Bluhm family donates $5 million for women artists: MCA Chicago receives its largest donation for gender equality

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA Chicago) has received a $5 million donation from Leslie Bluhm, a member of its board and its vice chair, as ARTnews reports. The sum will serve to endow the “Women Artists Initiative” (WAI), the initiative the museum launched in 2015 with the aim of achieving gender parity in its exhibition programme and permanent collection.

With the donation, the fund will be renamed the “Madeleine Fund for Women Artists”, in honour of Madeleine Grynsztejn, the museum’s longtime director who is stepping down from the post. In an interview with ARTnews, Bluhm said her family has been personally touched by Grynsztejn’s leadership and vision, and that the gift was the most beautiful way to honour her visionary work, which has taken the museum to levels and heights that no one had dreamed of.

The “Women Artists Initiative” has already marked ten years of effort toward gender parity in exhibitions and acquisitions. Board chair Bill Silverstein said the initiative’s transition into a perpetual fund shows the long-term institutional commitment and ensures the continuity of the work.

The news comes at a moment of strengthening of MCA Chicago’s mission: the museum, located at 220 East Chicago Avenue in the building designed by German architect Josef Paul Kleihues, is known as one of the most active contemporary art institutions in the United States.