Radical Craft: Arts Education at Hull-House, 1889-1935, an exhibition, catalog, and workshop series, celebrates the work of immigrant artists and reformers at the country’s most important social settlement. The exhibition showcases Hull-House’s rarely exhibited textile collection, drawn from a wide array of immigrant traditions. Also highlighted are handbound books from Ellen Gates Starr’s bookbindery, newly restored paintings by Alice Kellogg Tyler, and a new selection of ceramics from the historic Hull-House Kilns. The exhibition is accompanied by a unique clothbound exhibition catalog, designed by Hour Studio, and a special edition created in collaboration with The Weaving Mill

Radical Craft illuminates a network of local beginnings and international influences upon Hull-House’s approach to the practice and experience of art. By the turn of the century, Hull-House had become a nexus for educators who envisioned the arts as a tool for social reform in the immigrant communities on the Near West Side. Through paintings, textiles, metalwork, pottery, and books—largely from Hull-House’s own collection—the exhibition shows how the arts at Hull-House provided immigrant neighbors with opportunities to experience the “restorative power in the exercise of a genuine craft,” in the words of Hull-House co-founder Jane Addams (1860-1935). Radical Craft gives attention to Hull-House’s lesser-known co-founder, Ellen Gates Starr (1859-1940), who was committed to the ideals of the Arts and Crafts movement and believed that art should be accessible to everyone. Notably, the exhibition also sheds new light on immigrant artists who came to Hull-House for art classes and demonstrated their heritage crafts.

Radical Craft extends Hull-House’s commitment to access to the arts for all. Hull-House will host a series of workshops in ceramics and textiles in the historic Residents’ Dining Hall. We will partner with Red Line Service, an arts organization led by people experiencing homelessness, and Firebird Community Arts, which offers arts instruction to people living on the South and West Sides. The workshops with shared meals will take place in Fall 2024 and Spring 2025.

The exhibition also features a host of programs open to the public: including our Radical Mending series, in collaboration with The WasteShed; Weaving Stories, a collaborative program with Art Design Chicago partner institutions; and Unravel, a workshop presented in collaboration with exhibition partners The Weaving Mill.

Radical Craft and its companion exhibition, Learning Together: Art, Education, Community at UIC’s Gallery 400, are funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art as part of Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration that highlights the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities.

Radical Craft is funded in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Efroymson Family Fund.

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Tags: Alice Kellogg Tyler, Chicago, Ellen Gates Starr, Jane Addams, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, near west side, Radical Craft: Arts Education at Hull-House 1889-1935