1980 – Elmhurst Art Museum formed by Elmhurst Fine Arts and Civic Center Foundation

The Elmhurst Art Museum was formed in 1980 by the Elmhurst Fine Arts and Civic Center Foundation, which was chartered in 1974 with the goal of raising funds to build an art museum in Elmhurst. When the Elmhurst Art Museum was established as a non-for-profit organization in 1980, it opened in the Elmhurst Community Center, which was just one room of the then Eldridge School at Madison Street and Berkeley Avenue. When the Elmhurst Park District sold the Eldridge School building and moved the Community Center to its present location at 130 West Madison Street (now renamed Wagner Community Center) in 1984, the Elmhurst Art Museum moved with it into two of the Center’s rooms. One year prior, the Elmhurst Fine Arts and Civic Center Foundation purchased property on Virginia Street, just north of Wilder Park, with plans to build the Elmhurst Art Museum. This was additional property for the future Elmhurst Art Museum since the Elmhurst Artists’ Guild had already purchased three lots on Virginia Street in 1959 with the same goal in mind. In 1990, the Elmhurst Park District, the City of Elmhurst, the Elmhurst Artists’ Guild, and the Elmhurst Fine Arts and Civic Center Foundation made an agreement that finalized the exchange of the Virginia Street properties for the expansion of Wilder Park, gave the Elmhurst Art Museum a footprint on the northeast corner of Wilder Park, and granted the Elmhurst Artists’ Guild a permanent gallery in the Museum.