Ann Nathan, Chicago art gallery owner who helped young artists navigate art world, dies at 98

Pioneering gallerist Ann Nathan gave opportunities to budding artists — but did not coddle them.

"Ann was like my art world mom, she was remarkable," said Chicago artist Tony Fitzpatrick.

"When I walked into her gallery in 1982, I was an angry 19-year-old kid, and I handed her my portfolio of drawings, and she knew I was not the average bear, not an art school product, but she said 'I'm going to take one and let's see what happens.'"

It was a metaphorical drawing of jazz musician Charles Mingus as a cat. A lady who likes cats bought it for $150.

When Fitzpatrick came to pick up a check for the sale, Mrs. Nathan told him the dealer's commission was 50%.

"I said '50%?' and she looked me dead in the eye and said 'Get used to it, Dorothy. You're not in Kansas anymore,'" Fitzpatrick recalled.

"She prepared me for the casual brutalities of the art world."

"She said, 'If you're going to do this, it's the hardest thing in the world to make a living at, so make only the work you have to make, honest work that defines you and tells the world who you are," he said.

"I was kind of beginning to find myself as an artist, beginning to realize, and Ann Nathan helped me get there, and I can honestly tell you, now that I'm in the MoMA, The Met, The Art Institute, that Ann Nathan walked me every step of the way."

Many artists looked to her as a mentor as Mrs. Nathan became a pioneer and icon in the city's art scene for more than 30 years.

She died May 5 from natural causes. She was 98.

Mrs. Nathan made the plunge into the gallery world at age 57, after selling her successful temp agency.

Some viewed it as a lark. She did not.

She started in the early 1980s in a tiny space in Ravenswood before moving her "Objects Gallery" to the Merchandise Mart.

She later opened Ann Nathan Gallery in River North before she closed in 2016 as her health began to fail.

She featured many artists who others overlooked or might not have taken seriously, like tattoo artists.

"She was never interested in anything decorative, that wasn't interesting," said her daughter Betsy Nathan, owner of Pagoda Red.

"When she looked at art, she was able to feel someone's soul in a visual expression, and I don't know how she did that, but she did," she said.

She leaned into her favorite saying: "Say it fast, say it true, or else my dear, the hell with you."

Mrs. Nathan was born in July of 1925 in Detroit, the fourth of six children, to Bessie Kuchar and Emmanuel Cole, both immigrants from Eastern Europe. When she was 10, the family, which struggled financially, moved to Chicago. Mrs. Nathan lied about her age to get work in a factory and later in the hosiery department of a Goldblatt's department store.

She attended Von Steuben High School and in her 20s met her future husband, Walter Nathan, at a party months before they married in July of 1950.

They were a driven pair.

He grew up in an affluent family in Germany but fled with nothing to the United States in 1938 as Nazi violence against Jews rose to new heights. He later served in the Navy and co-founded the Round Tubes and Cores Co. in Chicago.

In the 1950s, Mrs. Nathan helped run her in-law's temp agency before launching her own agency, Ivy Personnel, in 1957, which helped find women jobs as clerks and secretaries. She had six offices but mostly ran it from her home in Glencoe, where the family moved in 1960 after living in West Rogers Park.

On top of raising four kids and running a business, Mrs. Nathan got involved in the scene at the Hyde Park Art Center, which included a group of young eccentric artists who called themselves the "Hairy Whos."

They attended parties Mrs. Nathan hosted, who had her kids offer guests cigarettes in cute little bowls.

"As they spent more time in that world, this concept in her head began to develop that she could do this as well or better than anybody else," said her son, Richard Nathan.

She traveled the country and beyond hunting art, always trusting her gut.

At an art fair in Vermont in the 1960s she bought a Norman Rockwell painting known as "The Connoisseur." The couple later sold it to help send their children to college. It later ended up in the collection of filmmaker Steven Spielberg.

Walking through her home in Glencoe was like traversing an art museum.

A three-dimensional installation by artist Red Grooms looked like a roller coaster ascending her staircase. She acquired a Grooms painting on a canvas so large that Mrs. Nathan built a small addition to have a large enough wall to hang it.

When the couple decided to move to Streeterville in the late 1980s, they couldn't bring everything with them, so they held a sale that attracted a frenzy of buyers.

Mrs. Nathan was a founder of Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art and of the SOFA art fair, now known as Intersect Chicago.

In addition to her son Richard and her daughter Betsy, Mrs. Nathan is survived by her daughters Susan Sholl and Nina Schroeder, as well as 14 grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Her husband died in 2018.

Services have been held.