The Land of Oz: Beyond the Page

The Land of Oz: Beyond the Page  explores the imaginative artistry required to turn the classic children’s story into a beloved movie. Divided into three sections—Writing, Costume, and Production Design—the installation reveals how the designers brought L. Frank Baum’s world to life.

Highlights include a replica of Dorothy’s Ruby Red slippers, an early draft of the script, a prototype of the iconic Flying Monkey costume, a character costume from Emerald City, and a replica of the Cowardly Lion’s Badge of Courage. Visitors will also see a production memo about Dorothy's look and a rare painting of the Emerald City. Families, film lovers, and design enthusiasts alike will find something to spark their imaginations.

The installation will be on view in two galleries on the Museum’s third floor.

LEARN MORE

Tiffany Lamps: Beyond the Shade

From the 1890s to the 1920s, Tiffany Studios created a captivating range of decorative lighting fixtures. To achieve founder Louis C. Tiffany's vast artistic vision and bring lighting designs to life, artisans at the Studios used a range of materials including bronze, enamel, pottery, and glass. Tiffany Lamps: Beyond the Shade explores this exciting aspect of Tiffany Studios' history and encourages visitors to see Tiffany's beloved lamps in a new light. 

LEARN MORE 

Rory McEwen: A New Perspective on Nature

A polymath at heart, a searcher, the work of Scottish botanical artist Rory McEwen (1932-1982) nevertheless reflects a sustained intensity of focus on the artistic pursuits that defined his life. McEwen was singularly devoted to the technical aspects and traditions of his crafts and how, in the case of his paintings, they enabled him to capture, in the minutest of detail, the essence of his subjects—plants of all kind—in all their organic beauty. Presented by The Richard H. Driehaus Museum, Rory McEwen: A New Perspective on Nature is a travelling exhibition that seeks to reintroduce McEwen and his remarkable body of visual work to United States audiences, in the process also inspiring wider appreciation for the botanical arts and the unique role they have played throughout art history. LEARN MORE.

Image: Tulip 'Helen Josephine,' 1975 (detail), by Rory McEwen (Scottish, 1932-1982). Watercolor on vellum. ©Estate of Rory McEwen

A Tale of Today: Materialities

A Tale of Today: Materialities  invites living artists to select a material from the Museum, research its history, and produce site-specific installations designed to uncover hidden cultural, historical, and ecological networks, connecting the fabric of the Mansion to distant shores, traditions, and ideologies. With guest curator Giovanni Aloi.

LEARN MORE

Photographing Frank Lloyd Wright

Special thanks to our presenting sponsor Northern Trust.

Chicago Collects: Jewelry in Perspective

Chicago Collects: Jewelry in Perspective  included approximately 200 pieces of jewelry and objects collected by Chicagoans, many never displayed before in public. Exhibition highlights include a 19th century jeweled monstrance, three magnificent tiaras, jewelry renderings by René Lalique and by Anne Howe Geyer for Mauboisson, a large collection of medals of the French kings, the Cliff Dweller's Club famous punch bowl by Robert Jarvie, and much more. Lenders include the Richard H. Driehaus Collection, Chicago, the Chicago History Museum, the Cliff Dweller's Club, the Field Museum, the Lizzadro Museum, select private collectors, and contemporary Chicago jewelry artisans. LEARN MORE.

A Tale of Today Sif Itona Westerberg: Twin Flame, Double Ruin

The first solo US museum exhibition of Copenhagen-based artist Sif Itona Westerberg featuring recent bronze and concrete sculptures that draw from popular mythological narratives in dialogue with the museum’s richly-ornamented 1883 Nickerson Mansion. Sif Itona Westerberg: Twin Flame, Double Ruin is presented as part of the Driehaus Museum’s contemporary art series, A Tale of Today. LEARN MORE

Glass to Garden: Tiffany Inspired Floral Designs

This exhibition showcased commissioned floral design installations from local floral designers in dialogue with work by Louis Comfort Tiffany and Tiffany Studios. The exhibition was curated by guest curator 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. LEARN MORE.

Hector Guimard: Art Nouveau to Modernism

Hector Guimard: Art Nouveau to Modernism explored 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. LEARN MORE.

Capturing Louis Sullivan: What Richard Nickel Saw

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.  The exhibition featured 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. LEARN MORE

A Tale of Today: Theodora Allen Saturnine

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.

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

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.

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

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.

A Tale of Today: Nate Young and Mika Horibuchi

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

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

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

A Tale of Today: Yinka Shonibare CBE

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

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

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.

Gilded Chicago: Portraits of an Era

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.

Beauty's Legacy: Gilded Age Portraits in America

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.

The Art of Seating: 200 Years of American Design

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: The Passion for French Posters

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

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

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™: Changing Fashion for Changing Times

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: Women and Early Twentieth Century Art Jewelry

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

Louis Comfort Tiffany: Treasures from the Driehaus Collection

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