The Commission

The University of Chicago (UChicago) debuts a new public art commission by world-renowned artist and alumna Jenny Holzer (EX’74), YOU BE MY ALLY, premiering October 5, 2020, on the UChicago campus and worldwide through a web-based augmented reality app. The text-based artwork mobilizes in-app projections and LED trucks to consider ways in which humanistic thought can animate public life, urban space, and the built environment. 

YOU BE MY ALLY is Holzer’s first augmented reality (AR) artwork using virtual projections in the United States and her first work created in collaboration with a university’s students and faculty. Holzer received UChicago’s Rosenberger Medal in 2019 in recognition of her wide-reaching impact on public art. YOU BE MY ALLY features 29 excerpts from historically significant readings from UChicago’s Core Curriculum, including works by distinguished writers W. E. B. Du Bois, Helen Keller, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Friedrich Nietzsche, Plato, Mary Shelley, and Virginia Woolf. The title of the project itself is an excerpt from If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho, a translation by classicist Anne Carson that is among the Core readings. Starting October 5, viewers can access a free, web-based AR app to virtually project and animate these texts on the facades of architecturally significant UChicago buildings.  In addition, app users will be able to project the title quote onto their surroundings anywhere in the world. On October 30, additional will become available to project anywhere.

Text selections from the Core Curriculum will also be featured on LED trucks driving throughout UChicago campus, South Side, and downtown communities October 5 and 6, bringing the experience to diverse audiences in an unexpected manner. Text excerpts for the project were selected in collaboration with UChicago students and faculty.

Another component of Holzer’s work will incorporate original texts in support of nonpartisan get-out-the-vote efforts. These texts, selected by Holzer from various sources including submissions by UChicago students, will be displayed on LED trucks driven throughout the city on October 24 and 30.

Jenny Holzer

For more than 40 years, Jenny Holzer has presented her astringent ideas, arguments, and sorrows in public places and international exhibitions, including the Venice Biennale, the Guggenheim Museums in New York and Bilbao, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Louvre Abu Dhabi. Her medium, whether formulated as a T-shirt, a plaque, or an LED sign, is writing, and the public dimension is integral to the delivery of her work. Starting in the 1970s with the New York City posters and continuing through her recent light projections on landscape and architecture, her practice has rivaled ignorance and violence with humor, kindness, and courage. Holzer received the Leone d’Oro at the Venice Biennale in 1990, the World Economic Forum’s Crystal Award in 1996, the U.S. State Department’s International Medal of Arts in 2017, and the University of Chicago’s Rosenberger Medal in 2019. She studied at the University of Chicago in 1970–71 and holds honorary degrees from Williams College, the Rhode Island School of Design, The New School, and Smith College. She lives and works in New York.

Sponsors + Partners

The project was developed by Christine Mehring (Mary L. Block Professor of Art History and the College; Adjunct Curator, Smart Museum of Art; ), and Jill Sterrett (Interim Director, Deputy Director, Museum Affairs and Strategic Impact, Smart Museum) and led together with Leigh Fagin (Senior Director of Programming and Engagement, Logan Center for the Arts) and Alexandra Drexelius (Executive Assistant for Leadership Support at the Smart Museum) in partnership with Jenny Holzer Studio, Mark Hellar Studios, LLC., and Holition. The team also included ten students interns and collaborated with dozens of instructors and hundreds of students in the College Core curriculum.

The University of Chicago and campus partners: The College, The Department of Art History, Smart Museum of Art, Urban Architecture and Design Initiative, Public Art Committee, Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, UChicago Arts, UChicago GRAD, and Office of Civic Engagement.

This project is also made possible with support from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Read about the Project Team HERE.