Fund a Need: Exhibitions and Programming

This year's Fund a Need will help support innovative exhibitions and programming at the Elmhurst Art Museum. The Sustaining Fellows fundraiser will be credited as a sponsor of the 2019 installation by Luftwerk, which will be on display during the next Soiree. Donors to this project will be invited to a special preview and reception.

The acclaimed and innovative collaborative duo Luftwerk (Petra Bachmaier and Sean Gallero) will use site-specific glass and light interventions to activate and interpret the McCormick House, designed by Mies van der Rohe. The interior and newly revealed exterior of one of three single-family homes built in the U.S. by Mies presents an opportunity for Luftwerk to examine, transform, and celebrate its architectural nuances. The artists will respond to the reflectivity of the glass house, as well as an idea by the original developers Robert Hall McCormick and Herbert S. Greenwald, who offered to make glass windows of their proposed prefab housing "almost any shade of the rainbow."

Luftwerk explores the power of light as a crucial element to sight and its relationship to the perception of color. Using various media--projecting videos, casting shadows, creating custom sculpture--light is integral to every project. Through their career, they have developed projects for iconic buildings by architects including Renzo Piano, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Mies van der Rohe. In each project, they draw from the surrounding environment to interpret and expand on the context of the site.