New Chicago architecture

The scope of this exhibit is the presentation of an array of experiences, vast yet at the same time unified. The unity of place and of the formation of its protagonists permits us, we hope, to bring them together despite their diversities and to underscore the continued vitality of that artistic realm perhaps most typically American. Behind these young, but already acknowledged architects, one cannot help but feel the presence of the fascinating personalities of Sullivan, Wright and Mies: logical and deducible relationship, although at times one of lashing contrasts. The more we examine the phenomenon called "post-modern", the more we realize that, as in every attempt to attach a label to a movement of complex situations and personalities, we are confronted by a multiform reality. In this new Chicago, the relationship to the recent and not so recent past is, at any rate, clearly manifest. But it is not our intention to signify this phenomenon as some sort of model or paradigm; on the contrary, the factors and occurrences merely glimpsed at here are part of a much broader context whose characteristics and developments we can only follow with time. The fact that this exhibition has been prepared in a museum suggests the concept of the Museum as a place which, as in our case, from the illustrious name of the architect who renovated it down to the daily activities that go on there, aspires to a live contact with the present as well as with the past: inseparable aspects of cultural activity.