Exhibits & events
The gallery has reopened and is now accessible by elevator.
At Home at the Fair: Chicago Artists at the World’s Columbian Exposition
Saturday, January 25, 2025 at 1:00 p.m.
FREE admission
A lecture by independent art historian Wendy Greenhouse
Held in the Vanderpoel Art Gallery
Ridge Park Fieldhouse, 9625 S. Longwood Drive, Chicago
This illustrated presentation explores the subject of what Chicago’s fine artists brought to the celebrated world’s fair held in their hometown in 1893. Although little noticed at the time and in posterity, Chicagoans contributed to the decoration of the exposition’s buildings and grounds and submitted significant paintings and sculptures to the vast but exclusive art exhibition in the fair’s Fine Arts Building. What do their contributions reveal about Chicago’s artistic identity and ambitions as the city used the occasion of the fair to promote its arrival as a sophisticated metropolis on the world’s stage?”
Independent art historian Wendy Greenhouse has written extensively about Chicago’s art and artists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and curated exhibitions for numerous area museums, among them the Chicago History Museum, the Terra Museum of American Art, the Illinois Governor’s Mansion in Springfield, and the Brauer Museum at Valparaiso University.¬† Greenhouse earned her PhD in the history of art at Yale. This lecture is drawn from her essay for the forthcoming catalog for the National Mexican Fine Arts Museum’s recent exhibition Arte Diseño Xicágo II, which compared the art of Chicagoans and Mexicans exhibited at the world’s fair.
Past exhibits and events
Concert Title: Autumnal Americana
Personnel and Instruments Featured: Brian Ostrega, Violin and Stephen Uhl, Piano
Date: Saturday, October 12, 2024
Time: 1:00p.m.-2:30p.m.
Location: Ridge Field House, John H. Vanderpoel Art Association 9625 S. Longwood Dr. Chicago, IL 60643
Join the Ostrega Uhl Project in its upcoming performance of Autumnal Americana on October 12, 2024 at the Ridge Field House. Enjoy uplifting and inspiring melodies from Lukas Foss, Samuel Coleridge Taylor, Erich Korngold and more! This event is free and open to the public, all are welcome to attend.
Open House Chicago features the John H. Vanderpoel Art Association collection in the Ridge Park Fieldhouse
Every October, the Chicago Architecture Center is proud to host Open House Chicago‚ a free public festival that offers self-guided history and architecture trails throughout Chicago, talks and programming, and behind-the-scenes access to architecturally, historically and culturally significant sites across the city.
The Vanderpoel gallery will be open from 10:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m. on October 19 and 20, 2024.
The gallery is on the second floor of the Ridge Park Fieldhouse, designed by John and Murray Hetherington in 1929.
Visitors can enjoy self-guided tours. Please note: this site is now ADA compliant, as there is access by elevator. No photography please.
Andy Paczos
Andy Paczos is a direct observation, on-site painter. Born in Detroit in 1961, he received formal training and has been actively painting for 30 years.
While at the The School at the Art Institute of Chicago receiving his MFA, artist and teacher Ted Halkins, on reviewing Paczos’s work at his studio, recommended that he “look out of the window – there’s lots of good stuff out there.”
Paczos took the advice and has painted urban environments, primarily in Chicago ever since. His paintings have included classic building-scapes as well as iconic, isolated elements such as expressway lights against the sky.
The mission of the Ridge Park Art Fair & Festival is to support artists in showcasing their unique creations and to contribute to the vitality of life in Beverly Hills/Morgan Park and beyond.
The Ridge Park Art Fair & Festival is sponsored by the Chicago Park District, The Ridge Park Advisory Council and The John H. Vanderpoel Art Association. The John H. Vanderpoel Art Association is in residency at Ridge Park through the Chicago Park District’s Arts Partner in residence program, which unites artists and communities in Chicago’s parks.
The gallery has reopened and is now accessible by elevator.
Open Tuesdays & Thursdays 1:00 – 4:00 p.m. and Saturdays by appointment. • Call 773-294-8311 for information or an appointment.
Ridge Park Fieldhouse, 9625 S. Longwood Drive, Chicago, IL 60643
Send donations and correspondence to: 10429 S. Seeley Ave., Chicago, IL 60643