Public Media Institute, co-producer of Version Festival, is releasing a Proximity magazine sister project that is a guide to contemporary art spaces in Chicago.

The beautifully made 144 page book was created by Plural.




Introduction

The (Con)Temporary Art Guide is a map of the city showcasing some of Chicago's best cultural offerings during the spring art season. The floorplans are made up by prominent art institutes and initiatives, several annual art festivals and fairs, independent art spaces and other culturally significant projects.

We created the Guide to help us experience the city as a space for contemporary art, to reflect on the need and vulnerability of these cultural presentations and to celebrate art: day and night, inside and outside, high and low.

The Guide is dived into texts, maps, directories, event calendars, The Artropolis program, and the Version 09 Festival program. We believe by merely documenting the breadth and scale of Chicago's cultural offerings once a year that will confirm how incredibly diverse our art world is and reinforces how lucky we are to be based in it.

But the Guide is not just about tooting our collective horn. We have asked a few prominent cultural figures to give us a brief analysis of the health of our contemporary art scenes. Paul Klein, Shannon Stratton, Daniel Gunn, Duncan MacKenzie, Albert Stabler and Paul Morris reflect on different aspects of our cultural ecology to give you an insiders perspective.

We also created a few routes we hope you will use to experience the regional and conceptual diversity of the spaces and places that showcase and facilitate contemporary art practice in Chicago.

The Guide is a project of Proximity Magazine and is published by the Public Media Institute, a non-profit community-based grass roots arts and culture organization.

We hope you find a good use for it.

Ed and Rachael Marszewski