The Renaissance Society, founded in 1915, is an independent contemporary art museum located on the campus of the University of Chicago, with a focus on the commissioning and production of new works by international artists. The kunsthalle-style institution typically presents four exhibitions each year, along with concerts, performances, screenings, readings, and lectures—all of which are free and open to the public. "The Ren" also produces publications in conjunction with many of its exhibitions.

The Renaissance Society was founded in the wake of the Armory Show of 1913's contentious time in New York. Then called the International Exhibition of Modern Art, the show was met with outrage and incomprehension in New York, leading to a similarly fervent uproar when it traveled to Chicago. In the aftermath, it was clear that the city, and the American populace as a whole, were generally opposed to the post-impressionist, cubist, and futurist art that was presented.

The Society was founded shortly after in 1915. Member and secretary of the University of Chicago Board of Trustees, James Spencer Dickerson, felt it would be a nice to have particular portrait of poet Robert Browning in Harper Library, but there was no fund for such an acquisition. Consequently, he proposed an organization called “Friends of Art of the University of Chicago” which could provide said funding. On April 20, 1915, ten professors of the university convened at the Quadrangle Club in an exploratory meeting; and subsequently, a larger meeting was held on June 3 in Harper Assembly Hall of Cobb Hall to garner broader support for this organization. There, “a committee of five […] chaired by J. Laurence Laughlin, professor and head of the Department of Political Economy, was appointed to consider the organization of the art society and draft a constitution.” The president of the University approved and worked to assist in the establishment of the society. However, it was not until April 24, 1916, that the next formal meeting was held in the Classics Building. Twelve women and fourteen men voted to accept the constitution that was drafted by the committee. They then elected a president and an all-male executive committee. A further three women were added as vice presidents to rectify the gender imbalance.

The constitution ensured that the society would not become a collecting museum by stipulating that "all acquisitions of The Society, except money, shall become the property of the University of Chicago." The document stated the mission:

The society would organize exhibitions, encourage gifts of art to the university, sponsor lectures on the arts, issue publications, and use other such means to accomplish its mission. Programming elements were open to the public (as is still the case now) in order to enrich the life of the community and the university.

The impetus behind the cultural renaissance in Chicago was the desire to improve society. For wealthy patrons, this aspiration drove philanthropy and the establishment of Chicago’s most preeminent cultural and educational institutions. Similarly, Renaissance Society academics wished to use their scholarly status to lead their community. Rather than take upon the duty of art education as non-professionals, they turned outward in the name of public service. The pervasive sense of idealism that underlies the Society undoubtedly excluded educating its community about modernism in its first decade of programming. The original tenets included a sense of morality to "uplift humanity, a prescription that honored the art of the past, particularly that of the Renaissance, as well as the rigid aesthetic dictates of academic realism." To the academics, the modernists were radical in promoting self-expression in art-making rather. Thus, the Society attacked the artists of the early twentieth-century avant-garde, "bringing to the University some of the most beautiful things in the world."

In 1927, Agnes C. Gale was elected president—the first woman and non-academic to hold this post. In the first of a five annual exhibitions of modern French paintings, Gale included pieces by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Paul Gauguin, who were originally maligned by the Armory Show. The shows proved popular, marked by a jump in membership during Gale’s brief tenure. The Renaissance Society recruited the important photographer Eva Watson-Schütze in the late 1920s to be president of the organization. She was elected in 1929 to become the Society’s first full-time staff person as exhibition director. Schütze made clear her progressive intent: "Part of the program of The Renaissance Society is to stimulate study of the art of the present time, the new renaissance."

Throughout the 1920s, modernism was scarce in the city. Only a handful of exhibitions and few commercial galleries displayed avant-garde works. In the dearth of progressive leadership, The Arts Club, under the direction of Rue Winterbotham Carpenter, became the Midwest center for the examination of twentieth-century art. Schütze knew Carpenter and The Renaissance Society began to exchange programs with The Arts Club. In the 1930–31 season, the Club brought Fernand Léger to Chicago to screen his film Le Ballet Mecanique and subsequently lent it to the Society.