Abby Pucker stood in a warehouse in Fulton Market the other day and explained herself, her role, her goals, her vision, and just how committed she really is to Chicago. She’s uncommonly comfortable justifying her existence. Probably because Abby Pucker has had to explain herself a lot. She grew up in Chicago, then left for a while to live in New York and Los Angeles. She’s only 33. It’s not unusual. But when she moved back to Chicago four years ago and founded Gertie, a cultural organization with the aim of reenergizing Chicago’s art scene with new faces and collectors, plenty of locals assumed she was back temporarily, Gertie was a hobby — she’d eventually leave again.
Pucker, you see, is a cousin of Gov. JB Pritzker, and a scion of the extremely wealthy Pritzker family, and though their cultural legacy runs deep — from Pritzker Pavilion to the Pritzker Architecture Prize to the Pritzker Military Museum in Wisconsin, for starters — it’s hard avoiding the archetype of a rich arts patron as a walking checkbook, happy to lend a name and move on.
Pucker is not that.
Take Chicago Exhibition Weekend, Gertie’s signature event. It opens Friday and has become one of the city’s hottest new cultural events, despite being largely free, with three days of gallery visits, exhibitions, dinners, art fairs and peeks at private collections. When I entered the Peoria Street headquarters of Exhibition Weekend, a Gertie staffer quietly informed me Pucker was “in the middle of a painting emergency.” I assumed screaming was involved. Instead, I found Pucker on a landing, wearing Nikes and a hoodie, gnawing at her thumbs, surrounded by a Rashid Johnson installation waiting for assembly. There’s been no screaming, she said. “I’m not a screamer. I’m more like a keep-it-all-in-and-let-the-stress-manifest-itself-in-my-neck person.”
Pucker had gone to see Lady Gaga at the United Center the night before, but left early: Gareth Thomas Kaye, who is co-curating Exhibition Weekend’s anchor exhibit with Iris Colburn of the Museum of Contemporary Art, texted Pucker that he was running out of white paint for the exhibition’s walls, plus the rollers weren’t working well, and now everything was falling apart.
Pucker was there by 11 p.m.
By morning, all was fine.
Chicago Exhibition Weekend was established about six years ago by Tony Karman of EXPO Chicago, as something of an autumn continuation of EXPO, a contemporary art fair held in the spring on Navy Pier. It was created to ensure that Chicago would be more than a once-a-year visit for the international art world. Still, its popularity and growth is largely credited to Pucker’s steadiness.
Karman agrees. “When Abby came back to town four years ago, she didn’t lead with her money, her family or her connections,” he said. “She led with her passion and ideas in support of the cultural community. She made sure Gertie would not be seen as someone writing a check.”
Indeed, four years later, it’s hard to discuss contemporary art in Chicago without hearing about Abby Pucker and her ambitious initiatives, which have included public art pieces installed during last year’s Democratic National Convention as well as EarlyWork, a monthly subscription service that connects Chicago audiences and collectors with artists, galleries and art-scene happenings. Pucker says her two target audiences are fledgling young collectors and the “culturally curious,” which are often one and the same.
Valerie Carberry, president and CEO of GRAY gallery, said that during last year’s Exhibition Weekend, her longtime West Town art space probably saw its biggest influx of visitors ever.
“Abby’s name opens doors, yes,” she said, “but no one who works with her thinks of her as a dilettante. She’s bringing intelligence, energy. She’s identifying a real hunger in young people to be a part of the art community but find art galleries intimidating. We’re lucky to have her here.”
A few days before Exhibition Weekend, Pucker moved through that large concrete exhibition space on Peoria Street, surveying an installation here, an installation there. “WHAT IS THIS?” she said, stopping in her tracks. Kaye leaned in to a pair of faint matching smudges on a white gallery wall. “We’re going to need to fix that,” she said, and Kaye agreed and they continued on.
“Hey, am I a yeller?” she asked Kaye.
“No, you’re not, but if you follow me through a day …”
“You good?” she called to an installer.
A nod.
The core exhibit of Chicago Exhibition Weekend is titled “Over My Head: Encounters With Conceptual Art in a Flyover City, 1984-2015.” Kaye calls it “sort of a show about shows.” Each of the dozen artists included had a work that originated in or made a significant impact at a Chicago gallery. We passed a large pink wall painted with the words “ELVIS LIVES,” a piece from Kay Rosen. We passed a huge “NO” in silver and black with dark cheetah-like spots, made by the painter Molly Zuckerman-Hartung. We passed artist Wendy Jacob herself, and with her daughter, hunched over a field of truck tires, halved and stitched together, resembling edamame but connected to a network of electronics and blowers “breathing” each half, inflating, deflating. We passed a craggy mound of paper that could be a science-fair volcano, or the Smog Monster.
“It’s the Tony Lewis — and it’s whatever you think it is,” Pucker said.
She turned to a large wall installed with long pipes and video monitors and speakers at the ends of long black arms. “This is by Dara Birnbaum, who passed away about two years ago. She had a seminal show with the Rhona Hoffman Gallery. Should we turn it on?” She called over to an staffer: “Hey you guys, could you please turn on the Dara? Thank you.” It clicked to life and Dan Rather spoke over faded news footage. “It’s called ‘Tiananmen Square: Break-In Transmission,’ and it’s so incredibly relevant right now, in terms of suppression of the media, and free speech.”
“In short, this is the hub this year (for Chicago Exhibition Weekend),” she said, continuing on. “And we never had a hub. Right here is where there’ll be opening text explaining how this show fits into the weekend, and all of this here” — she pointed to refrigerators on rollers, stacks of shining aluminum pans — “all goes to a big dinner we’re doing. Anyway I got in this morning at 7:30 a.m., picked up Gareth, we got paint and then had to find someone last-minute to paint the wall better than us, which means I texted everyone I know and posted on Instagram. I should not have let Gareth stay that late and paint. We have never had a central exhibition for this weekend until now. We’re evolving. At first when we were starting (Exhibition Weekend), we had to ask: Is it even interesting? Do people even want it? And now since they do, we’re kicking it up a notch and, again, the theme here is Chicago’s role as a hotbed for conceptual and post-conceptual art. But I also wanted a show that wasn’t just this artist and this artist showed in these galleries. The works are in a conversation within the show. It’s about time, forgetting …”
She speaks in a restless stream of ideas that ping from one thought to the next, slowing to expand, then continuing. She speaks in the wary, slightly tired voice of the perpetually busy.
She sees Gertie producing more shows in the future. “We move really quickly — this show alone right here only took two and a half months.” By comparison, museum exhibitions, even gallery shows, can take years to organize.
She said she might change her mind in five years but right now, though it may be hard to explain what she does without a gallery or museum behind her — something to point to and say, this is what I do — she can’t imagine herself wanting to create any kind of permanent collection.
She prefers the speed of projects — also known as, trying stuff.
She sees herself bringing more Chicagoans to arts who wouldn’t normally consider the gallery world seriously — and conversely, wouldn’t be considered seriously by the gallery world.
We stop at a table covered in small cards, each with a name, like at a wedding.
To begin Chicago Exhibition Weekend, she’s hosting a dinner for 300. Tickets were $230 a head and sold out quickly. “This,” she said, “this is my favorite part. I love curating people. Why would I put all this work in if the people who attend these projects only talk to other people they know?”
So she seats everyone herself.
She reaches inside a duffle bag. A photographer is coming to take her picture. She’s was going to change into a cardigan, but decided to just change sneakers. She pulled out a pair of sparkly Alexander McQueens, the sort of sneakers that start at $600. She wears them everywhere, to galas, weddings. She rotates through a few pairs of the same kinds, “like a cartoon character.” The pair she has on she once gave to her grandmother, Cindy Pritzker, who died in March at 101. She cofounded the Pritzker Architecture Prize. She was appointed by Mayor Harold Washington to lead the formation of what eventually became the Harold Washington Library.
“She was (expletive) iconic, is what she was,” Pucker said. “And my inspiration.”
After the photo, she’s getting dry-needling therapy, to remove the knots in her neck. After that, she buying the staff lunch — her mother, film producer Gigi Pritzker Pucker, told her the best way judge the quality of a production is by its craft services. Then she heads out for a political fundraiser. And then after that, an EarlyWork event at the Chicago Athletic Association.
About a year ago she stopped concerning herself with whether or not she was legitimate. She stopped trying to please everyone with every new project. She knows Chicago can be a transient place for the art world. She herself is in New York City at least twice a month. “But I will be here forever now,” she said. “If I’m rapping Chicago, who am I if I am not walking the walk?”
Chicago Exhibition Weekend runs Sept. 19-21 at various locations; “Over My Head: Encounters with Conceptual Art in a Flyover City, 1984-2015” continues through Oct. 11 at 400 N. Peoria St.; more information at www.chicagoexhibitionweekend.com
cborrelli@chicagotribune.com