August 2013, Amanda Ross Ho's MCA Chicago Plaza Project, THE CHARACTER AND SHAPE OF ILLUMINATED THINGS, up from July through December 2013.

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As the MCA landed in its quadruple-sized new space, the curator list expanded and titles became more explicit. And yet, for me, things became a little confusing. The roster and chronicle below was compiled from MCA annual reports, news items, individual histories and longtime curator Lynne Warren's records and memory.


James W. Alsdorf Chief Curators
1993 - 1997: Richard Francis,
1997 - 1999: Amanda Cruz, Acting Chief Curator
1999 - 2009: Elizabeth A.T. Smith
2009 - 2010: Dominic Molon, Acting Curatorial Head
2011 - present: Michael Darling

Manilow Senior Curators:
1995 - 1999: Amanda Cruz
1999 - 2008: Francesco Bonami, Manilow Senior Curator at Large
2011 - present: Dieter Roelstraete

Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator:
2011 - present: Naomi Beckwith

Curators:
1981 - present: Lynne Warren
2009 - 2010: Dominic Molon
2000 - 2003: Staci Boris

Pamela Alper Associate Curators:
2005 - 2008: Dominic Molon
2009 - present: Julie Rodrigues Widholm

Associate Curator:
2009 - 2011: Tricia Van Eck

Curators of Collections:
1992 - 1998: Lucinda Barnes
1998 - 2001: Alison Pearlman

Curator of Exhibitions:
1992 - 1998: Amanda Cruz

Curatorial Assistants:
1994 - 1998: Dominic Molon
1994 - 1998: Staci Boris
1995 - 1998: Jessica Morgan
1998 - 2002: Michael Rooks
1999 - 2003: Sylvia Chivaratanond
2005 - 2009: Julie Rodrigues Widholm
2009 - 2011: Michael Green
2011 - present: Karsten Lund
2011 - present: Steven Bridges

Curatorial Coordinator and Curator of Books:
2007 - 2009: Tricia Van Eck

Marjorie Susman Curatorial Fellows:
2000: Harriet Gordon
2001: Jennifer Zukerman
2002: Monika Gehlawat
2003: Zhiva Valiavicharscka
2004: Tabatha Tucker
2005:Heather Pesanti
2006: Miescha Harris
2007: Joe Madura
2008: Celine Kopp
2009: Diana Nawi
2010: Timothy Grundy
2011: Joanna Szupinska
2012: Kristin Korolowicz
2013: Abigail Winograd

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The new Museum of Contemporary Art opened on June 21, 1996, with a 24-hour summer solstice celebration. See the MCA video, A Collective Vision, that shows the museum's progress from demolition of the armory, to the groundbreaking, to the opening of the museum, here.

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Chicago Reader: July 25, 1996, Lewis Lazare:
Attendance at the new Museum of Contemporary Art has been unpredictable since its opening on July 2, with the number of daily visitors ranging between 800 and 3,000. But MCA spokeswoman Maureen King says, "These numbers are above what we had projected." The most encouraging news so far is the number of new MCA memberships. When the museum closed down operations on Ontario Street last February, it had 3,400 members. The tally now stands at 10,000, according to King. That puts the museum nearly a year ahead of its projections. Meanwhile, the MCA has launched First Fridays, its own monthly cocktail event for young adults based on the Art Institute's successful After Hours soirees. First Fridays debuted July 5, during a holiday weekend, and attracted more than 700 people, says King. An even larger turnout is expected August 2, when Brigid Murphy brings her Orchid Show persona, Milly May Smithy, to the next First Fridays offering.





Chicago Tribune: June 15, 1997, Alan Artner:

1998 exhibition co-organized by the MCA Los Angeles and the MCA Chicago.









August 22, 1999, Chicago Tribune:
Transmute is the first exhibition both at the Museum of Contemporary Art and on its Web site. Viewers are invited to submit pieces as well as re-invent a show of about 40 artworks.










1999 exhibition curated by Lynne Warren.














1999 exhibition curated by Lynne Warren











Chicago Tribune, November 14, 1999, Achy Obejas:
When the Museum of Contemporary Art opened its doors a few years back, the critical reaction to its architecture was that it was too cold, too clinical -- a space so vast it would always feel empty. The atrium, nestled between its two principal galleries, seemed more like a meaningless hallway, an airport terminal.

But the totemic "Archipielago en mi Pensamiento" ("Archipelago in my Thoughts") skewers all that. A towering installation of weather- beaten dinghies, dusty liquor bottles, wasted ropes, worn suitcases and leathery inner tubes, the piece not only defies the atrium space, it overwhelms it with its paradoxical precariousness and weight, earned wisdom and imperfect humanity.












1999 exhibition originating at the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles


Chicago Tribune, February 25, 2000, Alan Artner:
This is the final weekend to see the complete version of At the End of the Century: One Hundred Years of Architecture, the extraordinary survey that since last fall has occupied the whole of the Museum of Contemporary Art. Portions will continue through March 12, but the scope and ambition of the show only comes clear when its 21 sections are viewed in their entirety, as a long unbroken sequence of episodes, movements and thematic developments. No other exhibition in the museum's history has been as vast and adventuresome.









Chicago Tribune, April 16, 2000, Alan Artner:
In a tacit agreement to mark the first year of the new century, many art museums are highlighting their permanent collections rather than sending masterpieces away on loan and hosting big traveling attractions. The Museum of Contemporary Art's contribution to this effort is "Age of Influence: Reflections in the Mirror of American Culture," an exhibition drawn primarily from recent additions to its holdings.

The show is notable for being the first in-house exhibition organized by both its chief and senior curators; the first vehicle for displaying the director's efficacy in purchasing works and prompting increased giving; the first selection from the collection to occupy all the museum's largest galleries; and the first exposure for about a dozen artists previously unknown in Chicago.









Chicago Tribune, February 25, 2001, Karla Loring:
BUT IS IT ART? THE CREATORS OF THESE DIGITAL WORKS SAY THAT BEHIND THE GEE-WHIZ GADGETRY IS A NEW, INTERACTIVE ART FORM (Excerpts):

Of course, the purveyors of those traditional images do not agree that they are out of touch with the viewing public. Nor do some leaders in the art world share the view that digital artists are fundamentally changing the way art is created, exhibited and perceived.

"Digital art is simply a new tool that will share space alongside all the other traditional arts," says Robert Fitzpatrick, director of Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art. He considers the technology of such art a potentially powerful, but still embryonic medium, likening it to the evolution of photography in the 19th Century. "Photography began by simply capturing a building or a person, and it took decades for artists to develop the medium as a brilliant, original art form," he says.

Though he believes that some digital art techniques, such as virtual reality, "have artistic potential, right now the technology is primarily being used for Sony PlayStations and things like that; artistically it has not reached a level of meaningful content yet."

For Fitzpatrick, "Looking at art on the Web is not a long- term satisfying experience. It exists for a moment and then is over. Its limited duration creates a very temporal experience, not anything like looking at an object." Despite the difficulties of working on-line, including the problems of perpetuity and how to sell an on-line work, Polli has no regrets about using the Web as an artistic medium. "Information, like the Internet, should be free. Hoarding or hiding your ideas because you think there is going to be this big payoff is really limiting. It is better to get the ideas out there."










Chicago Tribune, October 7, 2002, Alan Artner article revisiting a 1978 exhibition organized by MCA curator Judith Russi Kirshner; an exhibition that Arner vehemently panned 22 years earlier.

MCA PLAYED A ROLE IN CATAPULTING FRIDA KAHLO TO NATIONAL FIGURE

Rarely has a Chicago art museum played a significant role in building an international reputation for an artist overlooked in history, but the Museum of Contemporary Art once did with an exhibition for Mexican cult figure and painter Frida Kahlo.

"I'm not sure I understand it," Kirshner said. "The feminist approach, while necessary, was hardly sufficient to explain the art's power. It helped to have a seductive biography. But the impact [of the work also has to do with small] scale and intensity. I remember the painting as poignant and particular and passionate and revealing all at the same time that it has the concision of the Mexican votive form."
Because such concision was applied to the stuff of life -- Kahlo's art is pure autobiography -- there is a directness that went beyond her major followers in the 1980s, Latin Americans living in the United States. Anybody could understand the nature of Kahlo's paintings in a way they couldn't always do with the work of, say, Tamara de Lempicka, another flamboyant artist whose reputation was on the rise. Kahlo used the forms and colors of folk art; de Lempicka, the space of decorative Cubism. The one was a matter of feeling, the other style.








2003 exhibition curated by Staci Boris and Rochelle Steiner











2006 exhibition of Catherine Opies work that was commissioned by the MCA.













2007 exhibition curated by Julie Rodrigues Widholm














2007 exhibition curated by Dominic Molon.

Chicago Tribune, September 9, 2007, Alan Artner:
Rock music makes the middle-aged feel young. So the Museum of Contemporary Art, which officially enters middle age by reaching 40 next month, has done something uplifting. It has organized the largest exhibition to date on 40 years of relationships between visual art and rock music.













2009 exhibition curated by Dominic Molon










Chicago Tribune, May 10, 2009, Colleen Mastony:
Stepping into the Olafur Eliasson exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art feels a little like tumbling down the rabbit hole. Colors shift, perspectives change, the mind bends. Turn right into the first of a series of exhibit rooms, and you'll find yourself bathed in an eerie orange light.

Cross through another doorway, and you're confronted by a gigantic wall of Norwegian moss -- which is alive, by the way, and fills the gallery with the scent of damp earth. Around another corner, you're suddenly in a pitch-black room. A gentle mist falls from the ceiling and -- with a single light -- creates a shimmering, miragelike rainbow.

An hour spent wandering through "Take Your Time: Olafur Eliasson" -- which runs through Sept. 13 -- is at turns dizzying, disorienting and wondrous.









Chicago Tribune, June 12, 2011:
In order of popularity based on highest weekly attendance during their run, the MCA's top 10 hits fall mostly within the past decade

1. "Take your time: Olafur Eliasson" (2009)

2. "Sympathy for the Devil: Art and Rock and Roll Since 1967" (2007)

3. "Jeff Koons" (2008)

4. "Alexander Calder: Form, Balance, Joy" (2010)

5. "Andy Warhol/Supernova: Stars, Deaths, and Disasters, 1962-1964" (2006)

6. "Chuck Close" (1998)

7. "At the End of the Century: 100 Years of Architecture" (1999)

8. "Buckminster Fuller: Starting with the Universe" (2009)

9. "Massive Change: The Future of Global Design" (2006)

10. "Lee Bontecou: A Retrospective" (2004)

Source: Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago










Chicago Tribune, October 28, 2011, Lauren Viera:
When news broke in June that the Museum of Contemporary Art would be discontinuing its "12x12: New Artists/New Work" series this month, ending its 10-year run, question marks loomed: Would a similar series be established to offer the same opportunities to local artists? And would the public know the difference?

Time will tell. "Chicago Works," the next iteration of the MCA's exhibition of local artists, launches Tuesday with a show by Scott Reeder, poised to join the museum's long list of local alumni.












2012 exhibition brochure for "First 50," organized by Joanna Szupinska, Marjorie Susman Curatorial Fellow. This exhibition presented the first fifty art works that entered the MCA's collection, changing the museum's original intention of being a Kunsthalle - an art center that only exhibits works.

The open page spread shows that the first thirteen objects were by Marisol, Jacques Chemay, Dartel, Hugo Demarco, Mimmo Rotella, Gianfranco Baruchello, Zoltan Kemeny, Francisco Sobrino, Don Eddy, Gorge Cohen, Paul Sarkisian, and John Van Saun.














2013 exhibition curated by Manilow Senior Curator Dieter Roelstraete.