![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1789517637/noxz9olp47gfneafz8xg.jpg\")
Each week, CGN interviews a local art dealer to discuss the ins and outs of running a gallery in the city of Chicago. This week we caught up with Martha Schneider of Schneider Gallery who is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the opening of her gallery in River North.
\r\n","body":"Each week, CGN interviews a local art dealer to discuss the ins and outs of running a gallery in the city of Chicago. This week we caught up with Martha Schneider of Schneider Gallery who is celebrating the 30th anniversary of the opening of her gallery in River North. Join her for the opening reception of Then + Now: 30th Anniversary on Friday, July 14 from 5-7:30pm.
\r\n\r\nGallery: Schneider Gallery
\r\nName: Martha Schneider
\r\nAge: 76
\r\nPrevious occupations: Assistant secretary at law office
\r\nHometown: Buenos Aires
Chicago Gallery News: Please describe your gallery’s program in one sentence.
\r\n\r\nMartha Schneider: Contemporary photography from around the world.
\r\n\r\nCGN: How did you become an art dealer?
\r\n\r\nMS: I started when my husband was a lowly resident in psychiatry and I fell in love with collecting art. He soon said I needed to find my own way of making money, so I started getting more involved in the art world, making friends with dealers, collectors and artists. My husband and I are originally from Argentina, so I started bringing small works back with me, and finding friends in my social circles to buy them. My circle grew and with the help of time, persistence and word of mouth I had a nice and growing base of collectors. I made some more important connections with larger corporate collections like US Bell. Eventually, I started to use my home for a display space and invited groups to view the work. For example, when I lived in Park Ridge, I invited the members of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago to come to my home and look around.
\r\n\r\nI moved to Highland Park and began advising people about art from home. I could be with my children and continue to pursue art dealing. I dedicated one of the bedrooms into a small home-gallery. From there I generated more clients and followers. Everything was working fine until one Sunday my doorbell began ringing like crazy; still in my pajamas, I opened the door to discover three clients in need of an emergency present for a friend. We solved their problem, but the experience was enough to make me decide not have my home disrupted any longer. So, I rented a gallery space on Green Bay Road in Highland Park, on the second floor. I opened it in 1982 and at the time specialized in ceramic and handmade jewelry. In 1988, my husband and I decided to move to the city, so the gallery moved with me to the River North and there it stayed. It’s from the River North location that I started to add photography. The ceramics faded, and today I focus on contemporary photography exclusively.
\r\n\r\nCGN: How did you decide to focus on contemporary photography?
\r\n\r\nMS: I had been collecting contemporary photography, and when I was still representing ceramicists, one of the photographers I met, Luis Gonzalez Palma, asked what was on my walls. When I said nothing, he insisted, “Put my photos on your walls,” and so we started. Today, I still believe that photography is the media of our time. When I began, there were not a lot of galleries interested in taking a risk on photography, and contemporary photography especially. Some may say that I was a pioneer, but I just think there are some interesting living artists making powerful work, and I want to give them a platform.
\r\n\r\nCGN: What’s the first thing you do each morning when you get to the gallery?
\r\n\r\nMS: I turn on the lights, grab a glass of water and start up my computer to begin checking my email.
\r\n\r\nCGN: Thumbs up or down on art fairs?
\r\n\r\nMS: Thumbs down, for me personally. I do have mixed feeling about them, but I don’t enjoy the rhythm of them from the dealer’s side. I enjoy taking time with my clients, and don’t feel I can work the same way at a fair. I will go to fairs to see what is out there, who the new artists are, and what is being shown. The one thing I always come away with is a reassurance of what I like. I don’t usually find the best work at art fairs.
\r\n\r\nCGN: Artists you admire but don’t represent?
\r\n\r\nMS: Pierre Goonord, Fazal Sheik, Cindy Sherman, and David Hilliard, among others.
\r\n\r\nCGN: Best sale you ever had?
\r\n\r\nMS: The best part of any sale, for me, is being part of what connects the artist and the collector. Money keeps us alive, but it is not the most rewarding part of the exchange. I like working personally with specific clients, and my favorites are the ones who come back year after year to look, talk and share what they have seen and in turn what I’ve seen to recommend for them. They are friends more than anything else. Some of my most faithful patrons are couples—one duo of lawyers out of New York, another major collector and museum patron out of Nebraska, some Italians who live in France, and a man in the hotelier business from Indonesia.
\r\n\r\nCGN: Your gallery is celebrating its 30th anniversary. What advice would you offer to your younger self?
\r\n\r\nMS: I am celebrating my 30 years in River North and 35 years as a dealer. However, my work in this business of art began quite a time before. When my oldest daughter was 9 months old and just starting to crawl, one of the members of the Museum of Contemporary Art came to my house and was interested in the art that I’d brought back from Argentina. He acquired a few copies. So in less formal ways, I’ve been in this business for more than 40 years.
\r\n\r\nAs for advice, I would say first try to start with some experience in both art and sales. Try to establish a few clients and grow slowly and steadily. Keep a moderate sense of goals in the beginning, and stick with it. You must know what you like, and stay true to your own aesthetic. If you can, you will be able to transmit why to existing and new patrons.
\r\n\r\nCGN: What’s coming up next at your gallery?
\r\n\r\nMS: The anniversary show. It opens the 14th of July and is on display through the first week of September. It will be a wonderful selection of old and new works by artists we have worked with through the years. The work I’m most excited about is some new pieces we will have from Luis (Gonzalez Palma). As I mentioned, Luis was the artist who helped me shift from ceramics to photography, and probably the artist I was most influential in developing through the years. It’s a special moment to have his work in our show, and they are as beautiful as ever.
\r\n\r\nCGN: What major successes have you had this year? What about challenges?
\r\n\r\nMS: I worked with Father Terry Dempsey to put a show together for Erika Diettes in the Museum of Contemporary Religious Art in St. Louis, Missouri that was very successful. Luis (Gonzalez Palma) is having a traveling retrospective in Spain that will likely travel more broadly in Europe, and he was also invited to contribute work to a site related to the Venice Biennale. This is the third time he is being affiliated with the global art initiative.
\r\n\r\n35+ years in business is also a major milestone for me.
\r\n\r\nThe challenge is staying relevant and alive in the art world with critical work and not resorting to “fluff” that is easy to sell, but not as critical or valid as the sort of work we have stood by all these past years.
\r\n\r\nCGN: What is your favorite interest outside of the art world?
\r\n\r\nMS: My husband and my family. Also, traveling plays a huge part in my life and major interests. I love seeing how other people live and their customs. I believe that experiencing other parts and people in the world is important.
\r\n\r\nCGN: What’s your favorite work of public art in Chicago?
\r\n\r\nMS: The Jaume Plensa Crown Fountain and Anish Kapoor’s Cloud Gate in Millennium Park.
\r\n\r\nCGN: What are your five favorite places to see art in Chicago?
\r\n\r\nMS:
\r\n\r\nMartha Schneider is the owner of Schneider Gallery located in River North. For more information about her gallery visit: Schneider Gallery.
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Behind the scenes, many people in the community are working tirelessly to support artists and bring fresh perspectives to the public. We spoke with five insiders about what excites them now and what they anticipate next.
The following preview is one of five conversations that appear in CGN's Fall 2026 magazine. To receive a copy of the print edition click here.
“I’m thrilled to further expand my artistic and design practice by introducing other mediums into the mix. I’m looking forward to watching the seasons change and devoting a lot of time in the studio as well. Fall/winter is my favorite time to create new works.
I have an upcoming solo show with VSG Contemporary that I am excited about. The work will delve further into the topics of cultural mythology and how these tales and narratives have helped shape my worldview.
Also, it wouldn’t be right if I left out my excitement for this upcoming season of Chicago sports.”
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961823/s3lp0uull2s8mvd8funj.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Extension Cords, Glazed stoneware, chrome, Sizes vary 2021-present. Photo: Mikey Mosher
This interview is part of CGN's Fall 2026 issue. Purchase a copy or subscribe.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961824/mghrpnghxd9j9ko2dsjt.jpg\")
Andi Crist
BY ALISON REILLY
Andi Crist’s warm, engaging demeanor is evident in the first few minutes of our conversation. Generous with her time and forthcoming in her observations, she cares deeply about building relationships through her art making. Crist grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, devoured art classes, wrote songs and played music in high school, and moved to Chicago to study visual art at Columbia College. In 2024, she received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a woodworker, sculptor, ceramicist, and conceptual artist, and she teaches at Illinois Institute of Technology. We discussed her multidisciplinary practice, her experience working as an art handler, preparator, and fabricator, and how she thinks about labor, creativity, and value in the art world.
CGN: You grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. How did that environment shape your point of view as an artist?
Andi Crist: That’s such a funny question. Nobody’s ever really asked.
CGN: Oh, really?
AC: Yeah, maybe because I never was super connected with the arts community down in Birmingham. I moved to Chicago in 2007, so it’s been 20 years since I lived in the South. I was definitely one of those art kids—one art credit was required in high school, and I graduated with like seven. I was surrounded by artists who had a big impact on me, because they were working artists. All my art teachers were trained in Alabama and then continued to teach and work in Alabama, which gave me this desire to try to expand my community outside of what I was familiar with.
CGN: Do you identify as a Chicagoan?
AC: My family still lives in Alabama, and I go back every year. I love being in Alabama. Maybe now being in Chicago for almost 20 years, I identify as a southerner living in the city. I carry on the social qualities of a friendly southern person [laughs].
CGN: You have a varied art practice—woodwork, ceramics, mold making. What drew you to those types of fabrication methods and that type of art making?
AC: My dad is a carpenter and a hobbyist woodworker, but his career was psychology, and my mom was a professor and an incredible craftswoman. I absorbed my mom’s model of creativity, which is to try a bunch of different things and not necessarily finish them but to try to learn as much as I can by just going for it. My practice over the years has become an exploration of conceptual elements of what makes art art and not just craft. Do you have to be a master craftsperson or a professional artist in order to make something that resonates with people?
I make a lot of work that references the mode of making and requires a variety of different media. I just finished teaching a ceramics production class where students learned how to produce molds, think about positives and negatives, and get into a level of production rather than just handicraft as a way to multiply their output.
I got into fabrication because I’ve always liked working with other artists. I have a background in theater and gallery work. I’m a voracious learner, and I like being able to share those skills with my community. Then I end up making work about that. It’s a self-feeding cycle.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961825/zzejqwibga5f5wk6einh.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Artist’s Ladder, 2023. Photo: Jeff Perlman
CGN: Thinking about your background as an art handler and preparator—how did you get to the point where you were making work about that experience?
AC: In 2010, right before I graduated from Columbia, I was living in a storefront in West Logan Square with my partner at the time. We started a gallery called Autotelic in the space and had to build it out using the worst tools with very minimal resources. Then we started curating shows there and that meant helping other artists figure out how to install their work in our unusual space. Eventually, I gained the reputation for knowing how to do that type of work. I started getting invited to work in museums and galleries.
The Holocaust Museum was the first museum I worked at, and as difficult as that subject matter is, that experience was really important to me because I was learning more about the larger world of gallery work. As an artist working as a preparator, you’re straddling both sides of that space. You’re really seeing how the sausage is made. You’re hearing all the conversations about artists, curators, the process of exhibition making. There is a lot of information you can gather about the economics of the art world by just being the person that has the know-how to touch and handle artwork. Eventually that started feeding into my art practice because I wanted to make work that was contributing to a conversation around art as a type of job. It fueled a methodology of seeing everything in the world as the result of a long line of processes that required effort and thoughtfulness by many hands.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961826/uv5bysb5fbne30gr5czh.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Fair Warning, 2025.
CGN: The title of your recent exhibition at the Cleve Carney Museum—Live, Laugh, Lo—sorry, not Live, Laugh, Love—Live, Laugh, Labor.
AC: [Laughs] That’s what everybody does.
CGN: I love the title—it’s perfect. You incorporate humor along with thoughtful critiques about labor and value in your work. What role does humor play? How does it help you connect with your audience?
AC: One of my biggest criticisms of art with a capital A is how easily it can be overly intellectualized. I think that’s why I end up making a lot of work that references things that already exist or have some kind of real purpose. It’s important to give people a foothold so there’s an obvious place to board that train of thought. As an artist—maybe this is me getting into a sweeping argument about what artists should be—but I personally believe in intellectual accessibility. Humor is a swift way to drop defenses and allow people to come in without feeling like they are not getting the joke or not understanding. I like to make work that can hold both of those things at the same time—it’s funny on the surface level, it’s kind of cheeky, but there’s also another way to look at it that is intellectually clever. There is a joy in the attempt to “get it”. Like the satisfaction of grasping how a crossword puzzle actually works.
It’s also so much a part of my personality. I take myself seriously as an artist, but my ego isn’t at the heart of it. It’s really something that I do because I love to make things, and I love to connect with other people. My parents raised me on puns, creating those language relationships between things and people and space. Understanding a joke is the same way that we understand art, and while neither of my parents would consider themselves artists, they taught me how to think about art.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961828/gnotyfijabr7e15kb6hm.jpg\")
Andi Crist, 69 Bananas
CGN: Your work, Artist’s Ladder, explores hierarchies, workplace cultures, and institutional values. What experiences shaped your reflections on these themes?
AC: The ladder piece distinctly represents the complicated relationship between front of house, back of house, and the hierarchy of labor. Who is the artist in those relationships? How much does another person’s knowledge and expertise contribute to the success of another artist?
There are enormous, industrialized art practices out there, warehouses full of people making things, and those people are also artists. When you make work that involves other people, it’s important to acknowledge their contributions. I’ve had complicated interactions with other artists who are like, ‘Hey, do you want to collaborate with me on this thing?’ but really they just want me to make their idea. I made Artist’s Ladder while I was in grad school at UIC, and it really represented my relationship with a lot of other artists, because I could be an actual support structure for them. Then it turned into this absurd physical thing. It’s extremely overbuilt with inlaid racing stripes made of exotic hardwood, and a butcher’s block-style plaid top. It’s not really like an FU as much as it is asking for acknowledgement of my skills and the essential support structures that exist.
CGN: I want to ask you about another piece, Five O’Clock Somewhere, a wool rug that resembles a children’s play mat. I work at a library, and it reminded me of rugs I see all the time. It’s a peaceful image of an office park with a large fountain surrounded by a parking lot. I’m curious why you chose a rug as the medium to depict that image.
AC: To me the heart of that joke was that it was a landscape. I wanted it to be physically traversable. And that was, I don’t want to say controversial, but it was something that I had to talk about a lot. The critique of that work was the fact that I didn’t want to hang it on the wall and turn it into a tapestry. I really wanted it to be a rug that people could walk on. When I showed that work at Chicago Artists Coalition for the New City Breakout Artists show. There was a lot of pushback about having it on the floor and allowing people to walk on it.
That, to me, was such an important conversation, because, in my mind, the fact that you could walk across it and traverse it was part of how I was thinking about the object. Rugs are utilitarian–they are floor coverings. When you make art that doesn’t do anything, you don’t get to participate in that part of the conversation.
I enjoy sparring around art like that. I am totally tickled by the pushback. The critique of display is exciting, and sorting through the politics of utilitarianism in art spaces is fun to me. And then—it was so crazy—we ended up showing it halfway on the wall and halfway on the ground.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961829/r1zylkwfw9rkw191skdl.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Five O’Clock Somewhere, on display at Live, Laugh, Labor: Thoughts on Usefulness and Other Myths at The Cleve Carney Museum of Art, 2025.
CGN: Oh, wow.
AC: I was like, this is the epitome of compromise! I had to build a structure so that it could hang that way safely.
CGN: I would say just put it on the ground if that’s what you want to do. It’s interesting that there are still very fixed ideas about the way that art should be displayed.
AC: That preparator part of it, that’s what I’m all about. I was having that conversation about what physically supports the work or what conceptually supports it in the way that it’s shown.
CGN: Have you always been a writer? How do your art and writing practices work together?
AC: I can’t say that I’m a writer, it’s probably the same way that it can feel weird to call yourself an artist. But I feel like I’ve always been relatively good at writing. The first time I ever did any kind of professional writing was contributing, a long time ago, to a website called eHow. The editors would send me a title, and then I would have to research how to do that thing. Then I would write out step-by-step instructions for how to do that.
I think that’s how I had to make myself think through my conceptual practice—I had to do the research, coagulate that into some kind of document, and then I would have stream-of-consciousness conversations with myself. “Why are we interested in this? Why would we make it this way? What would I want to talk about if someone were to ask me about this?” It’s almost like I was pre-interviewing myself.
I think the writing is just another way for me to process that idea before I put in all of the time and energy to actually accomplish it.
CGN: What are you working on right now? What projects do you have coming up?
AC: The biggest project that I have right now is my house. My family and I suffered a major house fire on New Year’s Day. We’ve been displaced since then and are navigating rebuilding our house. It was a total loss.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961830/kekfqzf9f87fq48juogh.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Single-Use Fireplace, 2025. Photo: Mikey Mosher.
CGN: I’m so sorry to hear that.
AC: Thank you. We’re all okay, but it’s been a really tumultuous year. I moved my studio into a storefront last summer, and so most of my, at least relatively recent, work is safe, and I still have all of my materials, but my home life is starting over. I just had my first full year at this space, and it’s got a little gallery built out in the front called Coming Soon. It’s beautiful with floor-to-ceiling windows on Division and Central Park. I’ve been inviting people into the space to try things out.
After teaching the ceramics class, I came into a bunch of nice slip casting molds, and I’m making some really playful, weird, ceramic stuff. I want to be open and not put too much pressure on myself. Having a big studio by myself is very expensive, so it’s easy to want to make it feel like it’s worth it. But if for now all I can do is make it a resource for other people, then that will be the thing I do. Be less selfish, but more selfish with my time. Saying I can’t do that, or I don’t want to do that. It’s not my nature to say no—I’m such a yes man. I’m learning how to be a yes man for myself.
CGN: That makes sense after going through something so traumatic.
AC: I have an amazing support system. Our friends started a GoFundMe. It was incredible. I’m so humbled and floored by how held I felt by Chicago. I can’t help but throw a little shout out to my Chicago people. I can see how people’s lives get totally ruined by this kind of tragedy. I feel so lucky. Chicago definitely showed its love back.
CGN: For your project Coming Soon, are you bringing in other artists?
AC: My philosophy is that I want to be involved as little as possible. I am thinking about it more as a hosted than curated space. I’m actively soliciting proposals or ideas for workshops, meetings, book clubs—I’m down for making it a resource, whatever that means. I don’t want to over-think it, I want it to be an intuitive and organic thing, which is why I call it Coming Soon—it can be a placeholder for anything. It’s exciting. Taking my hands off the reins is a good exercise for me.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961831/gno5dhliwfnzpuaim78s.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Extension Cords, Glazed stoneware, chrome, Sizes vary 2021-present. Photo: Mikey Mosher
Fall offers a full slate of exhibitions across galleries and museums throughout the Midwest. Behind the scenes, many people in the community are working tirelessly to support artists and bring fresh perspectives to the public. We spoke with five insiders about what excites them now and what they anticipate next.
The following preview is one of five conversations that appear in CGN's Fall 2026 magazine. To receive a copy of the print edition click here.
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“Intuit Art Museum’s renovated, expanded spaces give audiences the chance to connect with art through daily art-making, third Thursday Art After Work, group Slow Looks designed to provide a mindful experience with a single work and upcoming conversations with sculptor Bill Brady (Oct. 3) and Dr. Mary Trent (Oct. 15), who curated our current exhibition on the role of scrapbook-making in Henry Darger’s art.
On view is the thought-provoking Monumental: The Sculpture of Dr. Charles Smith, which encourages guests to consider the lack of historical representation of African Americans and Black people in America. Dr. Smith’s memorials champion Black history and stories of everyday life he sees missing in mainstream narratives.
This fall we’re opening an exhibition of paintings by Karla Wong, an artist who immigrated from Oaxaca and who explores themes of life and death, gender identity and self-discovery.”