WBEZ | Jane Addams

Home Economics at Hull House Museum

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 08:00:00 -0600

Back in my day (I’ve always wanted to start a review with those words!) home economics was still part of the middle school curriculum. We learned to follow a recipe, to set a table and clean up after our classroom meals, and to sew important objects, like pillows made out of washcloths or dangerously skimpy pot holders.

I was never keen on the domestic arts and sciences, a truth made clear by my sloppy stitches and thrown-together dishes. Though had I known more about the history of the field, I might have been more willing to apply myself. Thankfully, 21^st Century Home Economics, a new year-long exhibition at Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, offers an opportunity to form a new relationship to the discipline. The show explores the way women used the science of domesticity to escape their confinement in the home and carve out public roles for themselves. In doing so, they were able to fight for and secure a number of social reforms, from better working conditions to safer food.

At first it's hard to see that history. There is so much clutter crowded into the small second-story exhibition space – tea cups, books, sewing machines and more – that entering feels like stepping into ye olde curiosity shoppe. What does stand out is a pair of large, stunning photographs of important figures from the early days of home economics.

One is of Ellen Swallow Richards, a chemist and the first woman admitted to MIT. She helped integrate germ theory into an emerging discipline: linking bacteria in food to illness in people. Her work inspired various reform efforts at Hull House, including a political campaign for sanitary milk (a history cleverly told through text printed on old-fashioned glass milk bottles).

In fact, most home reformers had broad agendas. Utopian writer Charlotte Perkins Gilman (best known for her short story "The Yellow Wallpaper") imagined a world of collective rather than private kitchens and laundries, a social arrangement she hoped would free women from the drudgery of what we now call the “second shift.” That's a remarkable vision, especially since women continue to do the bulk of childcare and housework.

The exhibition taps into the radical heart of home economics by connecting these 19^th century histories and ambitions to present struggles. Beneath a large portrait of a Hull House servant named Mary Keyser, you’ll find narratives and artifacts from current domestic workers. A sponge sits in a glass case next to a text describing the efforts required to bathe a morbidly obese client. These contemporary testimonials make visible the enormous labor and care involved in domestic work. And a different sort of representation is also in the works. The Chicago Coalition of Household Workers (formerly known as the Latino Union), who partnered with Hull-House on the exhibition, is currently working to get a domestic workers bill of rights through the Illinois state legislature.

Curator Heather Radke says that was an important goal of the show’s collaborators (which range from labor organizers to individual artists): to make sure this kind of work is not just well-paid but well understood, especially as a labor of love.There are critical views of contemporary politics as well. A chalkboard inviting ideas about food justice contrasts the collective organizing of early reformers against contemporary desires to "buy our way to social change" by frequenting farmers' markets or selecting fair trade products.

All of the elements that make 21^st Century Home Economics so inviting and successful – its busy, inquisitive, interactive, and community-focused approach – are hallmarks of every exhibition put on by the staff at Hull House. That the museum isn't content just to be a repository for the good deeds and material possessions of Jane Addams, but functions as a lively, of-the-moment community space, is thanks to the vision and leadership of Lisa Yun Lee.

Lee became director at the museum in late 2006, after founding The Public Square event series at the Illinois Humanities Council. And in just six short years, she's led a radical make-over of the museum. For Lee that mission was almost a historical imperative.

"In this 21st century moment, if you want to know historic facts or figures there's really no reason why you'd need to go to a physical space," she said. "The Internet has that kind of information for you."

Instead Lee thinks a museum needs to be "about the cultural, social and political relationships you have or want to have not just with history but with other people, and yourself."

So at Hull House, people come together not just to preserve history but to preserve jam, hold pot lucks, or debate politics. The museum has convened public discussions of trending topics like the cultural phenomenon of sports star Jeremy Lin (full disclosure: I moderated the event), conducted workshops on how to interact with law enforcement, and invited artists to invent alternative histories for some of the museum’s artifacts. They also run a farm and an art lending library.

Lee said the diverse programming reflects a shared sense among her staff that "museum making is an artistic practice."

But now Lee is moving on. This month she steps down as director at Hull House Museum to lead UIC’s School of Art and Art History. There she'll lead a year-long reorganization of the school. But she'll also continue her efforts to create a "vibrant public sphere." Lee noted that "art, art history, museums, are rarified elitist things historically. But they've also been sites of revolution and subversion. It's just a matter of finding new ways of talking about and communicating that to people."

'Unfinished Business: 21 Century Home Economics' is at Jane Addams Hull-House Museum through November 2013.

The birth of Hull House

Tue, 18 Sep 2012 09:00:00 -0500

Jane Addams was the first American woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize. She started earning the prize on September 18, 1889. That was her first day at Hull House.

Addams was born in 1860, the youngest daughter of a wealthy family from northwest Illinois. While on a visit to London she was impressed by the Toynbee Hall settlement house. This was a new concept in charity. In the past, concerned people might visit poor neighborhoods and do works of mercy during the day, then return to their own middle-class homes at night.

The settlement idea was different – the “social workers” would actually live among those they were trying to help. Addams thought the idea would work in Chicago. She had recently inherited $50,000 on the death of her father. In the spring of 1889, with her friend Ellen Gates Starr, Addams set out trying to put her plan into action.

She decided to locate on the Near West Side. During a scouting trip in the area of Halsted and Polk, Addams noticed an old brick mansion that had seen better days. This was the onetime residence of Charles J. Hull, now owned by his niece. The niece agreed to lease the property rent-free, so the grateful Addams named the settlement Hull House.

The idea of two well-bred, upper-crust young ladies setting up housekeeping in a notorious slum caused some consternation, and some amusement. Addams and Starr did have to do some adjusting. On their first night, they forgot to lock one of the doors – in fact, they left it wide open. When they woke up the next day, and found nothing was missing, Addams took it as a hopeful sign for the future.

Hull House was a success. The people of the neighborhood came to accept Addams and Starr. Within a short time the settlement offered medical care, a dining room, bathhouse, library, gymnasium, lodging for about 20 women, night school for adults and the city’s first kindergarten. The property eventually had thirteen separate buildings, plus a summer camp in the country.

Jane Addams died in 1935, Ellen Gates Starr five years later. During the 1960s, most of the settlement buildings were razed for the UIC campus, but the original mansion remains as a museum. The Jane Addams Hull House Association continued the work of its founder until this past January, when it ceased operations.

National agency calls for closure of Cook County Juvenille Temporary Detention Center

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 21:02:00 -0600

A national criminal justice agency is calling for the closure of Cook County's long-troubled Juvenile Temporary Detention Center, and is suggesting the county needs to reform the way it deals with detaining juveniles.

The JTDC has a storied past, complete with citations over unsanitary conditions and overcrowding. In a recent report, the National Council on Crime and Deliquency said conditions have greatly improved at the center, but the current design has security flaws and isn't worth renovating. The study, commissioned by the Jane Addams Juvenile Court Foundation, also called for an investigation into the disproportionate number of minorities in Cook County's juvenile detention centers. According to their research, African-American youth are detained at 46 times the rate of their white peers.

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle said Friday that significant work and resources have gone into the JTDC, even admist budget cuts and tightening in other areas. Preckwinkle said she too has seen progress at the center, but isn't opposed to closing it.

"It's what I want to do eventually, it's just not tomorrow," she said. "There are 300 kids in it and we have no other place to put them."

Preckwinkle said this isn't the first time she's considered closing the JTDC; she told reporters Friday she once said she wanted to "blow it up." Both Preckwinkle and JTDC's transitional administrator, Earl Dunlap, agree the county would be better served by four to six smaller centers, rather than one large one.

Hull-House Museum looks for alternative labels

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 14:47:00 -0600

Most people have probably seen a museum label or two in their time--usually a small explainer of the object: title, date created, artist or origin. That can do the trick for those looking for information. But what if visitors had the ability to go into a museum and create their own label–-one without restrictions to its size or content? That experiment has been underway at the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.

The museum debuted its newest label, an essay by artist and scholar Terri Kapsalis Tuesday. Kapsalis chose to write about a small travel medicine kit owned by Jane Addams. When Eight Forty-Eight met the artist at the museum recently, Kapsalis started by talking about the connection between the kit and Addam’s own health.