150 South Cottage Hill Ave
2019
Two-Months Stay at Mies van der Rohe's McCormick House at the Elmhurst Art Museum, Elmhurst, IL
House on its original property, 299 Prospect Ave, Elmhurst, IL, in the 1950s (Source: Hedrich Blessing Archive / Chicago Historical Society)
Relocated house (turned by 90 degrees) at the Elmhurst Art Museum, 150 South Cottage Hill Ave
The house's lack of a kitchen and functioning bathroom required an expansion of the floorplan to its surroundings
Two entrances, one official (entrance fee) and one private (depicted here), complicated access to the house for visitors and guests
Installation view; objects and furniture were provided by the artist except for the loaned MR chair; photograph: Jim Prinz
The roles of objects were fluid, moving between furnishing and art, accommodation and improvisation
Former kitchen area; Untitled (Stainless Steel), 2019, 30 in. x 60 in x 2 in., rare earth magnets, wire, wood dowel
Card from the Exquisite Corpse card set, posted on the Untitled piece
Exquisite Corpse, a 260-piece card set specifically created for the house. It consists of four categories: House, Social Contexts, Ephemerals, and Discourse; the photograph shows the Discourse cards laid-out in a grid
Museum visitor engages with the cards
Card arrangement left behind by visitors
A checklist that contained all elements in the house. Each rearrangement required the list's update.
The McCormick House at night with the Children's Wing illuminated
Mies van der Rohe's McCormick House, commissioned in 1951 as a prototype for affordable prefab housing and incorporated into the Elmhurst Art Museum as an office and exhibition space in the 1990s, provided a potent backdrop for this project.
By using the format of a self-declared residency as a guise to move into the house, 150 South Cottage Hill Ave temporarily collapses the role of the museum with that of the home to reconsider the relationship between art, architecture and life, as well as between living and performing. It also revisits the contested role of the 'International Style' within architecture and the political climate in the United States after the war.
150 South Cottage Hill Ave featured changing textile works by designer Kate Park and sound works by artist Olivia Block and presented a series of events and salons including presentations by art historians Leili Adibfar, Nicoletta Rousseva, Chris Reeves (PhD candidates / UIC), designer Norman Teague, as well as a performance by artist Julietta Cheung.
A small publication, McCormick House Exquisite Corpse, was printed for the show's closing weekend.
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