{"article":{"id":22,"title":"Collector Profile: Janis Kanter and Tom McCormick","excerpt":"

By KEVIN NANCE

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If the secret of a happy marriage is compromise, Thomas McCormick and Janis Kanter are one of the happiest couples on Chicago’s art-collecting scene. Despite their significantly differing tastes—he leans toward mid-20th-century abstract painting, mostly by deceased artists; she favors contemporary work by living artists in various media, photography in particular—McCormick and Kanter have blended their interests and, along the way, created one of the city’s most eclectic yet surprisingly harmonious private collections.

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By KEVIN NANCE

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*This profile was published in the May-August 2014 issue of Chicago Gallery News

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\"\"If the secret of a happy marriage is compromise, Thomas McCormick and Janis Kanter are one of the happiest couples on Chicago’s art-collecting scene. Despite their significantly differing tastes—he leans toward mid-20th-century abstract painting, mostly by deceased artists; she favors contemporary work by living artists in various media, photography in particular—McCormick and Kanter have blended their interests and, along the way, created one of the city’s most eclectic yet surprisingly harmonious private collections.

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Over their 22-year marriage, this Chicago art-world power couple—he owns the Thomas McCormick Gallery in the West Loop, while she chairs the board of directors at the Hyde Park Art Center—have learned how to negotiate with each other on their joint acquisitions. Sometimes it’s a matter of one bending a bit in the other’s direction. Other times it’s a matter of one spouse recognizing that the other’s enthusiasm for a particular work of art is so primal, so unshakable that resistance is futile. 

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“I would say the decision-making is heavily weighted to one side of the couple,” McCormick says with a smile, pointing his chin in Kanter’s direction during an interview at their sprawling historic home, a 1904 Holabird and Roche mansion in Hyde Park that they bought and refurbished five years ago. “One of the first expensive pieces we bought together was at the Chicago art fair at Navy Pier a while back,” McCormick recalls. “I step out into the corridor and here comes Janis walking towards me. She’s got that look, and I know I’m in trouble.” 

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His wife doesn’t deny it. “If I don’t like it,” she says with a twinkle in her eye, “it doesn’t get very far.”

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“Or it goes in my man-cave upstairs,” he offers. “That’s all me, straight down the line. She walks by there on tiptoe.”

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“On occasion I walk in and go, ‘I could really do something in here,’” she says. “And then I think, ‘I need to be out of here.’”

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In all seriousness, McCormick’s willingness to accede to his wife’s judgment has grown over the years, in part because his experience has taught him that her more experimental tastes and instincts (“I definitely like things that are weirder,” she says) are more on target than might be initially apparent. “I’m a little bull-headed,” he admits. “But Janis helps me see things that I would turn a blind eye to otherwise. I would be much more inward-looking, much more of an old fart about all this stuff if I weren’t married to her. More often than not, what happens is that we’ll get something that I’m not crazy about, and then six months or a year later, I really love it. It grows on me.”

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One of the earliest examples of this was the piece Kanter fell in love with at Navy Pier all those years ago: a photo-collage by the Scottish artist David Mach of a Chicago River scene, which now hangs in their entrance hall with a small collection of Asian ceramics beneath a chandelier of Murano glass. McCormick’s initial hesitation about the Mach piece was that it was so large, and as his wife says, “Wall space is at a premium in this house.” 

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That’s true despite the fact that the house is a rangy 8,000 square feet. “Some people with eclectic collections display them salon-style, but Tom and Janis don’t do that,” says Kate Lorenz, executive director at the Hyde Park Art Center and a longtime friend of the couple. “They hang things with space around them, so everything kind of breathes.”

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___

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Husband and wife came by their respective collecting knowledge and practices via distinctly different routes. McCormick, who studied printmaking at the University of Kansas, is a largely self-taught collector who began acquiring (and sometimes reselling) antiques, especially furniture, oriental rugs, paintings, prints, textiles and ceramics, as an undergraduate. “If it’s not nailed down, I’ve probably bought and sold it,” he says. “I never did cars, but you never know.” By 1992, when McCormick moved from Kansas City to Chicago and married Kanter, he had narrowed his business model to dealing in paintings, but continued to collect most of the other genres he had loved as a teenager. 

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She, on the other hand, had grown up surrounded by art as one of three children in a collecting family. Her parents, Chicago tax attorney Burton Kanter and his wife Naomi, began with little money (“They used to frame pieces of wallpaper,” their daughter recalls fondly) but, as their fortunes improved, collected work by local artists and, eventually, blue-chip pieces by some of the biggest names in the international art world. Eventually the senior Kanters amassed a collection of about 1,200 artworks.

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But Burton Kanter in particular never lost interest in contemporary and local artists, often developing relationships with them that proved mutually beneficial. “He was a patron,” his daughter says. “Artists would come to my dad and say, ‘Hey, Burt, I really want to do this body of work for the next year. Is there a chance that you could support me for this amount of money, and you’ll get the first six pieces of your choice?”  

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After their father’s death in 2001 at the age of 71, Kanter and her two brothers inherited the family collection, which they have since culled down to about 500 pieces. About a third of the McCormick-Kanter collection, displayed in their homes in Hyde Park and Sawyer, Mich., 

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is from the Kanter family legacy, and includes pieces by Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, Hans Hofmann and Andy Warhol, including ten works from Warhol’s “Myths” series. 

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Another third features works by artists represented by the McCormick Gallery, including mid-century abstract expressionists such as the 92-year-old New York painter Mary Abbott, as well as Chicago artists such as Dawoud Bey, Roger Brown, Tony Fitzpatrick, Richard Hunt, Judy Ledgerwood, Laura Letinsky, Wesley Kimler and others.

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The final third includes works jointly acquired by McCormick and Kanter, with the latter’s taste—her special emphasis on large-scale photography, including a series of commissioned portraits of their daughters, Tatum and Reese—a bit more apparent. Several of these works were acquired at art fairs or through the Hyde Park Art Center, often as a result of Kanter’s passionate and sometimes rather sudden attachments to them. “She tends to be pretty sure about things very quickly,” Lorenz says. “Just the other day, a show was going up in one of our galleries and she was breezing through. By the time she got to the end of the hall, she had essentially bought something. We hadn’t even put the price list down, but something shook her, and she was ready to add it to her collection.”

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McCormick is a more deliberative buyer and more attentive to the price of an artwork than his wife. But he is not without his own all but uncontrollable enthusiasms, including a passion for elegant Mexican serapes (McCormick has 40 of them in his man-cave, displayed on a rack system with hand-cranked dowels that he designed himself) and various artworks featuring dragons. 

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“I’m a dragon guy,” he says helplessly, then recounts what happened one year at the Armory Show in New York, when he spotted a ceramic sculpture featuring the mythical creatures by the mid-career Chinese artist Li Lihong. McCormick had lusted after the piece since seeing it on the cover of Art + Auction magazine two weeks earlier; now, beholding it in the gleaming porcelain flesh, he could barely contain himself. 

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Within minutes he was on the phone to his wife, who calmly told him: “Tom, just get it.”

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___

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It’s difficult to quantify the McCormick-Kanter collection, which consists of a core group of about 150 paintings, prints and photographs divided between their two homes, plus hundreds of other objects, including collections of textiles, antique oriental rugs, Italian art glass, Asian (especially Japanese and Chinese) ceramics, salt-and-pepper shakers, Mexican and Arts & Crafts pottery, art furniture and a wide variety of sculpture. The remarkable thing about the works on display in Hyde Park is that despite the fact that they are arrayed in fairly close proximity and often grouped together in juxtaposed fashion, they cohere far more than they clash.

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“Janis has an eye for design, and the house itself is such a platform,” Lorenz says. “It’s an amazing house that they’ve refreshed and put a new palette on, and it holds art wonderfully. When you walk in and see an Andy Warhol next to a young photographer next to a ceramic pot, it all makes sense, because it’s all held together by the house.”

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It’s held together, too, by a couple who have assembled their collection the way they’ve nurtured their marriage: by knowing when to bend and blend, when to stand firm, and when to tell each other to just get it.

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*Publisher's update to the print edition: Artworks from the Kanter family collection are owned by Art Enterprises, Ltd.

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Kevin Nance is a Chicago-based freelance writer and photographer. Twitter @KevinNance1

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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.





Nikko Washington – 

Artist


“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.”


Nikko Washington


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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.




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.


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.



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.



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. 


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. 



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.


andicrist.com



Andi Crist, Extension Cords, Glazed stoneware, chrome, Sizes vary 2021-present. Photo: Mikey Mosher



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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. 




Debra Kerr – 

CEO, Intuit Art Museum


“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.”


Intuit Art Museum

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