Project Description
Marwen offers free, professional-caliber after-school arts programming to students in grades 6-12, filling the void left behind by the gutting of public school arts programs.
For 15 years, Marwen’s physical presence to the public and neighborhood went largely unnoticed. As an internalized tenant on two floors of a four-story industrial loft building, the ambitious and inspiring center for visual arts wasn’t perceived from the outside. The purchase of the building and adjacent lot allowed Marwen to expand to create a fully realized arts campus. With its new presence, Marwen conveys to the public its thoughtfully composed mission and vision, just at it has always done from the inside only.
The new campus aims to be a cohesive learning community that serves as a cornerstone of arts education for diverse communities throughout Chicago. The program includes a renovated main public gallery for student work, a student and family lounge, alumni gallery, library, administrative offices, and nine state-of-the-art instructional studios for painting, printmaking, photography, graphic design, film, animation, textile arts, sculpture, and ceramics.
The expansion included a new entry and parking court, a 950 square-foot steel-and-glass multiuse loggia space, an additional 15,000 sf of new and renovated studio spaces, as well as new windows, HVAC, roof, solar panel array, and building signage.