At 90, Rhona Hoffman Is Closing Her Chicago Gallery—however She Isn’t Retiring But

The Chicago gallerist Rhona Hoffman is understood for a lot of issues, however being an honorary member of the feminist collective the Guerrilla Women isn’t considered one of them.

After receiving a letter from the collective criticizing her for a present of German Expressionists that featured largely males, she mailed again her eponymous Chicago gallery’s exhibition programming with all the ladies’s names circled in black magic marker. A card quickly arrived: “Thanks for the documentation in your report of displaying ladies artists, which has certified you to grow to be an honorary Guerrilla Woman…See you on the streets.” Talking by telephone from her residence in Chicago, Hoffman, laughing, instructed Artsy that the letter is “considered one of my most prized possessions.”

The interplay embodies Hoffman’s indefatigable spirit as a gallerist and creative ambassador. A power within the artwork world since her gallery opened in 1976, Hoffman gave early platforms to now-household names all through her profession—Sol LeWitt confirmed together with her in 1979, and the likes of Mickalene Thomas and Carrie Mae Weems have additionally been featured. However greater than something, Hoffman has constructed her storied repute by platforming ladies artists like Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, and Jenny Holzer. “What these ladies had been doing was of nice curiosity to me,” she stated. “And I don’t like being bored. I wish to go to work on daily basis and like what I’m doing. And the ladies, they had been superb.”

Hoffman’s gallery has been a cornerstone in Chicago’s artwork world for just below 5 many years, having moved six instances earlier than touchdown in West City in 2018. Now 90, she has made the choice to shut her brick-and-mortar gallery on the finish of Could, following the gallery’s remaining group present, “Not Simply A Fairly Image,” which ends on April twenty sixth.

Hoffman is frank about her determination, “Properly, I’m fucking previous,” she instructed Artsy. “On June 1st, I don’t know the place my butt’s going to be. The place am I going to be sitting?” One factor is for certain: she has no plans to depart town.

As a substitute, she intends to pursue something that sparks her curiosity, from curating exhibits to working carefully with artists. Simply don’t name it a pop-up mannequin: “I’ve by no means used that phrase ‘pop-up’ in my life,” she stated. “I actually don’t prefer it. It’s like a Jack-in-the-box—right here right now and gone tomorrow. I don’t consider in that sort of timeline.” What’s for certain is that Hoffman is just not leaving her residence metropolis: “I’m saying sure to all the things that’s being provided to me. Somebody asks, ‘Will you curate a present for me?’ I am going, ‘Yeah, certain. Why not?’”

Some 45 years in the past, Hoffman was a part of the primary group of gallerists to take part within the artwork truthful that will grow to be EXPO Chicago, a staple occasion within the Midwest artwork calendar. Because the truthful prepares to open this week, she’s going to current work by a number of of her artists, together with Amanda Williams and Nancy Spero, in her final sales space earlier than her brick-and-mortar house closes.

Born and raised in New York Metropolis, Hoffman grew up across the arts. “I actually was certain I used to be going to be a well-known artist once I grew up,” she instructed Artsy. “I painted. I performed the piano. I took classes. I had dance courses with Martha Graham.” She went on to review at Vassar, Yale, and Harvard earlier than shifting to Chicago in 1958 after marrying a person from town. When requested what her plan was when she arrived, Hoffman didn’t hesitate: “Cry.”

On the time, Hoffman discovered town missing in cultural life—a state of affairs that was on the cusp of growing. “What I didn’t like about it modified,” she stated. “There wasn’t movie show. There weren’t good performs. There weren’t good cultural issues—besides the Artwork Institute [of Chicago].”

Hoffman rapidly turned concerned within the metropolis’s nascent artwork scene. She moved to Highland Park and joined the Associates of the Artwork Institute of Chicago, a program designed to attach suburban communities to town’s cultural life. On the time, the Institute was the one main middle for the humanities, so it turned the middle of her consideration.

“That was to make folks conscious of town and to make the Artwork Institute the objective to get to,” she stated. Across the similar time, she performed a key position within the early days of the modern artwork middle MCA Chicago, serving to to discovered the MCA Retailer in 1967 as a part of its ladies’s board.

“Chicago was awakening to the truth that they had been a Twentieth-century metropolis,” she recalled. By 1974, Hoffman had divorced from her husband and partnered with artwork vendor Donald Younger, who had a repute for promoting “French stuff,” in her phrases, similar to works by Henri Matisse. In 1976, they opened the Younger Hoffman Gallery, with a mission to champion modern artists in Chicago.

“There was artwork right here,” she stated. “However not what they referred to as in France and New York, l’artwork du second—artwork of the second. We had been within the extra extremely modern and what was happening.” Among the first artists they confirmed included Donald Judd, Vito Acconci, and Sylvia and Robert Mangold.

Hoffman and Younger broke up, and the gallery break up with them. In 1981, she struck out on her personal, rebranding as Rhona Hoffman Gallery. She was a part of a technology of gallerists who had launched areas in Chicago through the Nineteen Sixties and ’70s, together with Younger, Jan Cicero, and Richard Grey. Cicero closed in 2003; Younger closed in 2012 after his passing. Grey died in 2018, however his son, Paul Grey, took the helm of the gallery. Hoffman, in contrast, has remained a relentless presence.

From the beginning, her program stood aside. Hoffman confirmed Sherman in 1981, following an introduction by the legendary New York vendor Janelle Reiring, in addition to solo exhibits of Kruger in 1984 and Holzer in 1987. “If I gave you the costs we had been promoting issues for, you’d faint,” Hoffman stated. “Cindy Sherman—I used to be promoting movie stills for 100 bucks.”

Hoffman rapidly developed a repute for showcasing artists on the innovative. “I’m excellent at discovering youthful artists,” she stated. The checklist of figures proven by her gallery backs this up: Key names embody Weems in 1993; Adam Pendleton in considered one of his first solo exhibitions in 2005; and Derrick Adams in 2014. In 2015, she mounted a solo present for Chicago-born painter Nathaniel Mary Quinn, “Again and Forth,” after a buddy urged her to go to his studio. “I don’t present something that I don’t need,” she stated merely. Lately, Hoffman hasn’t slowed down. In 2024, the gallery introduced six exhibits, that includes artists similar to Jacob Hashimoto and Judy Ledgerwood.

Few gallerists are higher positioned to know the modifications within the Chicago artwork scene than Hoffman. Since she opened her house, town’s arts ecosystem has developed immeasurably. Through the years, Chicago’s modern artwork scene has grow to be a wealthy, various panorama, notably with out the presence of any blue-chip gallery conglomerates. As a substitute, unbiased galleries and cultural establishments have propelled and stored town thriving.

Based on Hoffman, a main motive for the richness of the Chicago neighborhood is due to its artwork colleges. “In the event you have a look at the checklist of graduates from the College of the Artwork Institute of Chicago, you’re amazed—merely amazed—by the variety of well-known artists who graduated from right here,” she stated. “So in the event that they graduated from right here, they should have additionally lived right here.” This wealth of expertise is paired with a youthful technology of gallerists who’re giving Hoffman hope for the long run. Native stalwart Monique Meloche, for instance, as soon as labored as a director at Hoffman’s gallery.

“I spent 1997 to 1999 because the director of Rhona Hoffman Gallery, and I all the time say I earned my PhD in artwork dealing over these two years,” stated Meloche. “Notoriously snarky, Rhona all the time revealed her heat and maternal facet to me, and we’ve constructed a now 30-plus years of friendships and collaborations.”

Certainly, a parallel might be drawn between Chicago’s artwork scene and its meals trade, which is understood to nurture budding cooks and thrilling new eating places. “We’re a restaurant metropolis as a result of folks can open a restaurant for much less cash than they’ll in New York, so we’ve all of the younger ‘cooks’ come to Chicago to open their new galleries,” Hoffman defined The neighborhood, she provides, is beneficiant: “Right here, in Chicago, the gallerists are very nice folks, and so they welcome the guests.”

This welcoming spirit is bolstered by EXPO Chicago. The beloved artwork truthful, identified for bringing collectors and curators to the American Midwest, will mount its twelfth version this week. Hoffman credit the truthful, particularly below the management of director Tony Karman, with serving to to domesticate a way of openness that mirrors its metropolis. “EXPO is enormously chargeable for that,” she stated.

Even now, as political and financial volatility envelops the world—and the artwork world by extension—Hoffman is resolute. “The artwork world is basically holding its breath, however…we’re nonetheless doing our lives as a result of it might be a disaster if we stopped doing that.” In her eyes, the neighborhood, which she sees as extraordinarily shut, has come a great distance because the days when the considered dwelling in Chicago introduced her to tears.