RENAISSANCE SOCIETY RECEIVES LARGEST GIFTS IN ITS 100-YEAR HISTORY

The Renaissance Society—a noncollecting museum dedicated to presenting avant-garde art—announced today that it has received three donations of $500,000. Totaling $1.5 million, the pledges from the Edlis Neeson Foundation, the Pritzker Traubert Family Foundation, and the Zell Family Foundation are the largest gifts the institution has received in its one-hundred-year history. The donations will support the society’s Next Century Fund, which was launched in 2015 to commission new artworks, and to develop educational and publishing initiatives. The society has already raised 65 percent of its goal for the fund’s $5 million campaign.

“Over its history the Renaissance Society has stayed resolutely small and focused, which gives us an incredible freedom and flexibility,” executive director and chief curator Solveig Øvstebø said. “My vision of the Ren as an engine for new artistic production allows us to concentrate on the present moment and to engage with artists who are addressing urgent and timely issues.”

Founded in 1915 by a group of University of Chicago faculty members, the Renaissance Society has introduced Chicago’s audiences to the works of Robert Smithson, Lawrence Weiner, Louise Bourgeois, Jeff Wall, Fischli and Weiss, Mike Kelley, and Juan Muñoz, among others.