FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 9, 2008
MEDIA CONTACT:
Erin Hogan
(312) 443 3664
ehogan@artic.edu
Chai Lee
(312) 443 3625
clee4@artic.edu
ART INSTITUTE WING NAMED FOR RICHARD AND MARY L. GRAY
North Flank of Original Allerton Building to be Opened June 14, 2008
Wing Houses New Prints and Drawings Galleries
The Art Institute of Chicago will open to the public its Richard and Mary L. Gray Wing on June
14, 2008. The Richard and Mary L. Gray Wing, the north section of the museum’s original
Allerton Building on Michigan Avenue, was established through major gifts committed to the
Department of Prints and Drawings by the couple in 2006. This generous donation supports the
renovation of the newly dedicated prints and drawings galleries, endows the department’s
programs and exhibitions, and names the entire wing of department facilities within the lower
Allerton building.
The Art Institute also announces a major promised gift from Richard and Mary L. Gray and the
Gray Collection Trust, Collage (1929) by Spanish artist Joan Miró, which dramatically
enhances the museum’s rich representation of works by this seminal 20th-century master. This
work will be showcased as a timely addition to the exhibition Collecting for Chicago: Prints,
Drawings, and Patronage, also opening to the public on June 14.
Douglas Druick, Prince Trust Chair of Prints and Drawings, said: "I have long admired this great
collage in Richard and Mary's collection and am thrilled that it will join the Art Institute's
collection. The museum's fine holdings of works by Miró will be much enriched by this stellar gift
which speaks to the Grays’ collecting acumen and civic generosity."
Throughout his career, Joan Miró made frequent and varied use of collage—on paper supports
as well as in witty sculptural assemblages—and additions such as rope, rocks, and sand to his
paintings. The collages that he created in 1929 were made as stand-alone works as well as
sketches for larger paintings. In this exquisite and singular example, collaged paper shapes may
be read as heavenly or earthly bodies, around and through which Miró sketched what appear to
be orbiting planets within a solar system. Although the work’s stripped-down graphic vocabulary
is echoed in the paintings he made during the mid-1920s, the present composition seems to
willfully move away from suggestions of landscape, anticipating the monumental paintings
featuring ambiguous spaces that Miró would begin in 1933.
Mr. Gray, of the Richard Gray Gallery in Chicago and New York City, is best known for his
work with Impressionist, modern, and contemporary art. He was Chairman of the American
Art Dealers Association from 1997 to 2003. Mr. Gray gained international fame in the art
world in 1974 when he sold Willem de Kooning's Woman V to the Australian National
Gallery for the highest price ever paid for a work by a living artist. The personal collection of
the Grays encompasses a significant array of Old Master drawings as well as modern and
contemporary paintings and works on paper.
Mr. Gray, a Life Trustee of the Art Institute since 2004, is Chairman Emeritus of the Board
of Governors of the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago; a Life Trustee of the
Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Goodman Theater, and WTTW/WFMT; and Founding
Vice-Chairman of the Chicago Humanities Festival. At the Art Institute, he also serves on
the Nominating and the Capital Campaign Executive Committees.
Mary Lackritz Gray is the author of A Guide to Chicago’s Public Sculpture (1983) and A
Guide to Chicago’s Murals (2001), and is a member of the Friends of the Parks Advisory
Board. The Grays have three children—Paul, Jennifer, and Harry—and five grandchildren.
At the Art Institute, the Grays are also members of the Old Masters Society, Classical Art
Society, and Print and Drawing Club. Mrs. Gray also serves on the Committee on Libraries.
Mr. and Mrs. Gray have been Sustaining Fellows since 1983 and are considered
Distinguished Benefactors of the Art Institute of Chicago.
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10:30 a.m.–5:00 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday
10:30 a.m.–8:00 p.m. Thursday
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FREE FEBRUARY 1 TO 29
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Please check www.artic.edu before your visit.
Admission: Adults, $12.00; children 12 and over, students, and seniors, $7.00; children under 12 free; members always
free. Free Evenings are free to all, except for certain special exhibitions that may require full or extra admission fee. City of
Chicago residents with Chicago Public Library cards can borrow a "Check Us Out" card from any library branch for free general
admission to the nine members of Museums in the Park, including the Art Institute of Chicago. To reach the Art Institute on the
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The Art Institute of Chicago is a museum in Chicago’s Grant Park, located across from Millennium Park.