Gallery Chat: The Founders of Corbett vs. Dempsey on Elevating Midwestern Art, Why Collectors Should be Obsessive and Fall in Love with Art, and More

By Stephanie Strasnick

Jim Dempsey and John Corbett. Photo by joe mazza / brave lux inc.

“The thought of having a gallery didn’t occur to us until five minutes before we had a gallery,” recalls Jim Dempsey, who co-founded Chicago’s Corbett vs. Dempsey gallery 14 years ago with business partner John Corbett. The two had first met at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and developed a friendship off campus at various film and music events, connecting over their shared interest in the mediums. After collaborating on a series of screenings at Dempsey’s art-house movie theater, the pair toyed with the idea of dealing rare, historic and curious works by Chicago artists in a storefront. Their real estate search brought them to the sprawling top floor of a friend’s record store, which was too large for the small enterprise they first envisioned, but just right for an exhibition space. “If we’d have gone home and thought about it, we would have talked ourselves out of it,” remembers Dempsey. Instead, they committed to the space on the spot with a handshake, marking the beginning of a fruitful 14-year partnership.

In the early years of Corbett vs. Dempsey, the gallery’s program was deeply rooted in the history of art in the Midwest. Together they uncovered what was in many ways a forgotten generation of artists and the two became known for their exhibitions of mid-century Midwestern art. Their first show featured WPA cityscapes by Modernist painter Eve Garrison, and the second highlighted works by erstwhile Chicagoan Jimmy Wright. Though the lifelong Chicagoans haven’t lost touch with their Midwestern roots, their program has evolved to include artists from across the country (such as Joyce Pensato, Christopher Wool, and Charline von Heyl). Currently, the gallery has a solo exhibition by Josiah McElheny. “Cosmic Love,” his second show at the gallery, features all new work and offers a teaser of his installation at the upcoming Carnegie International. Corbett vs. Dempsey is also participating in Condo New York, a gallery sharing initiative developed in London in 2016. Bortolami, a fellow ADAA member, will be hosting presentations by gallery artists Rebecca Morris and Ed Flood.

Josiah McElheny, Color Time—Model One, 2014, handblown molded and polished glass, marine plywood, red oak, AC gear motor and inverter, Variac control knob, electric lighting, electric wiring, sheet glass, mirror,
hardware. Courtesy the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago.

The Chicago-based duo talked with us about their decade-and-a-half-long collaboration, the multi-faceted history of Midwestern art, and why the key to collecting is “falling in love with things like you fall in love with a person.”

What first attracted you to visual art?

Corbett: When I was a kid, my father turned me onto painting. He took me to an art museum, sat me down in front of two very different paintings, and made a point that you may like one or the other, but they’re both worth looking at. That was really interesting to me—this idea that they could be so different, yet both so engaging. That stuck with me from then on.

How did this interest in painting manifest itself into a career in the arts?

Corbett: Well, I was really a closet visual art person all along, in terms of the things that I was doing, listening to, writing about and so on. I started teaching at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1988, mostly focusing on sound and music then migrated my way through the school as my interests shifted. When the chair of the Exhibition Studies program went on sabbatical, I filled in for a year and that was a bridge to curatorial for me—and then I met Jim.

Magalie Guérin, Untitled, 2017, oil on canvas on panel. Courtesy the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago.

How did you two first meet?

Corbett: We knew each other because we were both culture vultures. Although we were both at the School of the Art Institute at the same time, I was there teaching while in graduate school and Jim was there going to art school. We were theoretically in the same space, but we really knew each other from the music and film scenes.

What inspired you two to start a gallery together?

Corbett: Jim and I started getting interested in the history of our own city’s visual art and why we, as lifelong Chicagoans, knew so little about the art history of Chicago. We began exploring that angle through our exhibitions because at that time, there were big holes in the scholarship, and in the exhibition history. That curiosity was kind of what lured us into the business. The path to the gallery was a little different for Jim, though, so I’ll let him tell his version of the story.

Dempsey: I didn’t grow up in a family that went to museums—art was a bit of a mystery to me. But in school I became sort of a marvel at making things, I always cut the best looking pumpkin at Halloween. I wasn’t involved in the real art world until after high school, when I took a painting class at a community college. I went to art school, had a lot of studio practice for many years, and I used to run an art-house movie theatre.

Once, I was programming a series of Sun Ra films.  I knew that John was an authority on the extraterrestrial musician Sun Ra and invited him to help me. We became friends through that experience and started working together on other projects after that. Then at some point, we decided that we need to kind of pair up and actually try to curate some exhibitions.

Barbara Rossi, Rose Rock, 1972, acrylic on Plexiglas in artist’s frame. Courtesy the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago.

John mentioned that we were very interested in the history of the Midwest, and the more we learned the weirder it got. We realized that there was a great story to tell through art—a puzzle we could put together in a logical way. When I got out of school, I started doing research and started finding out more about the work of some of my former Art Institute teachers, who were artists, and it just felt like we were really doing historical—almost anthropological—work. It was endlessly fascinating.

Tell us about your first official exhibition at Corbett vs. Dempsey.

Corbett: Our first exhibition, in 2004, was WPA cityscapes from the late 1930s to the early 1940s by an artist named Eve Garrison. She was a Chicago painter and the head of a group called No-Jury Society, which fought for exhibitions at public institutions to be selected without judges. She was a really great Realist, figurative painter and, in the 1940s, she started to shift to a very strange kind of homespun Surrealism.

When and why did you start showing more artists from outside of Chicago?

Corbett: Originally, we were digging things up that collectors hadn’t seen yet. We ended up building a small market for mid-century Chicago art and we showed about 70% Chicago artists, 30% artists from outside Chicago. In 2008 we felt that was no longer the right mix. We were showing Chicago art to Chicagoans, which had been done before. It seemed like a better idea to broaden the reach, to show historical Chicagoans to the rest of the world and give interesting contemporary non-Chicago work a Chicago venue for the first time.

Cauleen Smith, Stop, 2017, satin, poly-satin, upholstery, wool felt, silk-rayon velvet, embroidery floss, acrylic fabric paint, and sequins. Courtesy the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago.

What sets Chicago apart from other cities? How would you describe the Chicago aesthetic?

Dempsey: The Midwest in general can be a place where you see some great things that don’t look like anything anywhere else. If you’re going to compare Chicago to, say, New York, the market pressures are much different. Historically, artists here were freed from those pressures and could explore things that move them—they just followed their muse. They followed each other and supported one another. I think this city also benefited from the incredible collections that were here, particularly the private Surrealist collections. Surrealism made its way into the museums, and then it got into the blood of some of the artists and the students, and ended up in their work.

One of the unique features of your gallery is that it also has its own record label. How did that happen?

Corbett: I had a record label before we started the gallery and it made sense to pull the label over from where it had been operating to the gallery. We changed its name to Corbett vs. Dempsey to be consistent. We put out 10 CDs a year—ranging from experimental jazz to free, improvised music—and we present live music in our gallery space periodically.

Various CDs published by Corbett vs. Dempsey. Courtesy the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey.

You’ve been working together for 14 years. At this point, are you typically on the same page when it comes to your program?

Dempsey: We respond to things in similar ways. When you find somebody who you jive with like that, the work can be easy. But you know, there are times when we do hash it out. We made a pact early on that we would only show work that really resonated with us and that really moved us. We wouldn’t make a show that we secretly didn’t like just for economical reasons. We can only be truthful to ourselves so we have to work with stuff we love. Now, there are things that John has championed that maybe I was not quite as keen on, but we trust each other’s instincts.

Do you have advice for aspiring dealers?

Dempsey: Don’t think more than five minutes about it, otherwise you’ll talk yourself out of it.

Corbett: I’d actually think long and hard about starting a gallery now because it’s a different world than it was 14 years ago. To start a gallery in New York or Los Angeles—just to keep the door open—is very difficult. Give it a long think—or do what Jim said and don’t think about it at all.

David Hartt, Carolina I, 2017, archival pigment print mounted to Dibond. Edition of 6 + 1 AP. Courtesy the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago.

Words of wisdom for budding collectors?

Corbett: I come at collecting from having collected something of a lesser monetary value—vinyl records. I’ve been a collector since I was a kid and my idea about collecting is to be obsessive about it. I get obsessive about things and want to find them and want to sometimes find unusual examples of them—rarity is key for record collectors. So, my advice? Become obsessed. The most interesting collections are the ones where you walk in and that collector knows a lot more than you do about their stuff.

Dempsey: For young collectors, it’s about falling in love with things like you fall in love with a person. Some of the most amazing experiences John and I have had are seeing well-honed, lifelong collections. They weren’t created by people who were following trends or treating their art collection like the stock market. When you see a Warhol next to a work by somebody you’ve never heard of, that means the collector loved both of those things equally, and that’s when you see somebody’s true soul, who they are, and what they want to surround themselves with.

Diane Simpson, Apron X, 2005, aluminum and leather. Courtesy the artist and Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago.