For a while last winter, Jayna Zweiman was the most famous artist in America, although almost no one could identify her by name. But everyone saw her work. It appeared in newspapers and magazines and all across the Internet. It was duplicated hundreds of thousands of times and displayed en masse at the various Women’s Marches around the world.
Immediately Gass decided that “Welcome Blanket” was something she wanted to work on. It combined her own interest in feminist art with the Smart Museum’s practice of community engagement with current social issues, and before she even arrived in Chicago, she was on the phone with her staff making arrangements to turn Zweiman’s community art project into a crowdsourced gallery show. In order to make sure it would still be timely, they had to condense a year’s worth of work into a single month.
(And some not-so-secret: Aliyah Bixby-Driesen, a museum employee, spends her shift on guard duty crocheting a bright pink square that will become part of the museum’s staff blanket.)
Through 12/18: Tue-Sun 10 AM-5 PM (Thu till 8 PM) Smart Museum of Art 5550 S. Greenwood 773-702-0200smartmuseum.uchicago.edu Free
