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Each week CGN interviews a local art-industry professional to discuss the ins and outs of running a space in the city of Chicago. This week we caught up with Sandra Hindman, owner of Les Enluminures.
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Age: Perpetually young in spirit
\r\nHometown: Chicago
\r\nPrevious Occupation: Professor
\r\nCurrent Position: Founder and President Les Enluminures (Chicago, New York and Paris)
5 favorites from the past week
\r\nRestaurant: the Bella Vista (near my house in Italy, where I had the most delightful scallops this week)
\r\nMusic: Flotow’s Martha (which I listen to when walking in the countryside)
\r\nTV: I just finished binge watching all the seasons of “Call the Midwife,” such an interesting take on women’s lives in the late 50s and early 60s
\r\nFavorite activity: Swimming a mile a day in the outdoor Olympic pool near my house in Italy (but when in Chicago I swim at the Peninsula, great pool)
\r\nFavorite recent trip: 4 days in Crete with some Italian girlfriends (amazing landscapes, wonderful food, herbs, teas, olive oil, no wonder the Cretans are the longest living people!)
CGN: Tell us a little bit about your background and how the gallery came to be?
\r\n\r\nSH: I grew up in Hyde Park (my father was on the Manhattan Project and at University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory). Although I wanted to be a famous scientist like my father, math was my worst subject. I suppose my mother’s attraction to art (she filled our house with reproductions of famous paintings – in my room, there was a Renoir, a Degas, and a Modigliani -- and took me to the Art Institute of Chicago on Saturdays) was what eventually led me to art history. Professors at University of Chicago, then at University of California at Berkeley, stimulated my interest in medieval art, specifically in manuscripts, and I went on to get a PhD in medieval art history.
\r\n\r\nFollowing that I taught for many decades, first at The Johns Hopkins University and then at Northwestern University, where I twice served as Chair of the department.
\r\n\r\nOne day sometime in the 1980s, sitting in my office at Northwestern, the phone rang, and it was an art dealer from Ohio, asking me to write some descriptions of medieval manuscript leaves that he was taking for display at the New York Book Fair. I thought, “Well, why not?” although I had never done something like that before. Fast forward, I served as his “expert” for a number of years, wrote catalogues for him, suggested what purchases he should make at auction, and because most dealers in my field “outsource” their expertise, I helped other dealers identify and describe what they had for sale or were considering purchasing. For me, the “magic” of this experience was all about living closely with the material. As a scholar and professor, I spent years in research libraries, but having close access to manuscripts on a daily basis was a very moving and different experience.
\r\n\r\nHence, my gallery, which I finally opened in Paris in 1991. Why Paris (apart from the fact that it’s one of the most beautiful cities in the world)? I already had an apartment there from my many years of research on French medieval manuscripts. But, more important, there was no dealer in my field in Paris, and besides there were always manuscripts coming available from French dealers and private collections. I wanted better access to these sources.
\r\n\r\nChicago is my home. Although I have always had a commercial presence here, the USA side of my business operated on a very low profile out of my home for decades. In the past few years, I decided I wanted more visibility in Chicago. It’s such a great city for the arts. I had seen other spaces in the One Mag Mile building, and I love the award-winning architecture. Within the space of a morning, I signed on for a space that had hideous green shag carpeting from the '80s, lowered ceilings, and glass cubby-holes.
\r\n\r\nI saw possibilities. I brought my Italian architect over, and voila! Eight months later, in August 2016, we opened our Chicago premises. This has been a wonderful two years for us. In 2017, I gave a third of my collection of medieval manuscript leaves to the Art Institute, and in 2018 (January–May) they mounted a well-received and beautifully installed exhibition (The Medieval World at Our Fingertips) to celebrate that gift.
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CGN: Share a typical day-in-the-life!
\r\n\r\nSH: Seat 1A on an airplane.
\r\n\r\nActually, I borrowed that line from a client, who lives between Hong Kong, London, and New York. But it’s appropriate for my life as well. I live between Chicago, Paris, New York (our commercial spaces are in big cities) and Italy, where I have a house in a tiny farming community in Veneto. My mother is Italian, and I have been coming to the same area since I was 17 years old. I have 35 cousins here. So, it’s home. It has a huge beautiful garden – I call this part of my life “flower therapy” – and birds that chirp so loud you can hear them when I’m talking on the phone. Then, I work. I write on the computer. I still do many of our descriptions, contribute to our blog, write academic books (I have one on French language manuscripts that is going to press this summer in Belgium), contact clients, talk to employees in my various locations, visit museums. I love cooking, especially Italian and French, although I am accomplished in several different cuisines (I even taught Chinese cooking when I lived in Baltimore).
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CGN: Best sale you've ever had?
\r\n\r\nSH: The best story concerns a work that I’ve often described as my favorite medieval manuscript leaf showing a group of people in a verdant landscape, illustrating the month of May. I long admired it in a private collection in New York. When it came up for sale, I bought it. It turned out to be a page from the Sforza Hours (a masterpiece painted in Milan in the 1490s) by the Italian artist Giovanni Birago. One day when Birago had gone out, some of the miniatures he was working on for this manuscript were stolen out of his workshop. They caught the monk who stole the miniatures, but the miniatures themselves never turned up. The manuscript was then completed by another Netherlandish painter, and it eventually ended up in the British Library.
\r\n\r\n"My" miniature of the month of May turned out to be one of the stolen miniatures! So, I sold it to the British Library and they reunited it with the original manuscript – 500 years later! A footnote: for insurance in the 1490s, they called in Michelangelo to do the appraisal, and he appraised the miniatures at the same value (then) as Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks.
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CGN: Any major successes this year? What about challenges?
\r\n\r\nSH: I think the show at the Art Institute was the most significant event so far of my 2018. I am proud of my relationship with the museum, thrilled that I have been able to add to an already-fine collection, and I look forward to continuing association with the museum.
\r\n\r\nThere are always challenges when one is in business. Employees come and go (we have about 15 employees in our various locations), clients too. Finding great works of art and placing them in great collections is always the biggest challenge. I am working on a few amazing projects now in this regard. Ask me again in 2019!
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CGN: One piece of advice you would send back to your younger self?
\r\n\r\nSH: Enjoy everything you do. I really feel like I’ve done it right. I loved teaching, and I have students who hold positions in many renowned universities and museums. They remain my colleagues today, sort of like far-flung children. And, I love the creativity of having my own business, of thinking up projects that give pleasure and are commercially viable, of working with younger colleagues.
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CGN: What do you look for in an artwork? When searching for yourself, what speaks to you?
\r\n\r\nSH: Quality, details, historical context.
\r\n\r\nI personally am very interested in art for and about women.
\r\n\r\nMy largest personal collection includes most of the works by Dora Maar during the years that she lived with Picasso (and a few Picassos that relate to Dora Maar from the same years). But, I also have one of the two most significant collections of Alicja Halicka (the Polish wife of the famous Cubist painter Louis Marcoussis). If I could own any two illuminated manuscripts in the world, I would choose the Collected Works by Christine de Pizan (British Library Harley 4431) and the Darmstadt Haggadah, the former written by a proto-feminist author at the French court and illuminated for the Queen and the latter made for and used by young German women in the fifteenth century, women are pictured in it celebrating the Seder.
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CGN: What’s coming up next at the gallery?
\r\n\r\nSH: We have many surprises for the latter half of 2018 and into 2019 – an exhibition of medieval and Renaissance rings, and an exhibition of three medieval masterpieces of manuscript illumination, the latter opening in New York at TEFAF New York in October, then exhibited in our New York gallery, before coming to Chicago in late November just in time for Christmas.
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Sandra Hindman is the Founder and President of Les Enluminures on Michigan Avenue. For more information regarding the gallery please visit Les Enluminures.
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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.
“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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.”