With the Art Institute recently announcing it had secured a $75 million gift aimed at constructing a new building for modern art, eyes turned to Chicago’s smaller museum up the street dedicated to the subject. The Museum of Contemporary Art was created in 1967 in part to fill a gap left unattended by the Art Institute, conceived as a “place of experiment, a proving and testing ground, a laboratory,” said founding director Jan van der Marck in Time magazine that same year. “I want to show what is living in the minds of artists today.”
In 2024, the MCA is still thinking outside the box. The museum prioritizes living artists, positioning itself as a gathering space where the public can eat, work and socialize. Increasingly, the MCA is pulling away from the museum model of static paintings on white walls. But it is also coping with fewer resources, staff turnover and a unionization campaign.
On Sept. 26, the MCA kicks off Chicago Performs, a four-day festival featuring performances by Lin Hixson and Matthew Goulish of Every house has a door, Cat Mahari and the collective Lykanthea led by Lakshmi Ramgopal.
Chicago Performs curator Laura Paige Kyber said the festival is aimed at “providing an annual commitment to showcasing local artists and offering a stepping stone for artists to have larger productions on our stage.”
“The idea here is that we commit to artists at varying stages of their career and support them over time,” Kyber said.
MCA Stage — once a full season of dance and performance effectively siloed from the rest of the museum — has consolidated programming to a single festival of Chicago artists with Chicago Performs, plus a theme-driven smattering of national and international performers each spring. This was not a pandemic pivot. The wheels were in motion well before then as part of a larger move merging performance with public programs.
It was a move toward sustainability and an effort to cross-pollinate with the museum’s other offerings. The outdoor music series Tuesdays on the Terrace is now Kyber’s program, for example. There’s been an uptick in live performances which accompany exhibitions. And with the MCA hiring Joey Orr as deputy director and chief of curatorial affairs as the lead for all artistic programming in May, there’s a likelihood performance will continue to scale up.
Orr has a background in site-specific installation and performance. He is no stranger to the MCA; he was a curatorial fellow there, curating solo exhibitions by Andrew Yang (2016) and Chris Bradley (2017) as part of the museum’s Chicago Works series, plus the 2013 installation of video works by Camille Henrot and a midcareer retrospective of Diana Thater.
Orr returns to the MCA to lead exhibitions, performance and education, replacing chief curator René Morales, in that role since 2022. In emailed responses to questions, Orr said the intention of his newly created position reflects the MCA’s “commitment to strengthening its leadership structure and enhancing its curatorial vision,” creating “one clear lead for the artistic division … to ensure a cohesive and forward-thinking approach” to exhibitions and programming.
Orr’s appointment signals a reshuffling of duties after two years with Morales as chief curator. Morales succeeded Michael Darling and Elizabeth Smith, who each held that role for a decade. The museum confirmed to the Tribune only that Morales left in April and that Orr’s position absorbs Morales’ responsibilities.
As deputy director, Orr said he will work closely with MCA director Madeleine Grynsztejn and Gwendolyn Perry Davis, the museum’s chief operating officer who was also named deputy director prior to Orr’s arrival. “This collaboration will allow the director to focus on broader institutional priorities and strategies, while I manage the day-to-day curatorial operations and support our team in planning and delivering impactful exhibitions, performances and programs,” said Orr.
According to public records required for nonprofits, it’s not currently unusual for MCA’s leadership to reshuffle their jobs, change titles or consolidate roles. An MCA spokesperson said “restructuring” is not an accurate description of what’s happening at the MCA, but those records demonstrate frequent changes and turnover.
Former MCA employees who spoke to the Tribune describe a leadership out of touch with workers administering programs and a revolving door of employment that has resulted in a loss of institutional knowledge. Department budgets and staffing were cut during the COVID-19 pandemic — as they were at museums across Chicago and elsewhere — but have not returned to pre-pandemic norms.
An open letter posted in February by 32 staff members as part of a unionizing campaign with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees said they would push for increased wages, paid leave and layoff protection and transparency around compensation — particularly after layoffs in 2021 provoked ire amongst artists presented by the museum at around the same time.
“While we understand the challenges all museums face, measures to balance the budget while also aiming to return to pre-pandemic attendance numbers have caused a vicious cycle of staff burnout and turnover,” the staff letter said.
“Cultural workers, for far too long, in too many institutions, have been taken for granted,” AFSCME spokesperson Anders Lindall said. “And too often, institutions have behaved as if employees are just fortunate to be in proximity to the name and perceived prestige of an institution.”
And yet, according to public tax filings, Grynsztejn’s salary has more than doubled over the past decade, including a nearly $300,000 raise in 2023, around the same time she was widely believed to be on the shortlist to lead the Guggenheim Museum. At close to $970,000, Grynztejn makes three times the salary of the museum’s next highest-paid employees — and on par with museum directors leading institutions five times the MCA’s size. Now, Grynsztejn is rumored to be in the running to head New York’s Museum of Modern Art.
The MCA declined requests for an interview with Grynsztejn.
That feels to some like a misalignment in the “proving ground” van der Marck envisioned, looking far more like the ivory tower model the MCA wished to resist, particularly as the museum unflinchingly commits to the art and artists it believes in.
“Sector-wide, there are certainly plenty of resources,” Lindall said. “It’s about priorities and seeing that those resources are distributed equitably. Ultimately, none of these institutions would exist without the employees who do the work every day. Much of it is unseen, un-remarked upon — certainly unglamorous. But it’s essential.”
Still, there are signs of the revolutionary museum the MCA always hoped it would be. In April, it became the first Chicago museum to voluntarily recognize its staff union. Employees have begun their work at bargaining table, Lindall confirmed. Orr’s position is a literal and perhaps symbolic link between the top of the museum and the workforce delivering its programs and exhibitions.
And those programs and exhibitions are often extraordinary, created and curated with thoughtfulness and care.
Ramgopal, of the collective Lykanthea, is an example of someone for whom the MCA has been a support through time, as Kyber described. She presented work on the concept of self-care in 2016 and returned for the MCA’s 50th anniversary celebration the next year. An evening-length work titled “Some Viscera” has been simmering since, interrogating individual and collective experiences in the South Asian diaspora through the lens of the arangetram, a rigorous solo performance demonstrating mastery of classical Indian dance or music signaling a student’s emergence as a mature artist. Ramgopal presented early ideas of “Some Visceral” at the MCA in 2019.
“This is the first time I’ve really made dance and movement a very clear component, and the MCA made that possible,” Ramgopal said.
“Some Viscera” will be presented 7:30 p.m. Sept. 26-27. Also in the Chicago Performs series, Every house has a door presents “Broken Aquarium” at 2 p.m. Sept. 28 and 4 p.m. Sept. 29. Cat Mahari’s “blk ark: the impossible manifestation” will be 7:30 p.m. Sept. 28 and 2 p.m. Sept 29.
“I want to offer opportunities that are open-ended enough to support artists in the practices that they’re developing for themselves,” Kyber said. “This is the way of contemporary practice and performance right now. What can we do to create experiences artists are trying to guide audiences through?”
Lauren Warnecke is a freelance writer.
