and Tiffany Studios. The exhibition is curated by Elizabeth Cronin, the owner of Chicago’s Asrai Garden—and widely known as one of the judges on HBO Max’s competition program, “Full Bloom”—who has selected both the participating floral designers and the Tiffany objects on view. Glass to Garden will run until January 7, 2024.

A seminal artist of the Gilded Age, Louis Comfort Tiffany is the best known and most widely collected figure in late nineteenth and early twentieth century American decorative arts. Tiffany relied on forms and colors inspired by nature to create a virtuosic array of windows, lamps, vases, and accessories. By bringing contemporary floral installations together with Tiffany objects,  the exhibition will demonstrate a new way of seeing these objects—taking them beyond their more traditional presentation and vividly connecting them with the natural forms that so inspired their creation.

Past Exhibition

Hector Guimard: Art Nouveau to Modernism

June 22, 2023 - November 5, 2023

Hector Guimard: Art Nouveau to Modernism explores the life and work of Hector Guimard (1867-1942), the French architect and designer whose name is synonymous with the French Art Nouveau movement. Bringing together furniture and design objects including jewelry, metalwork, ceramics, drawings, and textiles from collections worldwide, this is the first major American museum exhibition devoted to Guimard since 1970.

Guimard is best known for his designs for the Paris Métro entrances, but Hector Guimard: Art Nouveau to Modernism aims to explore lesser-known aspects of the designer’s life, including his entrepreneurial approach to promoting his work, the critical role played by his wife and sometimes collaborator Adeline Oppenheim, and his commitment to making beautiful design accessible in all aspects of urban life, from transportation to large-scale apartment buildings. As a visionary architect, Guimard’s dedication to the Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”) shaped his life and the sinuous curves of the Parisian landscape. Every aspect of his most famous buildings from the exterior façades to the interior furnishings and decoration were designed by Guimard himself.

Hector Guimard: Art Nouveau to Modernism is co-organized by the Richard H. Driehaus Museum and Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.  Exhibition curator David A. Hanks places Guimard’s work and the Art Nouveau style in direct dialogue with the Gilded Age style of the Driehaus Museum’s home, the Samuel M. Nickerson Mansion. Built in 1883 at the height of the Aesthetic movement, the architects and designers of the Nickerson Mansion were focused on ideas that influenced Guimard:  unifying architectural design with fine art, embracing natural forms, and harnessing new mass-production technologies as a force for social good.

The exhibition is accompanied by a beautifully illustrated retrospective of Art Nouveau architect and designer Hector Guimard available at our Museum Store.  Our book is published by Yale University Press in association with the Richard H. Driehaus Museum with support from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts and Robert and Carolyn Burk. It features new scholarship, including an essay by Philippe Thiebaut discussing Guimard’s training in drawing and the exquisite detail of his drawn plans; an essay by Barry Bergdoll highlighting an overarching theme of the exhibition – signature vs. standardization – and addressing Guimard’s concern for the well-being of people and workers; and an essay by Sarah D. Coffin discussing Adeline Oppenheim as a partner to Hector Guimard – in both life and work – and also as a determined preserver of his legacy.

The exhibition's presenting sponsor is Northern Trust.

The exhibition is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. It is underwritten in part by the Richard H. Driehaus Annual Exhibition Fund.

Image credit: Hector Guimard, Bracket for Bench, Model GO. c. 1912. Painted cast iron. Produced by Saint-Dizier Foundries, Saint-Dizier. The Collection of Richard H. Driehaus, Chicago 20332. Photograph by James Caulfield.

Past Exhibition

Capturing Louis Sullivan: What Richard Nickel Saw

August 26, 2022- May 21, 2023


Richard Nickel (1928-1972) was a Polish-American architectural photographer and preservationist. Nickel first encountered the work of Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) as a student, when photographing the architect’s buildings for a project at the IIT Institute of Design. In the 1960s and 1970s, many of Sullivan’s buildings began to be demolished to make way for new development—part of the “urban renewal” movement of the period—and Nickel became an activist. He picketed buildings designated for demolition, organized protests, and wrote letters to news media and politicians in the hopes of saving them from destruction. Realizing that his efforts were futile, he embarked on a mission to meticulously document the buildings in various stages of destruction. 

Today, Sullivan is well-known as an influential architect of the Chicago School, the “father of modernism,” and as a mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright. The fact that we have a comprehensive overview of Sullivan’s Chicago architecture today is largely thanks to Nickel’s tireless efforts to document Sullivan’s design philosophy and to preserve the architect’s legacy. Focusing on Adler & Sullivan’s Chicago buildings of the 1880s and early 1890s, the exhibition will explore the firm’s architecture through the lens of Nickel’s photography, which provides a detailed record of these buildings and, in particular, Sullivan’s signature ornamentation. The exhibition will highlight the integral role Nickel played in preserving Sullivan’s legacy—the photographer’s work is all that remains of many of Adler & Sullivan’s major buildings—while ultimately losing his life in an effort to salvage artifacts during a demolition.

Featuring around forty photographs as well as a selection of over a dozen architectural fragments from The Richard H. Driehaus Collection and loans from other private collectors – many initially saved by Nickel himself – Capturing Louis Sullivan: What Richard Nickel Saw will be on view at the Driehaus Museum until May 21, 2023. The exhibition is curated by David A. Hanks.

“Capturing Louis Sullivan: What Richard Nickel Saw is the last project initiated by the late Richard H. Driehaus, who founded the Driehaus Museum and served as its board president for more than a decade before passing away unexpectedly last year,” said Anna Musci, Executive Director of the Richard H. Driehaus Museum. “Just as Richard Nickel dedicated his life to documenting and salvaging Sullivan’s architecture, Richard H. Driehaus dedicated his to preserving significant architecture and design of the past, most notably the 1883 Nickerson Mansion, a home for his beloved Chicago community to be inspired through encounters with beautiful art. Presenting this exhibition is a celebration of both Chicago’s architectural legacy and those who have gone to great lengths to ensure that its beauty and cultural heritage are preserved for future generations.”

#CapturingSullivan

Capturing Louis Sullivan: What Richard Nickel Saw  is organized by the Richard H. Driehaus Museum.


SPONSORS:


Presenting Sponsor


Special thanks to our McCormickville Preservation Circle sponsors

Antunovich Associates

Botti Studio of Architectural Arts

Bourbon Tile & Marble, Inc.

Sallie and Allan Bulley

Great Lakes Controlled Energy

Jamerson and Bauwens Electrical Contractors, Inc.

The Hill Group

Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates, Inc.

The Richard H. Driehaus Annual Exhibition Fund

Image credit: Richard Nickel, self-portrait, c. 1958. Benjamin Lindauer Residence, Chicago, IL, 1885. Adler and Sullivan, Richard Nickel, photographer. Richard Nickel Archive, Ryerson and Burnham Art and Architecture Archives, Art Institute of Chicago.

 

The Cosmic Garden Past Exhibition

A Tale of Today: Theodora Allen Saturnine

March 25 - August 7, 2022

The exhibition marks the latest iteration of the Museum’s newest initiative: A Tale of Today, which features work by leading contemporary artists to expand the immersive experience and to shape our understanding of the world through the art, architecture, design, and cultural history of the Nickerson Mansion, the Museum’s home. Curated by Stephanie Cristello, Theodora Allen: Saturnine derives its title from figure of Saturn and its historical association with melancholy, often referred to as the curse of artists. Visitors to the Museum will see Allen’s luminous and meditative compositions, filled with a lexicon of snakes, planets, moons, and plant life – motifs that draw from ancient Greek mythology, literature, fin-de-siècle Europe, and the zeitgeist of 1960s California. LEARN MORE.

Past Exhibition

William H. Bradley and The Chap-Book from the Collection of Richard H. Driehaus

September 2020 - March 13, 2022

On the third floor is a small companion exhibition of six lithography prints from The Richard H. Driehaus Collection by artist William H. Bradley. One of the most successful magazine cover artists of the time, Bradley’s work was featured many times on the cover of The Chap-Book. Printed in Chicago from 1894-98, The Chap-Book was Chicago’s answer to the art and literary magazine trend at the turn of the last century.

Image: William H. Bradley (American, 1868-1962) The Chap-Book: The Pipes, June 1895. Lithograph on paper. The Collection of Richard H. Driehaus, Chicago.

Past Exhibition

PAN: Prints of Avant-Garde Europe, 1895-1900

September 2020 - March 13, 2022

PAN: Prints of the Avant-Garde Europe, 1895-1900 documents a new era of printmaking for the turn of the century, as well as the desire of the arts and literary journal’s founders to elevate graphic arts to the same level as the academic fine art of its day. PAN, published in Berlin, attracted an international selection of some of the most important painters and graphic artists of the time to fill its pages, such as Aubrey Beardsley, Käthe Kollwitz, Auguste Rodin, Georges Seurat, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Max Liebermann. The result is a stunning visual arts magazine that today, over 120 years later, continues to have a voracious following that includes Art Nouveau lovers, graphic design enthusiasts, and art aficionados across the globe. LEARN MORE.

Image: Franz Von Stuck (German 1863-1928), PAN cover illustration for Prospekt Buch (Prospectus), c. 1895. Woodcut.
PAN: Prints of Avant-Garde Europe, 1895-1900 is organized by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA in association with Denenberg Fine Arts, West Hollywood, CA.

Past Exhibition

A Tale of Today: Nate Young and Mika Horibuchi

September 26, 2020 - May 2, 2021

The second exhibition in the Museum’s contemporary art initiative featured two Chicago-based artists, Nate Young and Mika Horibuchi, whose works engaged our expectations of the Nickerson Mansion by responding to the architecture and history of the 1883 building. LEARN MORE

Past Exhibition

Eternal Light: The Sacred Stained-Glass Windows of Louis Comfort Tiffany

September 7, 2019 - March 22, 2020

At the heart of this exhibition are eleven outstanding, religiously themed windows made between 1880 and 1925 which demonstrate the signature designs, working methods, techniques, and production styles of Tiffany and his workshops. LEARN MORE

Past Exhibition

A Tale of Today: Yinka Shonibare CBE

March 2, 2019 - September 29, 2019

The Museum's inaugural contemporary art exhibition features the work of British-Nigerian artist, Yinka Shonibare CBE. Presented within the context of one of America’s great Gilded Age mansions - the Driehaus Museum’s home - it creates compelling juxtapositions that reveals new perspectives on both the art and its setting. LEARN MORE

Past Exhibition

Treasures from the White City: The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893

September 8, 2018 - August 11, 2019

Treasures from the White City: The Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 celebrates the Fair's 125th anniversary and includes objects created by Louis Comfort Tiffany, silver selections by both Gorham Manufacturing Company and Tiffany & Company, and ephemera from the exposition.

Past Exhibition

Gilded Chicago: Portraits of an Era

September 8, 2018 - January 6, 2019

Gilded Chicago: Portraits of an Era explores how the resurgence of portraiture manifested itself in Chicago during the Gilded Age and includes ten paintings of prominent Chicago citizens that were commissioned during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Past Exhibition

Beauty's Legacy: Gilded Age Portraits in America

September 8, 2018 - January 6, 2019

Organized by the New-York Historical Society, Beauty’s Legacy: Gilded Age Portraits in America looks at the popular revival of formal portraiture in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

chair Past Exhibition

The Art of Seating: 200 Years of American Design

Exhibition closed August 12, 2018

Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art, Jacksonville and the Thomas H. and Diane DeMell Jacobsen Ph.D. Foundation this exhibition features 37 exceptional examples of American chairs created between 1810 and 2010.

L'Affichomania Poster Past Exhibition

L'Affichomania: The Passion for French Posters

Exhibition closed January 7, 2018

L’Affichomania evokes the poster craze with transformed the Parisian streets into colorful public art galleries during the exuberant period in France known as the Belle Époque. LEARN MORE

Cartoonists of the Gilded Age Past Exhibition

With a Wink and a Nod: Cartoonists of the Gilded Age

Exhibition closed January 8, 2017

Organized by the Flagler Museum, this exhibition features the cartoons of Puck magazine.The leading magazine of the Gilded Age, Puck sought to change the world through the power of laughter.

Dressing Downton Past Exhibition

Dressing Downton™: Changing Fashion for Changing Times

Exhibition closed May 29, 2016

A popular exhibition of the award-winning costumes from the celebrated series. This event offers an immersive new perspective on the show’s most memorable characters.

Maker & Muse Past Exhibition

Maker & Muse: Women and Early Twentieth Century Art Jewelry

Exhibition closed January 3, 2016

Boldly artistic, exquisitely detailed, and inspired by nature — the designs of the early 20th-century became known as art jewelry. Over 250 examples are included in this exhibition. LEARN MORE

Tiffany Past Exhibition

Louis Comfort Tiffany: Treasures from the Driehaus Collection

Closed January 4, 2015

Louis Comfort Tiffany worked in nearly all media available to artists and designers in the late 19th and early 20th-centuries—glass, ceramic, metalwork, jewelry, and painting. LEARN MORE