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"Bouquet of Flowers" by Edward Steichen

A rare synchronicity of scheduling makes it possible for photography fans and collectors to survey 150 years of photography in three current museum exhibitions. The only hitch: you need to travel to Milwaukee, Washington D. C. and New York to do so. You can take in the most expansive show–75 years from 1906 to 1981–at the nearby Milwaukee Art Museum’s “Color Rush: American Color Photography from Stieglitz to Sherman,” a sharp-eyed, captivating survey on view through May 19.

Next, fly to Washington’s National Gallery of Art for “Faking It: Manipulated Photography before Photoshop” that runs through May 5. Then head up to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for “Photography and the American Civil War” which is up through September 2.

One theme running through all three shows, overtly stated or not, is the meta question of what is “real.” Such a question would have been inconceivable for Civil War photographers Matthew Brady, Alexander Gardner and Timothy O’Sullivan who captured the fierce reality of battle. The National Gallery show deals with the less-explored issue of photo manipulation before Photoshop came along in 1987.  Milwaukee tackles the struggle color photography endured during the first six decades of the 20th century to be accepted as “real’.

Color Rush - "Red Interior"

“Color Rush” begins in 1907 with the Lumiere brothers, Auguste and Louis, introducing the autochrome, the first widely used color process that didn’t require the manual application of color. Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen learned the process that first year and autochromes debuted in American magazines, such as National Geographic, in the 1910s.

The co-curators, Milwaukee’s Lisa Hostetler and the Art Institute of Chicago’s Katherine Bussard, have fashioned a decade-by-decade, scholarly yet highly accessible tour of color’s life story. The exhibit features leading photographers of each period with the focus on color’s evolution and photographic practice. Bussard spoke of their intentions. “Lisa and I set out to rectify the problematic–if prevailing–notion that color photography prior to the 1970s was either amateur or commercial and only recognized as such. The historical reality was never that simple, never so definitive.”

The show has a bipolar personality. During its youthful years, color film was used primarily by advertisers and commercial printers to lure consumers with eye-catching images before exploding into total saturation with Brownie and Polaroid cameras. By the late ’60s, color film has its artistic breakthrough.

For nearly a century after photography’s origin, black-and-white monochromes were the artistic language of reality. While Kodak introduced 35mm Kodachrome film in 1936, color remained the province of advertising, photo magazines such as LIFE and movie spectaculars. As color technology developed, the issue of realism between black and white and color was joined.

Starting in the 1960s, Americans begin snapping color pics by the millions to capture everyday moments and key life events. Alongside its penetration into popular culture, the exhibit registers color’s move into the art world with “The Conceptual Turn.” Artists such as Bruce Nauman, Ed Ruscha, Joel Meyerowitz and William Eggleston react against conventional notions of art-making and see the artist as a producer of ideas rather than simply objects. Their photos blur the boundary between art and life.

The exhibit ends with images by Cindy Sherman and a provocative video installation by Nan Goldin. I only wish the curators’ critical gaze had encompassed more conceptual and pop culture references from the 1980s. It felt like the exhibition ended too abruptly with Sherman and Goldin. However, I’d highly recommend making this enjoyable show part of a weekend getaway.

"Leap into the Void" at NGA

Starting with the invention of Photoshop, the question of whether a photo presents a true representation of reality or a crafty manipulation is ambiguous and rich with distinctions that would have baffled earlier generations. The National Gallery show demonstrates that altered photos are part of a tradition dating to the origins of photography in the 1840s. Even a photo purist  as Ansel Adams was not above making tonal changes to enhance his iconic images.

The National Gallery’s press release makes a telling point. The exhibit images show “that photography is–always has been–a medium of fabricated truths and artful lies.” Wish I had said that myself. This is a show I’m sorry to miss.

"Pennylvania Light Artillery"

The Met exhibit features more than 200 rare and poignant photos of the Civil War, the national tragedy in which an incredible 750,000 lives were lost. the curators examine the evolving role of the camera during America’s bloodiest war.

While the works of Brady, Gardner and O’Sullivan are the most iconic images, the conflict engaged the talents of roughly 1,000 photographers, working individually and in teams. It features studio portraits of Union and Confederate soldiers made on thin sheets of copper (daguerreotypes), glass (ambrotypes) or iron (tintypes), gory battlefield views of the dead at Antietam and rare muti-panel panoramas of Gettysburg’s killing fields.

Fly to all three venues online and access information about each exhibit, go to www.mam.org, www.nga.gov and www.metmuseum.org.

Addendum: I have just returned from a visit to the Art Institute and discovered another photographic exhibit worth your time. It is “When Collecting Was New,” a display from the Robert A. Taub collection. Taub purchased his first photo at a bookstore in Denver in 1960 and acquired most of the 200 works he donated to the museum during the 1970s and early 1980s.

"Galax, Virginia" by Lee Friedlander

That was a key period in photography’s acceptance as a true art form. The market boom for fine art photographs took off in the 1970s and was led by two pioneering New York dealers, the Witkin and Light Galleries.

Taub played an important role in paving the way for color photography’s acceptance as an undeniable part of art practice. By collecting vernacular and commercial images, such as NASA photographs and images commissioned by his employer, Ford Motor Company, Taub helped change the definition of photographic art.

The Department of Photography will host a free seminar on the show on Friday, April 26th from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in Fullerton Hall. Registration is not required. It should prove a worthwhile event.

Moviegoers were captivated last year with Woody Allen’s movie, “Midnight in Paris”. Millions of viewers fantasized going back in time to Paris in the 1920s to drop in on Gertrude Stein’s salon and meet American writers and fellow expatriates, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

That is not my fantasy. Mine would be to find myself in the Paris apartment at 27 Rue de Fleurus on a Saturday evening in 1906. On such a night, starting at 8 p.m., Leo and Gertrude Stein would convene their regular Saturday salon. Leo would hold me spellbound as he spoke about the groundbreaking, avant-garde art he and his family were collecting. I could gaze at now-priceless masterpieces hanging on every inch of wall space. Had I arrived on a good night, I might even share words and a drink with fellow guests, Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso. I’d be present close to modern art’s creation.

Leo & Gertrude Stein Family

I came close to having that vision last October when I entered the galleries of Paris’ Grand Palais museum and came face to face with many of the iconic paintings that now reside in museums around the world. As I entered the opening galleries, I gasped in astonishment. I had no idea that the Stein family was responsible for acquiring such works, nurturing the careers  of now-heralded artists. Like great explorers, the Steins were the earliest champions of modern art.

Unlike much wealthier collectors of that period, such as the Potter Palmers of Chicago or the H.O. Havemeyers of New York, the Steins were neither particularly wealthy nor had they come to Paris with the intention of collecting paintings. They were well-educated, had some art training (Leo was an artist who had studied with art historian and connoisseur, Bernard Berenson) and exhibited discerning taste for the new.

The exhibit, “The Steins Collect”, now at The Metropolitan Museum of Art through June 3, is the culmination of a decade-long commitment by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the French Union of National Museums–Grand Palais and the Met. It is truly the proverbial once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, made possible due to a one-time exception by the heirs of Elise A. Haas, allowing Matisse’s “Woman with a Hat” to travel. Viewers owe a debt of gratitude to the three museums and the lead curators (Janet Bishop at SFMOMA, Cecile Debray at the Grand Palais and Rebecca Rabinow at The Met) for bringing the exhibit to fruition with great flair and newly unearthed scholarship. The first examination of the Stein Collection in more than 40 years, it reunites close to 200 works, now scattered to all corners of the globe.

Matisse: Woman with a Hat

Leo was the collection’s driving force in its early years. Deciding to become an artist, he moved to Paris at the end of 1902 from Florence where he had met and been influenced by Berenson. His sister, Gertrude, joined him in the fall of 1903. Their brother and sister-in-law, Michael and Sarah Stein, arrived in January, 1904. Leo’s early aesthetic was more classical in outlook. The artists he called “The Big Four”: Manet, Renoir, Degas and Cezanne informed his aesthetic though the first three artists were beyond his means. He purchased his first Cezanne from legendary dealer, Ambroise Vollard, in 1903.

In Paris, Leo was delighted to learn he could afford contemporary oil paintings. Leo and Gertrude were transfixed by the art on view at the second Salon d’Automne in 1904. Works by Cezanne, Odilon Redon, Renoir and Toulouse-Lautrec were featured. Two weeks later, they emptied their bank accounts of close to $7,000 and bought two Cezannes, two Gauguins, two Renoirs and a Maurice Denis.

Madame Cézanne with a Fan

Six weeks later, they purchased Cezanne’s “Madame Cezanne with a Fan”. They acquired the centerpieces of their young collection, Matisse’s, “Woman with a Hat” in 1905 and Picasso’s portrait of Gertrude in 1906. During their lifetimes, the Steins owned 180 works by each artist.

Throughout the decade from 1904 until 1913, the Steins were modern art’s most influential tastemakers. Alfred Barr Jr., the first director of the Museum of Modern Art, has written: “For the two brief years between 1905 and 1907 he (Leo) was possibly the most discerning connoisseur and collector of 20th-Century painting in the world.”  Years later, Gertrude tried to inflate her role in assembling the collection but Rebecca Rabinow, curator of the exhibition at The Met, told me in an interview, “If Leo hadn’t been around, I don’t think there would have been a collection.”

Apartment - 27 Rue de Fleurus

If one were to have visited the Steins’ small apartment at 27 Rue de Fleurus in 1906, one would have seen paintings, hung floor to ceiling, crammed on three walls. There were works by Cezanne (3), Renoir (2), Gauguin, Picasso (3), Matisse, Manguin, Bonnard, Daumier, Delacroix, Denis, Toulouse-Lautrec and several by Leo Stein.  In the mid-1930s, Gertrude reminded her readers that the art they showed was once scorned. “It is very difficult now that everybody is accustomed to everything to give some idea of the uneasiness once felt when one first looked at all these pictures on the walls.”

The exhibit I saw six months ago at the Grand Palais opened with a room devoted to art by “The Big Four” and then devoted subsequent rooms to displaying the art collected by each of the Stein siblings and their companions in turn. Rabinow, however, has taken a different tack toward hanging the collection in New York. Her aim, she said, was to have the collection speak to its specific moment in time. “I arranged the paintings so that the art tells stories.”

Stein Salon

In the entry room, Rabinow hung paintings Leo saw from 1900-1903 that he didn’t buy. Leo and Gertrude had a rule that they would only buy works by artists they were friends with. A showstopper of Rabinow’s design is an exact replica, down to the exact dimensions, of Leo’s small studio (460 sq. ft.) complete with an in-gallery projection of the original artworks onto the studio walls. If you can’t make it to New York, you can view a video of the projection on the Met’s website, www.metmuseum.org. But you should, by all means, hop a plane or train if you want a special thrill.

While the exhibition is a full immersion by itself, I cannot end without praise for the lavish, nearly 500-page catalog, published by Yale University Press. I cannot recommend it too highly. It is a necessary complement to the exhibit that squares the circle, so to speak. The eleven original essays (including those by the three lead curators and a highly incisive profile of Leo Stein by Gary Tinterow, a former senior curator at The Met and now director of the Houston Museum of Fine Arts) are an entertaining read and a rich trove of fascinating biographical details about each member of the Stein family, along with new research findings.  The catalog contains 500 plates, many in color, a helpful chronology, pages from Sarah Stein’s Notebook of Matisse’s teachings, photos of the Stein residences illustrating how they displayed their art and, last but not least, an  invaluable inventory of the Stein Collections with dimensions, current ownership and past provenance.

Every aspect of the exhibition and catalog manifests the labor of love this endeavor was for all parties concerned. I offer a bow of deep appreciation for making that moment in time come alive for me. Go treat yourself to the same experience!

Editor’s Note: The postings this week and next focus on two magnificent art exhibits currently up.  One is 750 miles away at the Metropolitan Museum in New York while the other is only 90 miles from Chicago at the Milwaukee Art Museum. If hopping a plane is out of the question, I’d strongly recommend the journey north before the show closes on May 6th. I’m sure you will be moved  by the arresting and highly-accomplished works.

Anthony Petullo

At the moment, while the Art Institute treads water, preparing for its upcoming Roy Lichtenstein show, genuine art excitement can be found just up the road at the Milwaukee Art Museum where a stunning collection of 200 paintings, sculpture and objects, part of the Anthony Petullo Collection, is on view. Mere words alone cannot do justice to the show’s visceral power. I only know that, soon after entering the exhibit, I was in the grip of the virtuosity on display in a way I seldom experience at an exhibition, where keeping a critical distance is the norm.

Susanna York by David Lloyd

At the entry to the “Accidental Genius” exhibition is artist David Lloyd’s wall-size, blown-up portrait of English actress, Susanna York. Her gaze is captivating but one senses something askew about the likeness. That “off” quality serves as a metaphor for this bold assortment of works and styles by “self-taught” and “outsider” artists, no-name figures lacking academic training or existing outside mainstream culture due to psychological illness or some developmental disability.

The show highlights the artists’ mesmerizing talents as well as Petullo’s loving obsession for these works. Such previously-maligned and marginalized creations are now avidly pursued by collectors and museums. Go and treat yourself to a visual feast. After viewing the artists’ intuitive handling of color, composition, draftsmanship and detail, you may agree with me in finding current art babble surrounding these works too parochial. The current art canon should embrace such creations and label them Art–plain and simple, free of limiting modifiers. After all, many of the artists we now revere, names such as Cezanne, Rousseau, Van Gogh and Gauguin, didn’t go to art school either.

Carlo Zinelli (1916-1974)

I found myself particularly transfixed by the work of Eddie Arning, David Lloyd, Henry Darger, James Dixon, Madge Gill, Carlo Zinelli along with the artists of Art Haus, a mental health facility outside Vienna. The six named artists have wildly contrasting styles that paid no mind to the art world, yet produced creations of stunning originality. When I passed a good number of the works, I instinctively moved within inches of the paper or canvas, drawn by the force of their images, color, hyper-precise line drawing or written text. Margaret Andera, the curator of “Accidental Genius”, deserves praise for her long-standing commitment to the collection that informs her intelligent selection and organization of the exhibition.

Every great collection reflects the eye and personality of its collector. While Petullo assembled his collection over three decades, he noted, in a telephone conversation, that half of the 320 donated works were acquired during an intense three year period, from 1990-93. While the collection contains work by several American masters like Darger and Bill Traylor, its strength lies in the quality and range of European self-taught artists represented, many of whom Petullo collected in depth. His donation to the Milwaukee Art Museum, according to director, Dan Keegan, “is the most extensive grouping of its kind in any American museum or in private hands.”

Minnie Evans (1892–1987)

Petullo’s first collecting foray came in 1974 when he bought a work that caught his eye at the city’s Lakefront Festival of Arts. Over the next decade, he collected what he liked with no plan. He dubs those first purchases “early Dad art”. They now reside with his children and grandchildren. Gradually, this local businessman moved away from folk/naive art and gravitated toward self-taught and outsider art.

Petullo doesn’t like the artificial distinctions placed on this work. What attracts him so much to these artists? “They share an independent spirit, unrestrained by the rules of art training. Also they are inventive, having a free flow of creativity. Essentially, they create for their own enjoyment and fulfillment, with little or no regard for the rest of the art world.”

As Petullo’s eye developed and grew more discriminating, he concentrated on figurative, colorful, uplifting and optimistic work. Abstract or highly polished art didn’t move him. “I’m an imagist,”, he says. The art of Edward Hopper, Egon Schiele, The School of The Eight, and artists of  the Fauve movement holds special appeal.

Madge Gill (English, 1882–1961)

“I never bought art as an investment”, Petullo told me, advice he gives to every aspiring collector. “You have to realize that 98% of art never appreciates. And, as soon as the work leaves the dealer’s shop, it’s immediately worth 50% less than what you paid for it.” I asked if he had gotten some bargains when he began collecting outsider art in the early 1980s. “Well, maybe if you consider $20,000 or 30,000 a low price.”

Though he initially relied on one or two dealers to steer him toward outstanding work, Petullo soon developed firm confidence in his own taste. “You have to believe in yourself to build a great collection. You have to say “No” to them (dealers) if it’s not for you.” He laughingly recalled that Russell Bowman, a former director of the museum (now an art dealer in Chicago) once brought him a list of suggested artists to add to the collection. Petullo says he crossed off all but one or two names. He’d do it his way, thank you.

Friedrich Schröder Sonnenstern (1892–1982)

He made it clear years ago that his museum-quality collection was destined for Milwaukee. What criteria, I asked, did he use in deciding where it should go and had he considered a New York museum or The Art Institute (Petullo was born and grew up in Chicago and graduated from the University of Illinois, where he has endowed two named professorships).  He named four factors that governed the winning choice: “They needed to have strong interest in the collection, top curatorial talent, enough wall space and, very important, enough storage space.” He didn’t want the art to languish in an off-site warehouse.

Henry Darger (American, 1892–1973)

New York’s Museum of American Folk Art didn’t have enough wall space and recently shuttered its doors. And the Art Institute was “too damn big”. The collection would be lost there and he thought the museum “not ready”, possibly meaning such art was deemed not yet worthy of admission. At Milwaukee, the Petullo Collection will join the Richard and Erna Flagg Collection of Haitian Art and the Michael and Julie Hall Collection of American Folk Art. Those three collections, notes gallerist Jane Kallir in the lavish “Accidental Genius” catalog, “make Milwaukee one of America’s preeminent centers for the study of work by untrained creators.”

At a time when auction houses and one’s checkbook rule as the new arbiters of artistic value and social celebrity, it is heartening to see an older model of a generous collector motivated purely by his passion for art and his community. For more information on the artists and exhibition visit the Milwaukee Art Museum.

DePaul Art Museum

There’s a new museum in town. Yet I’m not sure how many Chicagoans know the good news. The DePaul Art Museum opened last September in a new, three-story structure adjoining the Fullerton CTA stop.

The museum is only new in a technical sense. Since 1998, it has been housed in two large rooms within Richardson Library, unknown to outside passersby. Louise Lincoln, its highly capable director since 1997, has mounted numerous noteworthy exhibitions under serious limitations.

Though art has been present on campus from 1985, it was hidden in the literal sense. What the striking red brick building achieves is a freestanding space for the museum’s art collection (2,000 objects with extensive holdings of Chicago art) with the size (15,000 sq. ft.) and facilities (a new collection study room) befitting a true museum. It also signifies the university’s growing commitment to the arts.

A tip of the hat is warranted for the contextually-rich design by Antunovich Associates, their first museum project.

My earlier post focused on Chicago’s formerly feisty publication, The New Art Examiner, and its dedicated focus on Chicago and the greater Midwest art community. Lincoln and assistant director, Laura Fatemi, opted for an equally strong local focus and provocative theme for their opening show

Re: Chicago opens with a wall text that states, “Chicago rivals—and surpasses—other cities in music, architecture and theater; yet in the visual arts, it has too frequently been seen as a ‘second city’.”  Though many prominent artists, past and present, sport Chicago connections, many left and made their reputations elsewhere.

The exhibit seeks to reframe Chicago as a true artistic center vis-a-vis other centers such as Paris, New York and even Los Angeles. Alongside the Chicago theme, Lincoln chose a novel way to showcase the chosen works: a group-curated show. She polled 43 curators, collectors, critics and scholars to name a favorite Chicago artist. The result is an alternate canon of the famous, the no longer famous and the ought to be famous.

Ivan Albright

The show is both a delight to walk through and an entertaining guessing game. New discoveries loom at each hang while one wonders what did James Elkins, Neil Harris, Lew Manilow and James Rondeau choose? For every known artist like Ivan Albright, Karl Wirsum, Dawoud Bey and Richard Hunt, there was the thrill of discovering Manierre Dawson, Art Shay, Macena Barton, Irving Petlin and many more. Most surprising was Franz Schulze’s backward reach into the mid-19^th Century for now-forgotten portraitist, George Healy, along with the absence of Ed Paschke, Roger Brown or Jim Nutt.

Manierre Dawson

You’ll want to take home the show’s colorful, attractively-designed catalog to reread not only each curator’s supporting statement but for the scholarly essays buttressing Chicago’s claim for its rightful place in the art world.

Wendy Greenhouse skillfully argues that Chicago’s art tradition has run counter to the prevailing canon throughout history. Its artists have long favored representational or surreal (“cartoonish”) work over an East Coast canon dominated by abstract, expressionistic art.

Karl Wirsum

Lynne Warren champions Chicago’s “extraordinary photographic legacy” and bemoans the near-criminal neglect of such masters as Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind and other renowned figures.

If you are an art lover, you owe it to yourself to get to the DePaul Art Museum by March 4 to catch this appealing yet ultimately serious show. The museum’s next exhibition will feature African photographer, Malick Sidibe. It opens March 29.

DePaul Art Museum is located at 935 West Fullerton Avenue. For information on public events and hours, call 773/325-7506 or visit www.depaul.edu/museum.

Editor’s Note: The blogs posted this month will feature lesser-known personal discoveries that can provide enjoyable holiday outings.

Driehaus Museum

If you passed the imposing three-story brownstone at 40 East Erie in recent years, you would have found the building dark and open only by appointment. One would never know that, beyond the front door, lies one of nation’s grandest mansions of the Gilded Age. However, with the arrival of Lise Dube-Scherr last April as director, the Richard H. Driehaus Museum has come alive.

The museum is now open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. (Sundays 12-5 p.m and closed Monday). Banners identifying the museum hang above the front door and the public is warmly welcomed inside for personal tours of this architectural and decorative arts showpiece. Ms. Dube-Scherr has worked hard in the last nine months to establish a membership program, themed visits and evening soirees as might have been held in the home by its original owners.

Noted investment adviser, Richard Driehaus, is passionate about architectural preservation and decorative arts. He purchased the mansion in 2003 and then spent several million dollars over five years restoring it to its former glory. He has also lent the house period furnishings, works from his art collection, pieces from his extensive collection of Tiffany-designed lamps and antique chandeliers; all to give the galleries a true feeling of late 19^th Century splendor.

Samuel Nickerson, the founder of the First National Bank of Chicago, was the original owner. He and his family lived there from 1887 to 1900. It cost a staggering $450,000 to build the 25,000 square foot mansion, the largest private residence in Chicago when it was completed (the cost in 2011 dollars would exceed $100 million). That part of town, at the time, was known as McCormickville since several members of the McCormick family lived in the area.

Nickerson sold the house to Lucius Fisher, a paper-bag manufacturer and big-game hunting enthusiast, who resided there until his death in 1916. Fearing that it might be demolished, one hundred prominent Chicagoans, including William Wrigley, Cyrus McCormick and Julius Rosenwald, bought the home and donated it to the American College of Surgeons, for use as its headquarters.

Driehaus Main Hall

Inside the front door on Erie (though early visitors arrived by horse-drawn coach at a porte cochere on the side), you enter a two-story Main Hall and your jaw drops.

Straight ahead you see a grand staircase that leads to the family’s living quarters on the second floor and ballroom. Off the main hall on both sides are the Front Parlor, Reception Room, Drawing Room, Dining Room, Smoking Room, Library and the stunning Sculpture Gallery.

At your feet, the floor is covered in 17 kinds of inlaid marble. The house quickly became known as The Marble Palace. Equally impressive are the wood moldings used for the rooms’ rich wainscotting and the dropped ceilings’ paneling. The majestic Sculpture Gallery holds three masterpieces, making it hard to choose a favorite: the 19^th-Century  sculpture of “Cupid and Psyche”, a 7-foot-high fireplace with a gorgeous fireplace surround of mosaic tile and an oversize Tiffany-inspired dome overhead.

"Cupid and Psyche"

Other special touches in rooms throughout the house include inlaid marquetry wood in the Library, rare blue-green wall tiles, fabrics by Scalamandre and some original sconses and small flickering gas lights. Such detail and craftsmanship is unavailable today, even in the infamous McMansions erected by modern-day financial wizards.

I cannot readily recall being as overwhelmed by the beauty of a private residence as I was touring Driehaus’ recreation of the Nickerson mansion. Dube-Scherr points out that “we’re not trying to perfectly recreate how the house appeared in Nickerson’s time but to give people a sense of what life was like in the Gilded Age.”

To that end, she scheduled strolling carolers, an evening cabaret performance and a magic show for family visitors during the holiday season. Twilight tours, on the first and third Tuesday of each month, let visitors glimpse how the Nickersons socialized in the evening.

Looking for a different holiday treat? A visit to the museum strikes me as a perfect outing. Its “Deck the Marble Halls” observance is on daily (except Mondays) through January 8^th. You can take a self-guided audio tour or a guided tour daily at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. (1:30 and 3 p.m. on Sunday).

Admission is $20, $12.50 for seniors and $10 for students, children under 18.

The Museum is also available for rental for intimate dinners, private receptions, board meetings. Dube-Scherr says she is awaiting its first wedding booking. For full details, visit the museum at

www.DriehausMuseum.org. Phone is 312/932-8665.