Lill Ave. Studio

The visibility of racialized violence and openly enforced segregation in the South allowed whites in Northern urban centers, like Chicago, to distance themselves from the most vile outcomes of white supremacy. Civil rights leaders in 1965 wanted to change that narrative. Northern cities forced Black residents into cramped, dilapidated, rat-infested housing that city officials could neglect and ignore. The “End Slums” campaign, led by the Coordinating Council of Community Organizations, brought Dr. Martin Luther  King, Jr. to Chicago. A march in 1966 on a real estate office to demand an end to housing discrimination was met with white mob violence. King commented that he had never seen “mobs as hostile and as hate-filled as I’m seeing in Chicago.” The effect of housing discrimination in Chicago was that Black renters and owners faced violence when trying to claim space for themselves and rarely owned any of the spaces in which they lived, worked, gathered, and entertained.

In 1971, Hunt purchased a defunct power substation building in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood as his new studio. The forty-five-foot ceiling and skylights illuminated the space and allowed for the fabrication of larger sculptures. The space also included a small loft where Hunt slept for much of the next fifty years. Hunt’s Lill Ave. studio became the hub for his artistic practice and a space to invite fellow artists, musicians, and performers for happenings and concerts. The founding of the Lill Ave. studio was a significant accomplishment in a city where racial segregation was enforced through the control of space.

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