In Lincoln Park, a piece of art history is up for grabs as the former home of Henry Darger, a reclusive artist whose posthumous fame has grown considerably, hits the real estate market. Darger, who toiled in obscurity as a hospital janitor during his lifetime, crafted a vast and mystifying array of outsider art in the two-room boarding house he inhabited from 1932 to 1972. Upon his death in 1973, his landlords stumbled upon a treasure trove of hundreds of artworks, including watercolors, collages, and a sprawling 15,000-page hand-illustrated novel, In the Realms of the Unreal, alongside other writings, as Crain's Chicago Business reported.
The historic building, which was erected in the 1880s, has undergone significant renovations, transforming Darger's former living and working space into a modern five-bedroom, roughly 4,875-square-foot home. The house, now owned by Annika Olson and Rob Lefko, will be listed for sale in mid-May at just under $2.6 million. While the property has been considerably modernized, the essence of Darger's living quarters has been painstakingly recreated in an exhibit at Intuit: The Center for Intuitive & Outsider Art, as detailed by Crain's Chicago Business.
Although the dwelling's current state bears little resemblance to Darger's darkly painted room of yesteryears, the Intuit museum has reincarnated his workspace for public viewing. Notably, the museum located at 756 N. Milwaukee Ave. is currently closed for renovations. Darger's life and work were given an in-depth look in the 2004 documentary "In the Realms of the Unreal," which received the National Film Board Award for best documentary a year before Olson and Lefko's purchase, as noted by the Chicago Sun-Times.
The sale of Darger's former abode is not affiliated with, the ongoing legal disagreement over the rightful ownership of Darger's art. His previous landlords assert that Darger relinquished ownership to them with his departing words: “I have nothing I need in the room. It is all yours. You can throw everything away.” However, Darger's distant relatives contend that they are the legitimate heirs, which has spurred a suit in Cook County now stalled pending a federal court's decision, according to information by the Chicago Sun-Times.
Today, Darger's work holds places of honor in prestigious institutions such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, and the American Folk Art Museum in New York. The resale of this property not only signifies a potentially lucrative deal for the current owners but also a passing of the torch in preserving the enigmatic legacy of an artist who, during his life, never stepped into the limelight he posthumously commands.
