New writers museum coming to Chicago in 2017
By Jean Lotus Staff Reporter — July 4, 2016
The Art Deco building at 180 N. Michigan will be the new home of the American Writer’s Museum (Photo: Chronicle Illinois)
George Lucas may have flown off to a galaxy far, far away, but Chicagoans can look forward to a brand new museum next year anyway when the American Writers Museum opens in fall of 2017.
Aiming to be a national celebration of American writers and their contribution to the written word, the museum is the brainchild of Malcolm O’Hagan, a D.C.-based retired CEO of the National Electrical Manufacturers Assn. O’Hagan is also a native Irishman and a fan of the Dublin Writers Museum, which opened in 1991 in a restored Georgian mansion.
O’Hagan, a docent at the Library of Congress, said he wondered why there was no similar organization for American writers, and then set out to create one.
“Our board had to set criteria for a location,” O’Hagan said.
. “One of the major factors was since it was a national museum it had to be in a central location. Chicago is the most American of American cities and a lot of history revolved around Chicago,” O’Hagan said.
The12,000 sq. foot museum will be located on the 2nd floor of 180 N. Michigan Avenue.
Funding has been received from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Chicago Community Trust, as well as from individual donors and family foundations.
“We’re planning a small, intimate museum where you can go an enjoy two hours with the great writers of America,” O’Hagan said.
The digital-based museum will consist of rotating exhibitions in galleries with names such as the Mind of a Writer, the Writer’s Room, the American Identity, Writing Across America, a Chicago gallery and a children’s gallery.
Board member Roberta Rubin, owned Winnetka’s Book Stall for 31 years, said the museum was “tremendously exciting and unique in all the country.”
“In the U.S. we don’t have a place to honor our literary forbearers,” she said.
Living authors will be celebrated in programming such as book signings, poetry readings and the like, but to get a exhibition, an author’s reputation will have to be tested with time.
“To be featured, a writer will likely have to be dead at least 10 years,” O’Hagan said. “In the Dublin museum they didn’t allow any living authors except Seamus Heaney when he won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1995,” he added.
Nonetheless, authors from Joyce Carol Oates, George Saunders, Scott Turow and Stuart Dybek have warmly endorsed the museum on its website.
The museum will not be a library or have collections of books, O’Hagan said.
“We’re not artifact-based. The way people read and write is changing and the technology available allows us to present materials in a totally different and much more interesting way.”
Board member S. Leigh Pierson Conant said the museum has partnered with around 50 author-home museums across the country. This will allow digital peeks into the homes of authors such as Louis May Alcott, Truman Capote, Willa Cather, Emily Dickenson or Oak Park’s native son Ernest Hemingway.
“Chicago is known for its museums,” Conant said. “This is going to be unlike any other with a blend of technology that helps enhance our literary history.”
The location was chosen within easy walking distance of many Chicago hotels, O’Hagan said. Plans on the museum website say they expect more than 100,000 visitors and revenue of $1.3 million the first year.
The museum has been backed by Ald. Edward Burke (14th Ward)-Alderman Walter Burnett Jr., (27th Ward) and Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd Ward), who have posted accolades on the website.
Other board members from Illinois include Roger Baskes, former Newberry Library trustee, Chicago museum Consultant Ronne Hartfield, Publisher James Donnelley, Architect Lamar Johnson, and Chicago construction contractors Allen Bulley III, Mike Clune and John Estey
“Chicago’s a great melting pot of literary tradition with a generous philanthropic community,” O’Hagan said.
O’Hagan said the museum team has so much to work with designing exhibits that celebrate American writers.
“We’re fortunate in America that we have such an abundance of great writers whose works influenced the history and the culture of the nation,” he said.
Read the current issue of the Cook County Chronicle
Free digital subscription to the Cook County Chronicle
— New writers museum coming to Chicago in 2017 —
