[4] In addition, the 1951 exhibition by Jean Dubuffet and his "Anticultural Positions" lecture at the Arts Club were tremendous influences on what would become the mid-1960s Imagist movement.

The club's founders—made aware of the exhibition's negative reception by the many Chicagoans who did not understand or accept what they saw—aimed to expose the city to new images, sounds and ideas.

[citation needed] Conceived as an exhibition and social space that would cultivate sophisticated conversations around a range of media, The Arts Club has maintained its core interest in presenting culture "in the making," serving as a key venue in Chicago for the presentation of work by the national and international avant-garde.

[10] Among its first exhibitions at the Wrigley building was the first major United States show (seventeen sculptures, nineteen drawings and a painting) of Brâncuși.

In 1951, it moved to 109 East Ontario in quarters built to specification that were designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

[citation needed] With the prospect of losing its home, the Arts Club opted to sell one of the most valuable items in its collection to finance the purchase of new land.

[17] To finance the purchase, the Art Institute sold several second tier works from its famous Impressionist collection at Sotheby's in guaranteed lots which was a new concept in the auction world in 1990.

[6] The building features furniture dating back to the club's founding as well as Mies van der Rohe designs.

The fact that the building was so Miesian thirty years after his death while the club focused on avant-garde art was a bit of a controversy.

[5] Another focal point of the building is the restored Mies van der Rohe steel staircase that provides access to the second floor.

[6] The design includes white-painted steel, travertine marble, floor-to-ceiling curtains, dark-stained wood floors, and large areas of glass.

The club has made recent acquisitions of contemporary works by Malcolm Morley, Alex Katz, and Peter Doig.

Many of the century's most controversial artists made their United States or midwest solo exhibition debuts at the club including: Alexander Calder, Marc Chagall, Salvador Dalí, Jean Dubuffet, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Auguste Rodin, Georges Seurat, and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec.

In addition, many artists have given lectures at the club, including Martha Graham, Kathleen Battle, Leonard Bernstein, Kenneth Branagh and Robert Altman.

Aside from visual artists, the club also has hosted lectures and performances from such prominent musicians as John Cage, Philip Glass, Ramsey Lewis and Igor Stravinsky, and poets W. H. Auden, Gertrude Stein and William Butler Yeats.

[28] In 1970 when Varujan Boghosian was a timely sculptor known for depicting the legend of Orpheus, The Arts Club hosted a showing.