Art
Colossal
#Alice Gray Stites
April 3, 2024
Grace Ebert
Walk into 21c Museum Hotel in downtown Chicago, and you might encounter a medicine cabinet filled with felted products by Lucy Sparrow, a photo from Carrie Mae Weems’s Kitchen Table series, and Angela Ellsworth’s unsettling bonnets made of pearls and pins, all within the lobby alone. The works were part of OFF-SPRING: New Generation, a traveling exhibition curated by Alice Gray Stites that considers how rituals influence identity. They were also unusual sights for a venue that welcomes guests toting unwieldy luggage and grabbing a drink at the bar.
Stites is chief curator for 21c Museum Hotels, a boutique hospitality chain across the Midwest and South that has carved a singular niche as both a space for world-renowned artworks and everyday tourism. I spoke with Stites in February 20204 via Zoom about curating for a multi-venue museum of this kind, why she values being articulate over being accessible, and the incredible trust and respect she has for the public.
Read the conversation.
#Alice Gray Stites