It’s hard to explain Tim Samuelson’s significance to the cultural vitality of Chicago. The fact that the city created a job for him — as its official Cultural Historian — probably says it all. But if you want to understand why he’s such a an important force, take a look at “Sullivan’s Idea,” the show he’s curated about Louis Sullivan at the Cultural Center.
Actually, you might call the show “Tim Samuelson’s idea, as executed by Chris Ware,” because the quality of the show has much to do with the graphic and spatial sensibilities of Ware, the celebrated comic book artist and creator of “Jimmy Corrigan” and The Novelty Acme Library series as well as increasingly regular contributor as a New Yorker cover artist .
Samuelson’s encyclopedic knowledge of a dizzying array of topics, usually [but not necessarily] related to Chicago, is nothing short of astonishing. Beginning in the late 1960s, he would routinely scan the lists of demolition permits filed at the city’s Building Department and, more often than not, know exactly what was being demolished on the site. This enabled him to dash over to the property and see what he could salvage from the building, which is why he has such an extraordinary personal stash of important architectural fragments. [All but three of the many fragments in the Sullivan’s Idea show are from his collection.]
Samuelson says he began planning the show in 2005, in anticipation of the 150th anniversary of Sullivan’s birth in 2006, but really, you could just as well say he’s been thinking about it for his whole life, given how entrenched he’s been in the subject matter since he was a kid. He says that when he first started planning in earnest, people were already starting to arrange events to mark the 100th anniversary [in 2009] of the Burnham Plan of Chicago, and that he was afraid that Sullivan “was going to be forgotten — again.” He had always been irritated that, if Sullivan was considered at all, it was always as an historical figure. He wanted to give a sense of the architect’s impact during his lifetime.
Part of Samuelson’s motivation stemmed from his personal desire to somehow go back and re-experience what he felt when he experienced a work of architecture for the first time — “the pure emotional power of a building.” He acknowledges that, because you’re typically showing plans, drawings, photos and fragments, most architecture shows fail to convey the sense of the buildings themselves. Here, by using enormous enlargements of photos taken when the buildings were new, ingeniously arranged in the Cultural Center’s triple-height galleries, he’s been largely successful in suggesting actual architecture.
Samuelson had actually secured a grant to mount the exhibition in time for the Sullivan sesquicentennial, but for various reasons, couldn’t put all the pieces in place to schedule it then. Other obligations intervened, which ended up being a blessing, because by the time the Department of Cultural Affairs could commit to the exhibition, technological innovations had made the kind of graphics used here to such remarkable impact feasible, on a cost-effective basis.
The other element that made the show possible was Chris Ware. Ware and Samuelson had met years before, and actually collaborated on a book/video/audio project called “Lost Buildings” [with Ira Glass], which was originally created as a Chicago Public Radio fund-drive premium. Ware’s work had long included exquisitely rendered architectural imagery, and many of his comics take place in the context of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893.
[image from Chris Ware’s website]
Beyond his skills as a draftsman and storyteller, Ware shows an obvious gift for spatial design. The configuration of the panels, the arrangement of the graphic elements and their juxtaposition with the fragments and models, really help to actualize Samuelson’s attempt to convey their emotional power.
There are a few specific elements that deserve special mention. Samuelson points out that all the photos in the show were taken when the buildings were reasonably new, which makes the images of Sullivan’s Transportation building for the 1893 World’s Fair notable, because very few photos of it even exist. An enlargement of the presentation drawing for the project gives a taste of its spectacular coloration, and photos taken some time after the Fair closed show it in a state of dessication.
I feel a special connection to the abundance of terra cotta ornament, given my personal perseveration on the topic, particularly the examples of stock pieces made by the Midland Terra Cotta Company.
Samuelson says he couldn’t come out and say it specifically in the didactic materials accompanying the show, but he wants people to touch the pieces displayed — not just the terra cotta, but the metal balusters decorative grates and wooden newel posts, to give them a tactile connection to the subject matter. While this would induce apoplexy in most curators, Samuelson can say it’s okay because it’s all his stuff.
I also liked the almost fully-scaled image made with enlargements of the terra cotta facade of the Krause Music Store, Sullivan’s last commissioned work.
[I should point out that the innovation and intimacy that Sullivan’s Idea presents is complemented with an entirely more conventional, but no less worthwhile show at the Art Institute, of Sullivania, highlighting iconic photos by famed photographers Aaron Siskind, John Szarkowski and Richard Nickel, plus drawings by Sullivan himself.]
In the last couple of years, there’s been a real sea change among Chicago’s institutions focused on design and architecture — a shift away from an emphasis on Chicago’s great design legacy and more toward more sweeping, global trends. This is not in any way a bad thing — everybody’s gotta move on with the times — but it’s tremendously reassuring that there is a Tim Samuelson who will not let us forget about the past, even as we inevitably look to the future.
