Chicago’s architectural biennial keeps the city at the forefront of design. But will it be held in 2021?
Will there be a Chicago Architecture Biennial next year at this time? Even if you’ve never attended the biennial, which bills itself as North America’s largest survey of contemporary architecture, you have a stake in the answer.
By showcasing rising stars in Chicago’s architecture firmament and introducing Chicagoans to global design talents like Mexican architect Tatiana Bilbao, the biennial brings Chicago to the world and the world to Chicago.
It also offers a hint of what’s to come in design and culture, as the 2019 version did by shining a light on suppressed narratives with the MASS Design Group’s memorial to victims of gun violence.
While the biennial has often baffled non-architects with jargon-laced wall text and its attendance dropped in 2019, the event, at its best, cements Chicago’s identity as a global architectural capital — a city that’s a forum for design ideas as well as great buildings.
Yet with a year to go before the scheduled debut of the 2021 biennial, no curator has been named and no decision has been made about the event’s format and timing, a quandary caused by the coronavirus pandemic and uncertainty about when it will end.
“There’s no definitive decision about 2021 or 2022 or the scope or the ability to put on an exhibition,” the biennial’s chairman, Chicago lawyer Jack Guthman, said in telephone interview Tuesday. “There are too many items that are not resolved.”
As Guthman’s remarks suggest, many options are being considered for the event, whose principal home since its 2015 inception has been the Beaux-Arts Chicago Cultural Center across Michigan Avenue from Millennium Park.
The alternatives, apparently, run the gamut from an in-person exhibition to a virtual exhibition to a combination of the two.
It is not clear if an outright cancellation is on the table — a course that could diminish the standing of a relatively new event on the international scene that lacks the tradition and prestige of the older Venice Architecture Biennale, begun in 1980.
One option, judging by Guthman’s reference to 2022, is to postpone the exhibition until 2022. That would follow the lead of the Venice Architecture Biennale, which earlier this year postponed its in-person 2020 exhibition to May 22-Nov. 21, 2021.
Another option is suggested by Expo Chicago, the big fall art fair on Navy Pier, which is proceeding with a combination of virtual and in-person events.
In May, Expo Chicago announced it would postpone its in-person exhibition from September until April 8-11, 2021. Recently, as if to remind the art world of the place it traditionally occupies on the September calendar, the event’s leaders said they would mount an online showcase for Chicago art galleries, art institutions and artists on Sept. 25-27.
The planned in-person April exhibition at Navy Pier is not a sure thing, fair leaders have acknowledged.
Leaders of the architecture biennial acknowledge that they need to reach a decision soon. A curator, or team of curators, would need time to determine an overall theme and recruit participating designers, who, in turn, would need months to prepare materials to exhibit. Funds would also need to be raised from corporate sponsors.
The event is put on by an eponymous nonprofit in cooperation with Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. Free to the public, it typically draws an estimated 500,000 people between its opening in mid-September and the end of the show the following January.
“We know we have to resolve the issue, so it is in our best interests and the best interests of the institution to come to closure," Guthman said.
He declined, however, to name a date by which a decision will be announced.
Blair Kamin is a Tribune critic.
Twitter @BlairKamin
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