Sometimes it really is, as they say, all in the timing. I happened to walk into the Art Institute’s Charles White retrospective last month just as the show’s curator, Sarah Kelly Oehler, was launching into a tour for a tiny clutch of people that included someone I recognized: Chicago’s low-profile first lady (and onetime AIC staffer), Amy Rule.
The exhibit features a wall map of Chicago locations frequented by White as he grew up here. They include the former main building of the Chicago Public Library (now the Chicago Cultural Center), where, as a youngster, he was parked by his mother while she worked. He attended Burke Elementary School and Englewood High School (when he questioned the representation of blacks in history texts there, he was told to “sit down and shut up”), and, at the age of 13, won a scholarship to Saturday classes at the Art Institute. By 16 he was exhibiting with the Arts Crafts Guild (whose members were part of the Black Chicago Renaissance), and winning numerous art-contest prizes. After graduating from Englewood in 1937, he attended SAIC on a scholarship, helped launch the South Side Community Art Center, and worked as an easel painter and muralist for the WPA. In 1941, he met and married artist Elizabeth Catlett, and left Chicago with her (they divorced in 1947).
Through 9/3: Fri-Wed 10:30 AM-5 PM, Thu 10:30 AM-8 PM, Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan, 312-443-3600, artic.edu, $25, $19 students and seniors, free 14 and under and for Illinois residents Thu 5-8 PM.
