The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC) announced this week that it will receive $25m from the Bucksbaum family—Carolyn (Kay), Jacolyn (Jackie) and John Bucksbaum—to create the new Bucksbaum Photography Center, which will house the museum’s Department of Photography and Media and its collection. This is the largest gift the AIC has received for the department, and one of the biggest sums earmarked for photography at any US museum.
Kay Bucksbaum became an AIC trustee in 2002 and has been a member of its Photography and Media Curatorial Committee since 2003. In 2009, when the AIC’s Modern Wing opened, so did a photography space named the Carolyn S. and Matthew Bucksbaum Gallery. (Kay is also a Chicago Symphony Orchestra trustee.)
“I have an abiding passion and appreciation for the power of photography and media,” Kay said in a statement. “This gift from our family is an investment in the future of the department at the museum and the curators who are moving this field forward.”
John Bucksbaum (Kay’s son) and his wife, Jackie, have been on the AIC’s Committee on Photography and Media since 2016. John is also a Field Museum trustee, and Jackie is on the board of the Society for Contemporary Art and a member of the Cinema/Chicago executive committee.
Kay’s late husband, Matthew Bucksbaum, was a Chicago real-estate mogul who, with his two brothers—Martin and Maurice—co-founded General Growth Properties (GGS) in 1954. By the mid-2000s, GGS had become one of the biggest shopping-mall operators in the US, owning almost 200 malls in 44 states. John succeeded his father as chief executive of GGS before launching his own real-estate company in 2012.
The AIC’s photography collection includes thousands of important works by artists including Diane Arbus, Dawoud Bey, Robert Frank, Nan Goldin, André Kertész, Cindy Sherman and Alfred Stieglitz, as well as historical photographs of the likes of Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth.