Making Modernism is a residential, three-week NEH summer institute for twenty-five higher education faculty, including advanced graduate students, that will explore Chicago’s vital contribution to the modernist movement. Directed by Dr. Liesl Olson (Newberry Library) and Dr. Susan Manning (Northwestern University), the summer institute will offer an expansive look at creative expression in Chicago across the arts from the turn of the century through the aftermath of the Second World War.

Institute faculty will encourage 25 participants to engage actively and critically with the Newberry’s archival collections in order to understand the networks that contributed to the explosion of cultural styles associated with the modernist period. The institute aims to attract participants who will utilize the library’s archives to develop new course syllabi and for independent research. From the records of Chicago’s newspapers and journalists, clubs and arts organizations, dance and theatre companies, famous and not-so-famous writers, editors, choreographers, artists, book designers, and publishers, the Newberry’s collections on this topic are unsurpassed. Particularly relevant collections include the records of the Arts Club of Chicago, the Ann Barzel Dance Research Collection, and the papers of Fanny Butcher, Jack Conroy, Floyd Dell, the Dill Pickle Club, Ben Hecht, Ruth Page, Eunice Tietjens, and Mark Turbyfill, among others.

In addition to working in the Newberry’s archives, the institute will spend time on several site visits throughout Chicago, including the Art Institute of Chicago, the South Side Community Art Center, Hull House, the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection, a bus tour of Bronzeville led by Lee Bey, a walking tour of Towertown, and a studio visit to Vershawn Sanders-Ward at Red Clay Dance Company.