Not Just Another Pretty Face

Gallery 1, 2  & Cleve E. Carney Gallery

The exhibition commemorates the 2020 and 2023 installments of the Not Just Another Pretty Face project. The triennial program, created by Hyde Park Art Center in the mid-1990s, allows the Art Center to play matchmaker for artists and potential art buyers. This dynamic project facilitates a fun and accessible commissioning process that builds lasting relationships between artists and patrons, creates a new base of support for artists, and invests in the vitality of Chicago’s cultural community. The completion of each installment is celebrated by an exhibition, a catalog documenting the process, and a lively event to unveil the finished pieces, which will make their way to the patrons’ homes following the exhibition.

The project has been a successful way for the Art Center to cultivate an essential part of the “ecosystem” that artists need to thrive – collectors – by embracing and encouraging the idea of patronage in contemporary art. We believe that artists need not only consumers (i.e., collectors) of their work but also a community of people who know and support them and value what they do.

To date, the Art Center has raised over $900,000—half of which goes directly into the hands of artists, with the other half supporting Art Center programs. Through Not Just Another Pretty Face, 375+ original works of art have been commissioned by 275 new and established collectors interested in investing in Chicago’s artists.

Learn more about the program