Museum Of Contemporary Art Receives $10 Million Grant

By Amy Cavanaugh in Arts & Entertainment on Apr 8, 2012 3:00PM

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago announced this week that it received $10 million from longtime supporters Stefan Edlis and Gael Neeson to name the MCA Theater. The theater, which seats 300 people and is often used for speakers and stage performances, will be named the Edlis Neeson Theater in their honor.

The amount of art the pair have helped the MCA acquire is pretty impressive: in 2000, they established the Edlis/Neeson Art Acquisition Fund, which has brought Jenny Holzer's For Chicago (2007), Olafur Eliasson's Your eye activity Field (2009), and other works to the museum’s collection. They’ve also donated work by Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and other artists to the museum, and they’re the owners of the metallic Jeff Koons Rabbit, which is on display as part of This Will Have Been: Art, Love & Politics in the 1980s.

We’ve long been fans of the dynamic work the MCA puts up, and are excited to see what this new grant will add to Chicago’s arts community.