Don Baum, Rin Tin Tin and the Peon. Courtesy of Elmhurst College.

Open House: Art About Home

Jan 19th–Apr 20th 2013

Open House: Art About Home focused on artists’ representations of home. Inspired by the museum’s McCormick House, a mid-century modern home designed by architect Mies van der Rohe, the new exhibitions consider experiences, contents, memories, and realities of home today. Open House: Art About Home consists of related projects throughout the museum, including initiatives by EAM’s artist-in-residence, Alberto Aguilar. Aguilar’s centerpiece is a site-specific installation of “domestic monuments” incorporating borrowed objects from local residents’ homes transformed into public sculptures that mark the exchange between artist and owner.

Work by artists Gabrielle Garland, Martin Hyers and William Mebane, Alyssa Miserendino, and Ann Toebbe presented interior views of homes visited or reconstructed through personal accounts or documentation. Examining the lives embedded within a home and the trappings associated with personal space, these paintings, photographs, and cut paper collages provide a glimpse inside while serving as impressions of a place and time.