![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1774446653/uegzwu5vvpwxtqgsyq6b.jpg\")
Courtesy Rhona Hoffman Gallery.
By GINNY VAN ALYEA
Last October Rhona Hoffman announced that in spring 2025, when the gallery’s West Town lease at 1711 W. Chicago Ave. was up, she would close the physical space and begin a new chapter in the gallery’s half-century history. It was my hope upon planning this spring issue that I would have the chance to speak with Hoffman, who recently celebrated her 90th birthday, about her plans for what comes next and to hear her reflections on her remarkable, art-filled life and career.
When we met at the gallery in February, Hoffman was about to fly to New York for her gallery artist Amanda Williams’s opening at Casey Kaplan Gallery, having just returned from attending Williams’s exhibition opening at Spelman College in Atlanta. When I shared my excitement of catching up with her for a quick ‘exit interview’, Hoffman firmly let me know that ‘exit’ would be inaccurate.
“Exit is a full stop, so I’m not doing that,” she explained. “Segue is a much better term, as it implies a seamless transition within the gallery’s program.”
Hoffman is ready for this change from one stage to another. As she closes the gallery space, she is considering the variety of opportunities and ideas she has to remain active in the art world. Over nearly 50 years as a gallerist, she’s earned a distinguished international reputation, having amassed a remarkable amount of knowledge and experience about running a prosperous, influential contemporary gallery program. During our talk Hoffman revealed that her life in the art world afforded many surprising experiences through her connections and engagements with life in this industry. One example, she tells me, is that because of her early dedication to presenting women artists, and contributing to their equal representation, she was made an official, honorary Gorilla Girls member. After so many years building relationships and putting forth her perspective through art, having the art world acknowledge her gallery program, her artists, and her humanism, I can’t blame Hoffman for not wanting to say goodbye just yet. While Hoffman doesn’t know the details of what comes next, she does know it is not yet time to exit.
*
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1774446653/nrtyplyj4zglvhnvquq4.jpg\")
MCA Women’s Board members Helyn Holland, Dorie Sternberg, and Rhona Hoffman examine goods sold through the MCA Store. Photo © MCA Chicago
In the 1960s when Rhona Hoffman moved from the East Coast to the suburbs of Chicago, having studied art history at Vassar, she was looking for something to do. “I was married, having kids, and we moved to Highland Park. It was really boring. I found out that there was an organization called The Highland Park Associates of the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC). They tried to get people from the suburbs down to the Art Institute and connect them to the museum and to each other by hiring speakers once a month or so and inviting people. It was smart, but I remember I wasn’t that happy with what they were doing, so I joined the organization and I worked my way up to be president, so I could do what I wanted.” Hoffman’s initiative gave her some authority over the group’s programming. She wanted it to focus on more current happenings, what she considered interesting. She admits some of those gatherings weren’t enthusiastically received, so the organization didn’t want to formally host them at the museum. Instead Hoffman held them in her living room. “We had Arthur Siegel and Aaron Siskind together for a program, and we had professors from Northwestern [University], and critics like Harry Bouras [of Hairy Who fame].”
While impressing all the women of the board, including some fellow Vassar alumnae, Hoffman was recognized by many as a woman ahead of her time. Not only did she have a penchant for art, she could get things done. Hoffman says that was the beginning of her Chicago life in the arts. She joined the Woman’s Board at the Art Institute of Chicago, and soon after, toward the end of the 1960s, Hoffman was well situated in the Chicago art world as it was evolving. She was asked to be a member of the first Woman’s Board of the new Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), just as it was opening. Engagement with the MCA placed Hoffman in the front row to ground-breaking art and positioned her to gain business experience and meet more people in the contemporary art world.
The MCA, she recalls, was always ahead of its time, as well as also ahead of other museums at that time. “Jan van der Marck was the first director [of the MCA] and he was brilliant. His first show was Poetry to be Seen/Paintings to be Read, [which opened in the fall of 1967.] The next show he did was Art by Telephone.” Hoffman said she recently came across some information about the exhibition, which the MCA credits with being extremely influential in the museum’s early history. Art by Telephone asked artists from the United States and Europe to communicate their ideas for artworks over the telephone to MCA curator David H. Katzive. MCA staff then executed the works based on the artists’ oral instructions, avoiding all blueprints and written plans. After six weeks, all of the works exhibited in Art by Telephone were either destroyed or disposed of by the museum. Hoffman emphasizes the importance of how the exhibition helped the fledgling institution establish itself quickly. “This exhibition was at the MCA before it was at MoMA,” she says. “It helped the museum make a mark.”
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1774446654/brogndkop1pxzt8boafb.jpg\"){kind=spacer}
Sol LeWitt installation at the gallery, 2010. Courtesy of Rhona Hoffman Gallery.
The opportunity to make a mark appeals to Hoffman in that it is a form of public education, curating and presenting new ideas through art. We spoke about how there is a long-held myth in Chicago that the MCA was opened because a group of collectors were being kept off of the Art Institute’s board. When I ask Hoffman about this she responds, “No. There was a group of people interested in forming this [new museum.] There were some great collectors here–the Shapiros, the Hokins, the Bergmans and the Horowitzes. They knew what they were doing [starting the MCA]. And it wasn’t because they weren’t admitted to the Art Institute. They didn’t want to do what the Art Institute did, they wanted to do what they wanted to do.”
The distinction is an important one that corrects a story that implies one group of collectors didn’t measure up in comparison to another, and that given their choice they would have joined AIC’s board. As Hoffman explained to me, Chicago’s art collecting landscape was changing. On one hand, within the city’s collector community there was of course interest in remaining affiliated with AIC, one of the world’s most famous museums, and, “On the other hand,” she says, “the Art Institute wasn’t going to have Art by Telephone. One institution can’t do everything.”
It would take an entirely new museum to make it happen.
*
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1774446656/bkkmbaafwau6knn1qr7f.jpg\")
Works by Leon Golub on view at the gallery, 2017. Courtesy of Rhona Hoffman Gallery.
Hoffman’s connections and experiences led from one role to another. It was on the MCA board that she very successfully launched and ran the museum’s store, one of the first in the country, with Helyn [Holland] Goldenberg for a decade, proving that a commercial space in a museum would benefit the MCA’s bottom line by becoming one of the most popular shops in the city. She was also becoming a collector. “Even when I moved from New York, I remember the first thing I bought was a work by Richard Hunt from Bud Holland in a parking lot. In 1961 the second piece I bought was a painting by Leon Golub for $2,400 from Allan Frumkin. I paid that off in a year.”
Energizing organizations and learning what made certain boards tick led to both friendships and knowledge. “An older board member explained the Women’s Board to me, ‘My dear, one third of the board is here because their family is important. Another third is here because they give money. And the other third is us. We are the worker bees.’ So that’s how I learned what the board was about.” Working alongside other women would eventually help Hoffman in her biggest move yet.
A surprise professional opportunity followed a difficult divorce. Hoffman recalls, “The divorce was good for me, but bad financially. It helped that I had been collecting art, and all the dealers were my friends.”
“My friend Grace Hokin had two galleries at the time, one in Bal Harbor in Florida, and one on Ontario Street [across from the MCA]. She called me up, ‘Oh, I’m so glad you got divorced, finally.’ Then she said, ‘I’m so sorry you’re poor. Come and be the director of my gallery.’ This is literally how my career started.”
Hoffman was incredulous, telling her friend she had never even thought of running a gallery. Hokin persisted, “She said, ‘Oh, come on. You went to Vassar. You studied art history. You know all the collectors in town. I’ll teach you the rest in 10, 15 minutes.’” Hoffman accepted her offer to make a new start and now admits she knew she could help Hokin become a contemporary art gallery.
*
A few years later, in 1976 she and Donald Young opened Young Hoffman Gallery on East Ohio Street in the Ontario/Michigan Ave. area of downtown. It would be several years before they relocated the gallery to what would become River North. “I knew other galleries that had been operating in Chicago for a while, but for our first couple of shows, we really felt that we had to catch people up. We had an exhibit of prints from [New York dealer] Ronald Feldman’s Parisol Press. Many became our gallery artists–for example Sol LeWitt, Robert Mangold, and Donald Judd. We wanted to show art that was contemporary internationally, without regard to location.”
“One of the things that helped us was our informality. The table we used was a butcher block. On Saturdays all the collectors came and we just sat around and talked about art. We were very accessible, and we were happy to have people with us.” The scope of the gallery continued to expand, and the city’s collector base increased as well. “It wasn’t just me and Donald,” Hoffman notes. “We had the Renaissance Society, Phyllis Kind [and the Hairy Who], Richard Feigen. We had a lot of help in terms of becoming contemporary, staying contemporary, being supported by people who liked it and understood. The collector base was spectacular. And because it was a small [community,] everyone knew each other and also wanted to help.”
Hoffman sees the history of Chicago’s art world at that time as one of collectors making choices, with museums running to catch up. “In the 19th Century, it was collectors [traveling Europe] who made the Art Institute take all those paintings they said they hated [but which made the museum famous]. That was so Chicago, even then.” She shares a story from the time of Young Hoffman Gallery, when a call between friends before a trip to New York resulted in some unique carry-on luggage. A well-known collector asked Hoffman and fellow MCA Board member Helyn Goldenberg to bring back a Joseph Cornell box they had just purchased, instead of having it shipped. Hoffman says it was just like any other flight, except she held a fragile, avant-garde artwork on her lap for a couple of hours. That sort of informality was so cozy, she remembers. “It was sort of strangers becoming friends.”
*
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1774446656/x8fp6w9w2tsvgv9zshnb.jpg\")
Michael Rakowitz , The Flesh Is Yours, The Bones Are Ours, 2016. Courtesy of Rhona Hoffman Gallery.
The gallery’s legacy and Hoffman’s own name ‘Rhona Hoffman’ are the amalgam of her dedication, integrity, expertise and care for the many artists Hoffman has worked with, exhibited and represented over these many years. She has championed and given visibility to dozens of artists. She has launched countless careers from the very beginning and developed many others. She doesn’t hesitate when I ask which single artist, out of such an esteemed group, she thinks has represented the gallery’s mission most purely. “Sol LeWitt. He was a great artist and a lovely man.” The two were friends and kindred spirits, with Hoffman noting she considers him the greatest artist ever (Hoffman added two more ‘evers’ to her adulation). LeWitt was political, she says, not necessarily in his art, but in his life. He was also known for his generosity, trading with artists he admired the most. “He’d ask, ‘Do you think Lorna Simpson would want to trade with me?’ It was his way of admiring another artist. So he had this huge collection of work by artists when they were young.” Hoffman shares that when the gallery started showing [photographer] Dawoud Bey’s work, around 1993 or ’94, LeWitt and Bey both happened to be spending time at [Phillips Academy] Andover in Massachusetts. Bey told LeWitt he wanted to take his picture. LeWitt said he didn’t want to, but [his wife] Carol said yes. Months later, a truck showed up at Bey’s house on Chicago’s South Side, and in it was a very large-scale drawing from LeWitt; unexpected artistic reciprocity.
Artists’ mutual respect, connections and friendships have contributed much to the gallery’s program. As Hoffman says, it’s quite common for one artist to lead to another. If you tried to create a family tree of the gallery’s stable, there would be many branches. Though rooted in conceptual and minimal art, the gallery has also stayed available to emerging ideas and always had a socio-political branch. “I’m very hyper-political, so a lot of the gallery’s artists are artists who were, while not totally political, at least socially political.” Hoffman says the relationships that develop are important for her to genuinely share each artist’s perspective on the world, and to communicate what their art expresses. When I mention the work of Iraqi-American gallery artist, Michael Rakowitz, Hoffman says, “He and I have been together for years. I adore him. I love his brain. I love his mind. I love the work that he creates.” Many years before Rakowitz, Hoffman says, came Leon Golub and Nancy Spero, whose work she first exhibited in 1982. “It’s a clear line from them to Michael. It’s not a big jump. It’s about being connected, and I like being connected to the world through art. Art changes people and art changes countries.” She points out that Golub and Spero examined the violence of the Vietnam War, and Rakowitz has explored the Iraq war, and beyond, because war is a constant. “Art has always jumped into the fray to answer war. And artists are always on the right side of destiny,” Hoffman says.
Hoffman’s artistic relationships go back decades, but she’s also known for continually adding to the gallery’s program by bringing on young, new talent. “I always go into that with happiness,” Hoffman says. One artist she brought to the gallery’s roster around 2015 was Nathaniel Mary Quinn. “I got a phone call from Jessamyn Fiore–the daughter of Bob Fiore, the photographer for artist Robert Smithson. She said, ‘Rhona, there’s an artist I just found. I think you will like him.’ She sent me a little picture. I was going to be in New York the next couple of days, and I went straight from the airport to Quinn’s studio. I went in and I saw the work. It was a teeny house, and it was breathtaking. It was so exciting to see someone of such big talent and ideas. I signed him up right then and there, and we had a show that year in September. Some things take time, some things don’t.”
Hoffman has trusted her eye as much as her connections over the decades. She has discovered many artists and introduced them to collectors. She’s also blunt about others in the art world who keep an eye on what she sees first. “I’ve lost a lot of artists because they get picked up by mega galleries in New York and LA. They go shopping in my store. I know most of the time, that’s the way of the world. It happens.”
*
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1774446658/lvmqz0cpoykqlrj21fov.jpg\")
Courtesy Rhona Hoffman Gallery.
Last October Hoffman announced that the gallery’s lease was up in April 2025 and that she did not plan to renew it or relocate. “I love art,” she says. “I’m going to do something, maybe something smaller. But I need to think. When you do something for 50 years, you get up and you go to work. And it’s easy. I think that really, it’s a wonderful thing.” She admits she’s torn between loving what happens in a gallery and also not wanting to come to work every day anymore. She turns to me and mentions the lyrics from a song she can’t place, “I got to go, but I don’t want to go.”
In 2014 Annie Leibovitz photographed Hoffman for Vanity Fair, when she was named one of America’s superstar female gallerists. And she’s sustained that elite status through the decades. There is only one Rhona. But being the only one has its limits where there are only so many hours in the day. As she considers what is next for the gallery and for herself, Hoffman says she is thinking about how to do all she wants to do. How to best spend her time weighs on her. She refers to a local organization benefit invitation the following week and laments, just a little, that she can’t make it. Instead, she says, she has to fly to New York for gallery business and she will also attend the Human Rights Watch dinner, of which she’s on the board. “There’s just a limited amount of me. So I make some choices about what I can still do.”
“I think coming to work, like yesterday, is fun.” She shares that the day before, Art Institute curator Melinda Watt, who is working on a Claire Zeisler exhibition, stopped by because Zeisler was a friend and artist at the gallery. Hoffman describes how they got all the artist’s books out and “made a mess,” excitedly describing the energy that comes from hosting visitors, and talking and searching for information. She says they even decided to order pies from Hoosier Mama down the street. When Hoffman offered to let Watt take the books needed back with her, Watt said she’d much prefer to go over them at the gallery. Hoffman was delighted. Next a collector arrived, another old friend. “It’s like having a town hall,” Hoffman says. “Being a meeting place is something that I seemed to be able to do easily.”
Now 90, Hoffman is contending with an increasing awareness of mortality and viewing her time as a limited resource. She wants to stay involved with art but also to respond to a fraught social and political climate. “I’m still pretty healthy and I don’t break and rarely get sick. I’m planning to stay in the art world but would also like to put more of my energies into what’s happening in the larger world that is so distressing, to do more work towards human rights. I’m ready to do whatever needs to be done, even if it’s writing letters and sending postcards.” Hoffman knows the relationships she’s built with her artists, collectors and institutions in Chicago and beyond will exist beyond the gallery’s walls, as they have always been intertwined. The gallery was not just a job, it has been an expression of herself and her life.
#
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.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1789517637/noxz9olp47gfneafz8xg.jpg\")
“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.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1789516769/izokunnmrufdyjbjnypk.jpg\")
“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.”