Contemporary Drawings from the Irving Stenn Jr. Collection
Art Institute of Chicago
November 19, 2011 – February 26, 2012
In only a decade, Chicago lawyer Irving Stenn Jr. has built a collection of more than 170 seminal drawings by more than 90 artists, a collection that focuses on the paradigm-shifting 1960s. This era saw a radical change in the way in which works on paper were made, used, and appreciated, and for the first time the public will be able to see this foundational moment in the history of drawing as represented through Stenn’s singular sensibility.

The Three Graces
Art Institute of Chicago
October 29, 2011 – January 22, 2012
Photographs of celebrations, vacations, and gatherings of family and friends are taken and kept with the aim of preserving moments in life for future generations. What happens, however, when a snapshot becomes an image “type”–transferred into the hands of a collector and folded into a broader cultural history? This subject is explored in the Art Institute of Chicago’s The Three Graces–on view October 29, 2011, through January 22, 2012, in the museum’s Photography Galleries 3 and 4. The exhibition, featuring a private collection of more than 500 anonymous images depicting female trios, spans nearly a century of female role-playing for the camera.

Art Institute of Chicago
May 23-September 3, 2012
This exhibition, the first assessment of the full scope and breadth of Roy Lichtenstein’s career since his death in 1997, aims to offer a new, scholarly assessment of the work of this foremost Pop artist. Lichtenstein is an artist whose work is widely known, reproduced, copied, and parodied–he is an artist that we seem to know well but in fact the true diversity and complexity of his oeuvre is little understood.

Light Years: Conceptual Art and the Photograph
Art Institute of Chicago
December 13, 2011-March 11, 2012
There is a general consensus that new art of the 1960s and 1970s was heavily invested in photography. Not since the promotion in the 1920s of photomontage, photograms, and the “new vision” had so many painters and sculptors turned to photography for a renewal of artistic practice. Light Years: Conceptual Art and the Photograph, 1964-1977 is the first major museum exhibition to examine that vanguard involvement in its full scope.

Tom Pritzker, Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Art Institute of Chicago, announced that Douglas Druick has been selected as the new President and Eloise W. Martin Director of the Art Institute of Chicago .