Kicked Out of Heaven
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I want to live in the Three Arts Club. I’d have a room of my own in the landmark Gold Coast building, two meals a day without ever having to cook, and the company of 90 inspiring sisters of all ages–dancers, singers, musicians, actors, painters, sculptors, and photographers, come from all over the world to work and study at Chicago institutions like the Joffrey, the Lyric Opera, and the School of the Art Institute. I’d noodle at the two Steinway grands (and have my own piano in my room, if I liked), paint in a light-drenched fourth-floor studio, linger over breakfast in the elegant courtyard. I’d have privacy and community, stimulation and security, the city and a tearoom, all for $715 or less a month. Sounds like a dream, but it’s been reality for 11,000 women since the club opened in 1912. Now the board of directors has decided it is in fact too good to be true. In May, a week after the second most successful fund-raiser in the club’s history, the board abruptly announced that the living quarters would be closing at least until the building can be renovated: occupants would have to be out by July 31. It blames financial hardship and unsafe living conditions, though the building hasn’t been cited with any code violations. The board talks of reopening with fewer residents as part of a broader organization. But irate residents refuse to go quietly. They don’t want to see the end of the Three Arts Club’s primary function as a home. “After 91 years,” says filmmaker and six-year resident Colby Luckenbill, “they’re shifting away from the real mission.”
The larger question is whether subsidized housing for women, not necessarily students, in what is loosely defined as the arts should still be the mission. Residents contributed about 56 percent of revenues in the last two years, and the administration says they are paying only about half what it costs to keep them there. Michelle Boone, director of the city’s Gallery 37, who joined the Three Arts board in 2001, recently told Channel 11 that “residency was a key issue for women artists in the early 1900s. It’s not so relevant today.” Residents say the board and administration (now headed by Esther Grimm, formerly of the Marwen Foundation) started to “remarket” the club last year, posting a new mission statement within the last six months that talks about “supporting” women artists rather than housing them. But Three Arts was meant to be a residence for women in the arts, says Luckenbill. “This building was built brick by brick and entrusted to the board for that purpose. It’s not a cultural center, not a multifaceted organization. It’s kept its doors open because of people who believe in its mission. There’s some concern that there may be members of the board who have another agenda. They think it’s obsolete. They’re trying to prove that a place like this isn’t viable today. But the desire to live in an artists’ community has not changed.” Luckenbill reads from a statement by Northwestern University art lecturer Pamela Bannos, who in an installation in honor of the club’s 90th anniversary mounted the name of every woman on record who ever lived there: “These were all young talented women looking with hope and excitement toward their futures. They were eager for the opportunity to live amongst other like-minded women in this safe haven in Chicago’s urban environment. The residents are the history of the Three Arts Club, not the architecture. The residents are the life of the structure.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Bruce Powell.
