College of DuPage proposes moving Frida Kahlo exhibit to 2021

The College of DuPage is considering plans to push back its Frida Kahlo art exhibit to summer 2021 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, delaying a blockbuster display expected to lure 150,000 visitors and bring more than $8 million in tourism dollars to the area.

For more than a year, the Glen Ellyn school has celebrated the scheduled June opening for an exhibit usually reserved for the world's great art museums. It's been more than four decades since Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art welcomed an equally large collection of works by the Mexican icon.

But Frida fans likely will have to wait another year.

COD officials are proposing moving the opening to June 5, 2021. The board of trustees will vote Thursday on rescheduling the exhibit.

Mexico's Museo Dolores Olmededo in Xochimilco was set to loan sketches and paintings spanning Kahlo's career. Known for her self-portraits and her personal tragedies, Kahlo explored themes of feminism, politics, sexuality and death, and drew inspiration from indigenous Mexican culture.

Anticipating a boon for ticket sales, the college's Cleve Carney Museum of Art has remained closed for an expansion built specifically to house the 26-piece exhibition, a timeline of photographs, a video presentation and reproductions of Kahlo's clothing.

The preparations have been a crowning achievement for McAninch Arts Center Director Diana Martinez, who helped land the exhibit through one of the college's founding members, Alan Peterson. He's a longtime friend of Carlos Phillips Olmedo, the son of Dolores Olmedo, a former model for Kahlo's husband, artist Diego Rivera.

Before the pandemic hit, the college had far exceeded fundraising goals, securing $1.3 million for the exhibit as of February, Martinez said. A sold-out gala on Valentine's Day raised over $400,000.

Exhibit ticket sales already were pouring in from Australia, New Zealand and the U.K.

Since the school announced the exhibit in 2018, Frida fever has spread beyond the college campus with a full lineup of regional lecture series and promotional events.

The village of Glen Ellyn last fall officially proclaimed a "Year of Frida" to usher in the exhibit. A free trolley was going to ferry crowds from the downtown Metra station to COD in an endless loop on the weekends. Merchants promoted Frida art and books in their storefronts.

One of the more impressive displays? Artist Geoff Bevington planned a vibrant mural of Kahlo in her floral crown to transform the facade of A Toda Madre, a restaurant at the downtown's northern gateway.