Joel Oppenheimer moving to Tree Studios
Joel Oppenheimer, owner of the namesake art gallery in the Wrigley Building, is moving to Tree Studios. After nearly twenty years in the Wrigley Building, the gallery will move a few short blocks to 10 East Ohio to the beautifully restored Queen Anne-style Tree Studios Annex Building in the Tree Studios complex, one of the nation’s oldest surviving artists’ studios. The move also marks the end of an era for North Michigan Avenue’s businesses. For the last several years, Joel Oppenheimer, Inc. has been the only independent, solely owned business on Chicago’s premier shopping avenue.
The gallery will occupy an estimated 3,225 square feet, and one-and-a-half floors of the building fronting Ohio Street, between State and Wabash. The Studios were commissioned by philanthropists Judge and Mrs. Lambert Tree and built between 1894 and 1913 as a home for Chicago artists and cultural life at the turn of the century. The Annexes were built last, designed in 1912 by architects Hill and Woltersdorf. Just two blocks off Michigan Avenue, the Ohio Street Annex building features original period woodwork, high ceilings, and dramatic north-facing windows overlooking a hidden courtyard garden, which provides an oasis of tranquility in the midst of a vibrant retail corridor with abundant foot traffic.
“This is why historic restoration inspires us,” said Albert Friedman, Chairman of the Board of Friedman Properties. “Friedman Properties is delighted to welcome the Oppenheimer Gallery to Tree Studios. When we undertook the task of saving this landmark property, we committed to the City of Chicago not only to restore the structure, but that we would make every effort to attract the art community and honor the buildings’ original use as intended by the Trees. Thanks to the fine efforts of our Executive Vice President Bob Zimmerman, Joel and his team are moving in, and they’re a perfect fit. I have to believe that Judge and Mrs. Lambert Tree would be tickled to see art being breathed back into Tree Studios. It’s an important part of Chicago’s history.”
Oppenheimer, a foremost expert on John James Audubon, authored THE BIRDS OF AMERICA: The Bien Chromolithographic Edition (W. W. Norton & Company) in 2013. As a gallery owner and businessman, he believes that to be proactive in this current fast-paced, far-reaching retail environment he must efficiently serve the needs of the gallery’s growing list of local, national, and international clients by building the marketing of the gallery’s signature walk-in retail location alongside of its state-of-the-art Web site presence, www.audubonart.com. The move will not only provide the gallery with an aesthetic ambiance uniquely suited to shopping for natural history art, their unparalleled museum-quality framing, and renowned art conservation services, but an easy to reach location for walk-in clientele that is also convenient to major hotels and the city’s expressways.
Established in 1969, the fine art galleries of Joel Oppenheimer, Inc. in Chicago and Charleston offer a stunning array of natural history art from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, as well as fine art framing, and complete conservation and restoration services. Joel Oppenheimer, Inc. strives to provide collectors with an unsurpassed selection of the finest examples of prints and paintings from the golden age of natural history art including rare works by John James Audubon, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Dr. Robert Thornton, John Gould, Basilius Besler, and many others. As a natural history art gallery, Joel Oppenheimer, Inc. is dedicated to the connoisseurship of collecting, preserving the art of natural history, and celebrating the magnificent contribution of the artist-explorers who produced an enduring pictorial record of the world’s flora and fauna.
For additional details visit Crain's Chicago Business at: http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20161011/NEWS07/161019967/last-independent-retailer-quits-michigan-avenue