The Show Goes On

Two years ago, Christopher Kennedy, the president of the Merchandise Mart and an heir of the iconic clan, rescued the city's leading art exhibition from last-minute ruin. This year, it opens with more exhibitors, four satellite shows, and world-class expectations.

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Ties that bind: Senator Robert F. Kennedy with his wife, Ethel, and their children in 1967 at their home in Maryland. From left: Max, Christopher, Kerry, Courtney, Kathleen, baby Douglas, Joe, Robert Jr., David, and Michael. Rory was born after the senator's death.

In his office at the Mart, Kennedy, wearing a button-down shirt and an Hermès tie, has a relaxed, engaging manner. The sad downward slope of the famous Kennedy eyes is countered by his quick grin and a rolling laugh. The room is filled with family memorabilia: on the wall, posters from movies made by his youngest sister, Rory; on tables, photographs of his four children; by his desk, the framed 1968

Time magazine cover of his father as a pop superhero; and under the glass top of the conference table, a snapshot of his Bernese mountain dog and a long-haired miniature dachshund. "Oh, my brother Bobby gave my kids that dachshund when I wasn't around," he says with a laugh. "I was so pissed. Then we had to get a cat so the dog had someone to play with."

Chris is the eighth of the 11 children of Ethel and Robert Kennedy. Growing up in a country house in McLean, Virginia, Kennedy says his early exposure to art was confined to "traditional paintings, like those by Edouard Cortès—you know, the kind of artwork you would find in a traditional colonial house." When Kennedy was in high school, he worked on the presidential campaign of his uncle Edward Kennedy. "Many contemporary artists gave artwork to help fund the campaign," he says. "And I realized that contemporary art touched me deeply." While attending Boston College, he met Sheila Berner, a fellow student, from Winnetka. That is how he became the only Kennedy living in the Midwest. "I fell in love and I followed her." At first, Kennedy worked for Archer Daniels Midland in downstate Decatur, commuting back for the weekends. "What can I tell you," he says with a laugh. "Before I moved here, Sheila told me Decatur was a suburb of Chicago." Berner was a lawyer at Sidley Austin; she left the firm to raise their four children.

He and Berner married in 1987; they and their four children—three daughters and a son, ages 9 to 17—live in a northern suburb. The eclectic art in their 100-year-old Queen Anne house includes a Jamie Wyeth portrait of Andy Warhol, work by Damian Elwes, drawings by the Irish artist Jack Yeats, and outsider art by Liz Mumford of Cape Cod. The Kennedys are also antiques enthusiasts. What spare time Chris has is spent attending his kids' sporting events, cross-country skiing with the family, or biking by himself down the lakefront. He is, after all, a Kennedy. But he is staying out of one family passion: politics.

Although Kennedy and his wife have hosted fundraising parties at their home for Senator Barack Obama in the past, he declines to endorse any Democratic Party candidate—even though his mother, his uncle Teddy, and his cousin Caroline have endorsed Obama, and his brother Robert Jr. and sisters Kathleen and Kerry have endorsed Senator Hillary Clinton. "They are either politicians by profession or high-profile public figures, so I think it's appropriate for them to do that," he says. "But it's unfair for someone like me to dabble in it. I tell them, You stay out of my business and I'll stay out of yours."

Kennedy started working at the Merchandise Mart, a family-owned business, in 1987. Commissioned by Marshall Field & Company to be a consolidated warehouse for wholesale goods and trade, the Mart opened in 1930. With four million square feet of floor space, it was the largest building in the world at the time. The architecture firm Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, along with the designer Alfred Shaw, used art deco detailing to break up the massive structure. In 1945, Field's sold the building to Joseph P. Kennedy, the former ambassador to Great Britain and the father of John F. Kennedy, the future president of the United States. In 1998, the Kennedy family sold MMPI to Vornado Realty for about $630 million in cash and a stake in Vornado. 

Starting as a research analyst, Chris worked his way up, developing a reputation for both detail-crunching and wide-sweeping vision. In 2000, he was named the president of MMPI, which now includes not only the Chicago Mart and the Apparel Center but also the Washington Design Center and the Federal Center in the District of Columbia; the Architects & Designers Building in New York; the Boston Design Center; the L.A. Mart in California; and several North Carolina properties, including the National Furniture Mart in High Point. Which means, Kennedy admits, he is in "show business"—as in show-room managing and trade-show producing. So expanding to include the art exposition seems to Kennedy a natural progression.

"It was distressing to witness the decline of Art Chicago over the years," he says. "The target audiences for Art Chicago—both high-end collectors and the design and décor community—overlap with the Mart's. Chicago is also a city associated with great architecture and great arts. We certainly didn't want to see the city turn its back on the art community. The idea that Chicago is a city that works still resonates here."

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Photography: (Image 1) Steve Schapiro/Corbis Online; (Image 2) Courtesy of Sheila Berner Kennedy and Christopher Kennedy

This article appears in the May 2008 issue of Chicago Magazine.

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