Wrightwood 659 in Chicago's Lincoln Park
Photo: William Zbaron/Rogert Sharoff
The architect Tadao Ando has designed an airy new exhibition space in Chicagos Lincoln Park neighbourhood that focuses on architecture and socially engaged art. Known as Wrightwood 659 for its street address, it is a project of the Alphawood Foundation, a philanthropic organisation committed largely to advocacy, the arts, LGBT equality and civil rights.
Among its other projects, the foundation has helped finance the Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island in New York and the restoration of Frank Lloyd Wrights Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois.
Sandhya Jain-Patel, formerly the head of Indian, Himalayan and Southeast Asian art at Christies, has been appointed the director of the venue, which will operate as a private non-commercial art space separate from the foundation, with its own staff. The inaugural exhibition, Ando and Le Corbusier: Masters of Architecture,opens on 12 October.
Patel previously worked with Alphawood to present Ai Weiwei: Tracein Chicago in the Lincoln Park building last spring, when the space was unfinished. The exhibition, featuring a monumental work of LEGO bricks arranged to depict activists, prisoners of conscience and free-speech advocates around the world, was originally commissioned by the FOR-SITE Foundation in 2014 and installed at Alcatraz, the island prison in San Francisco Bay, before travelling to the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC.
Ando has transformed the 35,000-square-foot interior of a former 1920s apartment building into an elegant contemporary environment while preserving the four-story brick façade. A floor-to-ceiling glass corridor along the rear and side of the top floor allows for views over the rooftops of the historic Northside neighbourhood. Spacious entryways look out over a light-filled atrium of exposed brick, glass and concrete, and the galleries are connected by smooth concrete floors and stairs.
Jim McDonough, the executive director of Alphawood, said the Wrightwood 659 project was proposed by the foundations founders, Fred Eychaner and Dan Whittaker, who admire Andos work and seek to promote good design and socially active art without the constraints one might encounter in a typical museum environment.
The number of daily visitors will be limited. “The intention is to provide a contemplative, quiet and meaningful experience for the public to think about, and be inspired by, the shows that are being presented,” McDonough said.
