Welcome to the McCormick Gallery website. It has been designed to help you become acquainted with our program and view selections from our inventory of 20th century and contemporary art. We hope you will visit in person at our downtown Chicago location in the West Loop Gallery District.

I started in this business more by accident than design. Forty years ago as a student at the University of Kansas (BFA in printmaking) I became interested in antiques—furniture, quilts, folkart, and oriental rugs. One day I found an old Belouchistan rug rolled up in a trashcan. A painting professor offered me $40 for it and I guess that started it all. I was lucky to have had two mentors. John Talleur was the printmaking professor at KU and besides being a wonderful man and talented artist he was a connoisseur and collector of the first order. He taught us how to see art and was concerned first and foremost with QUALITY. Rather than worry about printing an edition he used to tell his students to worry about making the damn thing interesting enough to warrant printing it once!

Talleur introduced me to John Wilson, my second mentor. John was an art dealer based in Lakeside, Michigan but his showroom was a far flung empire. He traveled around the country from September to May setting up one-day art showings at college and universities from coast to coast. My territory was everything east of the Rockies and I drove 84,000 miles in 18 months, rarely sleeping in the same town two nights in a row. This was 1971-73 and I was young, footloose and a glutton for punishment. It was a unforgettable experience and I learned a lot about art, business and getting along with people.

I've been interested in lots of things over the years but I make my living by showing American painting and sculpture. Our specialty is Abstract Expressionism and we are fortunate to represent a number of wonderful artists from the period of 1940 through the 1960s. We produce wonderful catalogs, most of which are available on this website. I hope you all discover something of interest here, although I already snagged all the discarded oriental carpets for myself.

Tom McCormick