October at Hull-House was a wonderful time. This newsletter will recap our exhibition programming, our Halloween fun and share some upcoming events where you can hang out here at Hull-House or around the city with our friends! But first, we have some fun news to share.  

Radical Craft has opened to rave reviews both from our daily visitors and cultural critics. We welcomed 700+ visitors during the weekend of the Chicago Architecture Center’s Open House Chicago! People who come to the museum as fans or even biographers of Jane Addams are excited about having learned new stories and histories from the settlement. In the Chicago Tribune, Hannah Edgar writes that through our programming, “the spirit of the original Hull-House settlement flared alive again”. You can read more here. 

Liesl and Nadia were also interviewed for a beautiful piece in the Chicago Reader. The article shares highlights from the exhibition, including a shout-out to our affordable and accessible catalogue, priced at $18, which can be found at Hull-House Books. The catalogue features new research from Hull-House educators as well as a fascinating interview conducted by Ross with artist and educator Faheem Majeed.  

You can make a day of it by starting off at Hull-House for Radical Craft and then heading over to Gallery 400 to visit the companion exhibition Learning Together which extends the Chicago arts education story into the present. Staff pick would be to end your day at Ground Up Coffee and Bites to process all the cool things you’ll have seen and learned. You’re likely to see one of us in there -- so don’t hesitate to say hi!  

Thanks for reading! 

Hull-House Updates

Another year of SOLD-OUT nighttime tours at the Hull-House tours including a special screening of the Ghost Files episode “The Devil Baby of Hull-House” which included a special tour led by Education Manager, Nadia

We also held a silent film festival showing Nosferatu (1922) and Phantom of the Opera (1925) to give visitors a taste of entertainment contemporary to the early years of the settlement

Let us know if you know anyone who would be interested in playing live piano alongside a silent film screening - we’re looking to grow next year! 

Over a series on Mondays in September and October, we partnered with Redline Service to connect with Chicago artists who have experienced homelessness. Participants were invited to Hull-House for glass blowing classes with Firebird Community Arts.

The artists spent a full day with us in the Residents’ Dining Hall where they shared a meal catered by museum favorite Chesa’s Bistro, alongside Hull-House staff. On some days, participants explored the exhibition for inspiration and on others they meditated with artist and energy worker Rhonda Wheatley.

The weather was good to us and in the final workshop, the artists got a chance to work on Firebird’s “Baby Dragon” to make their own glass cup or paperweight.

The program will have a second session in the spring, focusing on clay with Firebird ceramists. We’re looking forward to their return.  

Weaving Stories is a series of Open Studios that will take place at different “Art Design Chicago” locations. The series kicked off here at Hull-House with artists Lourdes Guerrero and Anders Zanichkowsky. They brought in their own weaving work to for us to admire and shared stories of the Hull-House neighborhood and their journeys through weaving as an artform. Visitors made their own textiles on a handloom and some people contributed to a communal textile on a teaching loom that will travel to from site to site. You can learn more about Anders in this WBEZ feature article about their incredible work with burial blankets.  You can see Lourdes’ work in the exhibition Agency: Craft in Chicago from the 1970s-80s and Beyond at the Ukranian Institute of Modern Art. UIMA is also the site of the next Weaving Stories Open Studio taking place November 16th. 

Exhibitions

Learning Together: Art, Education and Community highlights art education as activism and community-building. On show at Gallery 400 until December 16th, 2024.

Learn More

Upcoming events at Hull-House

Sewing Stories is a workshop centered around the creation of a textile tapestry to share personal stories. Sewing and repairing garments communally can invite stories about community, triumph, traditions lost or kept, and can inspire feelings of hope. For this workshop, visitors are encouraged to bring a textile object of significance to contribute to a collective tapestry. Cost: $22

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Join Emily Winter from The Weaving Mill for a workshop inspired by Hull-House's historic textile collection. The workshop will emphasize close looking and weave drafting, through which participants will first diagram the construction of fabric on graph paper, and then weave on Hull-House table looms. We invite participants to see "found fabrics" as a starting point for a speculative historical engagement with the collection highlighted in Radical Craft. This event is free but please register below.

RSVP

Mending Basics?is a workshop where arts-educators from The WasteShed will help visitors develop and practice basic sewing skills, and Hull-House educators will share stories of the people and histories of Chicago’s garment industry. Our September session is sold out but you can register for the January Session below. Cost: $22

BUY TICKETS for January Mending Basics