From navigating complex art-installation challenges to caring for extraordinarily delicate works to making sure the galleries always look their best for visitors, Jonathan approaches all he does here with ingenuity, patience, and humility.
I’ve had the pleasure of working alongside Jonathan for years, and some of my favorite projects have been the ones we’ve collaborated on most closely. He’s endlessly curious, quietly hilarious, and one of the most generous colleagues I know. I’m so happy to introduce you to someone whose work here quietly shapes the way visitors encounter art every day.
Kendall McNabb: Let’s talk through your journey to becoming the “mayor of Tiny Town!”
Jonathan Worcester: Ha, yes! Okay!
Kendall: That’s the nickname historically given to the caretaker of the Thorne Miniature Rooms, one of the many hats you wear. Your actual title, though, is departmental specialist for Applied Arts of Europe. Could you explain what “applied arts” are, for those who might not be familiar?
Jonathan: Applied arts refers to decorative objects, usually household objects like furniture, silver, ceramics, and glassware. My department specifically focuses on objects made from the 12th century to 1945. We have about 9,000 works in the collection.
Kendall: And what does your role as departmental specialist involve, broadly speaking?
Jonathan: It covers a pretty wide range of functions. I serve as the lead art handler on all of the department’s projects, which means I’m responsible for moving the artworks safely and physically installing or deinstalling them in the galleries.
A big part of my job is coordinating with other departments, like Imaging, Conservation and Science, and Facilities and Logistics, on projects that involve the movement of artwork. I also maintain our gallery displays, cleaning dust off the art and their cases, checking for any display bulbs that need replacing, and generally making sure everything looks beautiful, is safe for the artwork, and is ready for our visitors. Similarly, I manage my department’s art storage spaces to keep them organized and accessible for staff.
Kendall McNabb and Jonathan Worcester in the Eloise W. Martin Galleries, home to over 300 European design objects from 1600 to 1900
Kendall: What drew you to this kind of work to begin with?
Jonathan: This is pretty much the only type of work I’ve ever done, besides a dog-walking business I had as a kid. When I was in high school, I connected with the network of street art fairs happening in Chicago, like the 57th Street Art Fair and the art fairs in Lincoln Park and Old Town. I would set up people’s booths for them, help them figure out display methods, and install their work.
During undergrad at Sarah Lawrence, I ran the student art gallery for a year, and I did a lot of the patching and repairing of the walls there in addition to installing artwork. I got really handy; I learned woodworking and got much better at fabrication. After graduation I moved back to Chicago and started working with the Museum of Contemporary Art as a freelance technician, which led to additional freelance work across the city at different galleries and museums, including the Art Institute.
Kendall: And you ended up working here full time.
Jonathan: Yeah. I started in Collections and Loans in 2019, deinstalling and installing artworks for different curatorial departments, and then was promoted to my current role in Applied Arts of Europe in 2021. Growing up in Chicago, the Art Institute always loomed large for me. And as a practicing artist myself, I was interested in pursuing a graduate degree in painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC). Because the museum offers tuition remission to employees, working here full-time allowed me to earn my MFA.
These days I have a pretty awesome community between SAIC and the museum. It’s hard to walk down Michigan Avenue without seeing a familiar face.
Kendall: What was it like studying and working here at the same time?
Jonathan: It was incredible and a little bit surreal. I would be in art history class, and the professor would reference a work, and I’d be like, “Oh yeah, I hung that one two weeks ago.”
Admiring an armchair from India’s Coromandel Coast, about 1690–1700
Kendall: You and I collaborate here in our respective roles pretty often—sometimes I feel like we’ve completed a lifetime’s worth of projects together in the six years we’ve worked together.
Jonathan: The biggest for sure was the redesign of the Eloise W. Martin Galleries, which opened last summer.
Kendall: Right. These galleries were the first phase of our ongoing partnership with the design firm Barozzi Veiga to improve the museum’s campus. So my department, Capital Programs, was very heavily involved, and I served as project manager for the galleries’ redesign. It was a multiyear project, and the majority of y’all’s collection was off view for about two years. But the end result …
Jonathan: It’s gorgeous. Yeah. I mean, at first, the stone decks the designers proposed sounded crazy to me, but—
Kendall: But they were right.
Jonathan: Can’t lie. They look pretty great.
Kendall: So I’d love to know: What part of that project holds the most meaning for you when you walk through the galleries today?
Jonathan: One of the first objects you see when you enter is a massive tureen—a punch bowl. It’s white porcelain, and it weighs a ton.
Royal Porcelain Manufactory (Königliche Porzellan-Manufaktur or KPM), designed by Alexander Kips, modeled by Ernst Wägner
Jonathan: A very cool fact about that tureen is that it had belonged to the modern artist Ellsworth Kelly, which is very random. Anyway, the way we’ve installed it, you’re immediately greeted with the sight of Bacchus raising a glass to you. He’s also raising the glass to our adjacent wine cabinet, which also has images of Bacchus—
Kendall: We think of everything here.
Jonathan: It’s a nice moment.
Kendall: That work was somewhat difficult to install, right?
Jonathan: There was a logistical issue, which was that given the weight of the tureen, we would have needed three sets of hands to place it safely. But the case that had been so artfully and exactingly designed for it did not allow for even one person to stand inside of it; it’s a very narrow space. And it has a stone bottom and a stone riser.
After lots of consideration, my team determined that for us to place the tureen safely, the riser would have to contain metal struts that could be accessed and raised by a forklift, so that’s what we made. One side of the riser can be removed to access the struts. My colleague Christine Huck operated the forklift, and I crouched into the case—as much as I could—measuring and calling out directions for movement. We raised the object very carefully. It was a very tense moment. But the end result was totally worth the effort. It looks incredible.
Kendall: It’s such a perfect welcome to that space. And it’s one example of the sort of collective moment we seem to have on every installation, when, after many, many months of planning, everything comes together.
Jonathan: These projects rely so heavily on collaboration and, really, divergent thinking, which is what makes them so fun. It’s creative problem solving.
Kendall: You’ve worked here for a while now, and I’m wondering if there’s a favorite work that still calls out to you every time, even on the busiest days.
Jonathan: This is so obvious, but La Grande Jatte. Its colors are mesmerizing. I remember when my colleagues replaced the frame a few years ago, for a while the painting was up in the conservation studios without the glazing, or the glass, that it usually has. Seeing the truest, purest colors of that painting was pretty insane.
Georges Seurat
Kendall: Have you found that working alongside some of the great works of all time has influenced your own artistic practice?
Jonathan: Yes, and it’s dangerous.
Kendall: Why dangerous?
Jonathan: It’s so easy for me to become obsessed with how another artist made something and what brought them to make it. But at the same time, I can’t let that overshadow what feels authentic to me in my own work. There’s a fine balance between consideration and emulation.
Untitled, 2024
Jonathan Worcester
Image courtesy of the artist
Kendall: Who are some of the artists you look to?
Jonathan: A lot of the images that I make deal in a language of minimalism, or neominimalism, and perceptual abstraction. It’s really graphically difficult work—the sort of things that make your eyes hurt. So I’ll spend time with works by artists like Agnes Martin and Frank Stella. Some their works are off view, but I can still arrange to see them if I want to, which is amazing.
Kendall: How do you balance your work here with your work in the studio and your other interests?
Jonathan: I don’t! This is all that I do: I wake up, I come to the museum, and then I go to the studio. I don’t sleep a lot.
Kendall: Whoa.
Jonathan: I’m kidding, sort of. I stay pretty busy, but I do have other interests. I’m a huge movie person, as you know.
Kendall: I have learned so much about horror movies through our friendship, and admittedly, being your friend has made me more brave. I’m much more willing to watch horror movies now than I ever was before.
Jonathan: I’ve called you a coward too many times.
Kendall: Yeah. To my face, with direct eye contact!
Jonathan: But it’s made you a stronger person.
Kendall: That’s true.
Kendall: So looking to the future, what’s an upcoming project that you’re excited about?
Jonathan: We’re in the very early stages of planning some design changes to the Thorne Rooms gallery. People just love the Thorne Miniature Rooms and have always been fascinated by them. It’s a personal mission of mine—and a departmental imperative—to make the gallery a little more contemporary, bright, and accessible to visitors. We’ve already started behind the scenes, as you know.
Kendall: You’re making more work for me, pal.
Jonathan: Yeah, but that’s what we do. The fact that our work has the potential to change and improve the way an artwork is experienced is huge. The Thorne Rooms have been getting some attention in the media recently, which has been so exciting—
Kendall: You did a video short about cleaning those works that sort of went viral, yeah. I hear you sometimes get recognized on the street.
Jonathan: I’m not at all used to that. But as much fun as it’s been to be known, a little bit, for my connection to these objects, I actually think that my role here, at the end of the day, is to be a ghost. The work that I do shouldn’t be apparent. If I’m doing my job well, the art should be all that you see.
—Jonathan Worcester, departmental specialist, Applied Arts of Europe, and Kendall McNabb, director of gallery projects, Capital Programs
