John Vinci

Stretching south from 47th Street to the Midway Plaisance and east from Washington Park to the lakeshore, the historic neighborhood of Hyde Park - Kenwood covers nearly two square miles of Chicago's South Side. At one time a wealthy township outside of the city, this neighborhood has been home to Chicago's elite for more than 150 years, counting among its residents presidents and politicians, scholars, athletes, and fiery religious leaders. Known today for the grand mansions, stately row houses, and elegant apartments that these notables called home, Hyde Park - Kenwood is still one of Chicago's most prominent locales. Physically shaped by the Columbian Exposition of 1893 and by the efforts of some of the greatest architects of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries - including Daniel Burnham, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Mies van der Rohe - this area hosts some of the city's most spectacular architecture amid lush green spaces. Tree-lined streets give way to the impressive neogothic buildings that mark the campus of the University of Chicago, and some of the Jazz Age's swankiest high-rises offer spectacular views of the water and distant downtown skyline. In "Chicago's Historic Hyde Park", Susan O'Connor Davis offers readers a biography of this distinguished neighborhood, from house to home, and from architect to resident. Along the way, she weaves a fascinating tapestry, describing Hyde Park - Kenwood's most celebrated structures from the time of Lincoln through the racial upheaval and destructive urban renewal of the 1940s, '50s, and '60s and on into the preservationist movement of the last thirty-five years. Alongside hundreds of historical photographs, drawings, and current views, Davis recounts the life stories of these gorgeous buildings - and of the astounding talents that built them. This is architectural history at its best.

This biography of A. James Speyer traces his early career as a student of Mies van der Rohe in Chicago. During the 1940s and 1950s he taught architecture under Mies while completing glass and steel projects in Chicago and Pittsburgh. In 1957 Speyer travelled to Greece on a Fulbright fellowship, and taught at the Polytechneon in Athens. he later became Curator of Twentieth Century Painting and Sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago, holding this position for 25 years and mounting many innovative exhibitions. The book includes essays by Franz Schulze and six of Speyer's friends.

"What concerns me alone I only think, what concerns my friends I tell them, what can be of interest to only a limited public I write, and what the world ought to know is printed?" Georg Christoph Lichtenberg This major book commemorates the 75th anniversary of the Renaissance Society. The contents of the book were culled from all the Society's current records, its historical documents in the collection of The Archives of American Art of The Smithsonian Institution, and the permanent collections of this country's most renowned public museums. Several essays offer detailed and engaging histories of the Society and its context. John Vinci presents a personal rumination on the exhibition of Mies van der Rohe, and Anne Rorimer offers a typically brilliant account of Daniel Buren's in situ work and its later repercussions. Many of the book's 104 illustrations document what were the first U. S. museum exhibitions for some of the 20th century's most renowned artists such as Calder, Leger, Moholy-Nagy, van der Rohe, Orozco, Matta, Kosuth, Bourgeois, Pashke, and Mike Kelley. With documentation of every known exhibition, artist, publication and special event at The Renaissance Society from its founding in 1915 through 1990, this publication is a vital reference for contemporary art and exhibition in the 20th century.