Rhona Hoffman Gallery opened in 1976 as Young Hoffman Gallery, a joint venture between Hoffman and her then-husband Donald Young. The gallery’s first location was at 155 E. Ohio Street, just half a mile south of where ARC and Artemisia were stationed at the time. Rhona Hoffman Gallery Records Though their models and missions differed, the women’s cooperative galleries and the commercial Young Hoffman Gallery were both integral parts of an evolving arts ecosystem in Chicago. While ARC, Artemisia, and other artist-run spaces were primarily focused on supporting local and regional artists, Young Hoffman Gallery sought to exhibit an international roster of up-and-coming contemporary artists. The art shown by Young Hoffman Gallery was diverse, both in terms of style (minimalist, abstract, conceptual and socio-political work were frequently exhibited) and the people making it; the gallery was one of the first to show women and Black artists alongside the white men with cult status who had dominated the gallery scene up until then. By bringing an emerging and experimental art market to Chicago, the Young Hoffman-turned-Rhona Hoffman Gallery distinguished the Midwest as a destination on par with New York and California for creating, exhibiting, and buying contemporary art.
Young Hoffman Gallery’s first two exhibitions, Realism: Paintings and Drawings and Around 10th Street: Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s, demonstrate the gallery’s refusal to align itself with any one style. While the first exhibition featured the work of photorealists who strove for exactitude and objectivity in their work, among them Robert Bechtle, Charles Bell, Chuck Close, Robert Cottingham, Richard Estes, and Audrey Flack, the second exhibition featured work that was, in contrast, gestural and subjective. Among the preeminent Abstract Expressionists included in Around 10th Street were Norman Bluhm, Willem de Kooning, Michael Goldberg, Franz Kline, Joan Mitchell, Milton Resnick, Harold Rosenberg, and Jack Tworkov. Rhona Hoffman Gallery 2023
In 1983, Young Hoffman Gallery became Rhona Hoffman Gallery following the couple’s separation. That same year, Hoffman moved the gallery to the River North neighborhood, which was quickly becoming the epicenter of Chicago’s contemporary art galleries. Taft and Cozzolino 2018, 222 Under Hoffman’s sole leadership, the gallery continued to exhibit a mix of emerging and established artists.
Although Rhona Hoffman Gallery is not exclusively focused on promoting underrepresented demographics, it was one of the first commercial galleries in Chicago to regularly offer exhibitions to women artists, including Cindy Sherman, Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer, and Sylvia Plimack Mangold. From the start, the gallery’s roster also included new media artists such as Vito Acconci, whose coarse, experimental video, performance, and site-specific installation pieces reimagined the function of the gallery space. Hoffman 2015
Today, Rhona Hoffman Gallery is one of the oldest active contemporary art galleries in Chicago. Over the past four decades (and counting), it has launched the careers of many artists who have gone on to achieve international success and acclaim. In 2002, artist Kehinde Wiley had his first solo show, Passing/Posing, at Rhona Hoffman Gallery. Fifteen years later, Wiley was commissioned to paint the official portrait of President Barack Obama. Among the other notable artists Rhona Hoffman has exhibited or continues to exhibit are Spencer Finch, Luis Gispert, Leon Golub, Robert Heinecken, Sol LeWitt, Gordon Matta-Clark, Robert Ryman, Fred Sandback, Lorna Simpson, Nancy Spero, Richard Tuttle, Brian Ulrich, and Carrie Mae Weems. Rhona Hoffman Gallery 2023
Within the Rhona Hoffman Gallery Records at the Ryerson and Burnham Library are hundreds of “black books” pertaining to single artists and exhibitions, and comprising resumes, press releases, news articles, and images of installations and individual artworks. In addition, the archives contain well-documented financial records and correspondences with many of the gallery’s artists and collaborators. For a gallery defined as much by its content as by its cultural context, the preservation of both internal records and referential and epistolary materials makes the Rhona Hoffman Gallery Records an indispensable resource for scholars and artists alike.
