Elmhurst Art Museum transforms historic McCormick House for holiday market
To celebrate the holiday season, Elmhurst Art Museum will host "Jingle & Mingle" on Friday, Dec. 6. The holiday marketplace extravaganza will be 4 to 9 p.m. at the museum, 150 S. Cottage Hill Ave.
Tickets to the event are $15 and reservations are required at www.elmhurstartmuseum.org/events.
The festive event, featuring designer goods by local businesses and artisans, offers visitors the opportunity to sip and shop, as well as step into the museum's historic McCormick House where Chicago architect and interior designer Robert Kleinschmidt's Mid-Century Modern take on holiday decor will be on display in the museum's current exhibition, "McCormick House - Past, Present, Future."
The exhibition - a full 1950s inspired domestic representation of its Mies van der Rohe McCormick House - is furnished by modern home furnishings retailer Room & Board.
Items on display in the house will be available to order during "Jingle & Mingle. "
Other featured vendors include: A&M Country Jam and Jelly; Alta Textiles; Blue Violet Candles; Jason Boebinger; Donna Castellanos Design; Design Museum Chicago; East Grove Stamp Co.; Eclectic Redesigns; Irbe Design, Inc.; Jewelry by Venus; Jewelsies; Osio Brown Studios; Pock-It Palz; Practical Girl Designs; Room & Board; and Slowfire Ceramics.
In 1952, the renowned modern architect Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969) designed a home for Robert Hall McCormick III, a member of Chicago's most prominent families, and his wife, the poet Isabella Gardner.
The house was later lived in by families of Arthur and Marilyn Sladek, Ray and Mary Ann Fick, and then purchased by the Elmhurst Art Museum for a new arts complex.
The house is a rare and important example of Mies van der Rohe's mature style, incorporating elements of his celebrated designs for the Farnsworth House (1951) and 860-880 Lake Shore Drive (1951).
The McCormick House - one of only three single-family homes designed by Mies in the United States - originally served two purposes: it was a home for the McCormick family and a prototype for a proposed group of smaller, affordable mass-produced modular homes in the western Chicago suburbs that McCormick and co-developer Herbert S. Greenwald were hoping to build. However, the cutting-edge, high-end buildings were not met with enough buyers to begin construction.
The house became part of the Elmhurst Art Museum's campus in 1994, and important restoration efforts have been recently undertaken. In 2018, the McCormick House's facade and Mies van der Rohe's original carport design were revealed for the first time in nearly 25 years.
Simultaneous with the "McCormick House - Past, Present, Future," Elmhurst Art Museum will be mounting "What Came After: Figurative Painting in Chicago 1978-98," - also Sept. 14 to Jan. 12 - a survey of diverse interests in the figure as a subject, the human condition, and an interest in personal iconography.
The Elmhurst Art Museum is located at 150 S. Cottage Hill Ave. in Elmhurst, 25 minutes from downtown Chicago by car or public transportation (Metra). The museum is both an international destination for Mies van der Rohe scholars and fans and a regional center where people from Chicago and the western suburbs learn to see and think differently through the study of the art, architecture and design of our time.
The museum is one block from the Elmhurst Metra station and open Tuesday-Sunday from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $15 ($12 for seniors) and free for students and children under 18. For information, call (630) 834-0202 or visit elmhurstartmuseum.org.