100 Views of Lake Michigan

Fall 2021–Spring 2022

In the year-long project 100 Views of Lake Michigan, photographs of Lake Michigan become the basis of several art interventions throughout the University of Chicago campus.

Student organizers invited the UChicago community to submit photographs of the Lake Michigan horizon line. Inspired by Hiroshige’s famous Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, Monet’s multiple haystacks, and other iterative artworks, the collected images were then curated into a series of installations throughout the UChicago campus and across different time frames—100 vinyl banners that lined the walkways of the main quadrangle, transparent 6-foot tall prints of the lake in cubicles in the Stewart Reading Room, coffee cups and sleeves, immersive video projections on the façade of the Smart Museum of Art, stickers distributed through student-run cafes, and more.

Why Lake Michigan? Unlike many of the other hallmarks of UChicago, Lake Michigan is the paramount reminder of nature and the environment in the campus’s backyard. Is difficult to overstate the importance of Lake Michigan in the emotional lives of UChicago students and faculty. 100 Views challenged us to find variety and novelty in repeated interactions with the Lake.

About
100 Views of Lake Michigan was organized by Esha Deokar, Naomi Koo, Natalie Jenkins, Jess Xiong, Kina Takahashi, and Oscar Taub, with the support of Laura Steward, Curator of Public Art, and artist and designer Jason Pickleman. Major support was provided by the College.