Welcome to Mark Rogovin’s website. This site features information and resources on Mark Rogovin’s career as an artist, activist and author.  For more information about Milton Rogovin, Mark’s father please visit this website.

Mark was 73 when he died, and he had one unfulfilled aim– to compile his work into a public resource.  As his wife, I promised him I would tell this story. This website features Mark’s own words wherever possible, when he gave interviews, or wrote about his experience in articles. If you knew him, you’ll recognize his frequent colloquialisms and off-color language. Please visit often as this will be a living resource of his professional life. 

Mark Rogovin – Artist, Activist, Author, and “Seat-of-the-Pants” Historian

Mark was born in Buffalo, New York, and came to Chicago in 1968 after receiving a BFA degree from the Rhode Island School of Design. 

He spent summers working with prominent progressive muralist David Alfaro Siqueiros in Mexico City on Siqueiros’ last mural, the March of Humanity and noted sculptress Elizabeth Catlett.

He attended the Art Institute of Chicago and founded the Public Art Workshop in the Austin neighborhood. He made floats and street props with Peggy Lipschutz and others. He was a leader in the early mural movement in Chicago, and his best-known community murals included “Break the Grip of the Absentee Landlord,” “Free Angela,” and “Protect the People’s Homes.” He traveled across the US to develop murals with community groups, schools, workers and in a prison program.

Mark co-authored the book, The Mural Manual during this time, which, according to the Smithsonian Museum, is still the best resource available to produce a community and classroom mural that exists. The Public Art Workshop’s archive is available online through the Archives of American Art, a Smithsonian Museum program (physically located at the Chicago History Museum and the Terra Museum of Art. Later he helped develop the publication, Silhouette Murals. 

In 1981 Mark co-founded the Peace Museum and was its director for four years. Shows that he helped create included Unforgettable Fire, presenting the nuclear bomb's impact on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He also helped create “Give Peace a Chance,” featuring folk and rock musicians' songs, including John Lennon, Holly Near, and Pete Seeger.

Mark worked for a dozen years or more at La Rabida Children’s Hospital on the south side of Chicago, adding murals and other stimulating play spaces for children hospitalized for many months as a carpenter and artist in residence. 

Rogovin worked throughout his life on critical campaigns and movements: for peace and nuclear disarmament, the Committee to Save Lives in Chile, against apartheid in South Africa, and the freedom of Nelson Mandela. He was devoted to freeing political prisoners, especially the academic, author, and activist Angela Davis. He was passionate about working on political campaigns and was incredibly proud to help elect Harold Washington for Mayor in Chicago. He could always be counted on to produce political buttons or banners for any progressive movement or campaign, large or small. 

Rogovin was hired in 1989 to produce political banners for the Gene Hackman movie “The Package.” During his months on this job, he was a member of the SAG-United Scenic Artists Union. Rogovin was a member of the WEB DuBois Clubs of America and the Communist Party of the USA. He later joined the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism.

In 1997 Mark helped organize a nationwide movement to celebrate his hero, the centennial of actor, singer, and activist Paul Robeson. He co-authored the publication Paul Robeson: Rediscovered, An Annotated History of Paul Robeson in Chicago,  and helped create an 8-panel timeline of Robeson’s life for classroom teachers. He helped produce an educational website and organize a nationwide series of 100th birthday events to raise awareness of Paul Robeson’s accomplishments.  Mark helped locate several unpublished recordings of Paul Robeson’s recitals during this time, and with Folk Era Records, made them publicly available. 

Mark Rogovin served as the head of The Rogovin Collection for 17 years to promote the educational use of the documentary photography of his father, Milton Rogovin. Mark produced films on his father's photography, Picture Man and Be Filled with the Spirit.

He was dedicated to his community in Forest Park, Illinois,  loved the natural world, and just about everyone he encountered, considering them a source of joy and creativity in his life. Mark nurtured young people in every aspect of his work. 

Mark was a Chicago area resident for 50 years. Most if not all this time, he worked to protect and preserve labor history at Forest Home Cemetery and the Haymarket Monument, and Radical Row. He developed publications, projects, research, and events relating to the Haymarket Martyrs monument and other historic monuments and markers related to working-class heroes in collaboration with the Illinois Labor History the Forest Park Historical Society for decades. These projects include two versions of the publication The Day Will Come, a smartphone tour of the Radical Row, developing a new website for cemetery visitors, spearheading a fundraising drive for rubber molds to protect historical monuments, contacting organizations to help with the restoration of headstones and monuments, and identifying records and burial sites of key Haymarket family members and giving tours to visitors for years. Mark would often refer to himself as a “seat-of-the-pants” historian, relating with joy and enthusiasm the contributions of everyday people who fought for working people's rights to those who were new to those pages of history. 

Mark Rogovin now joins these working-class men and women, who rest in the long shadow of the Haymarket monument, both here in Chicago and around the world.  When you visit the Haymarket Monument in Chicago, and join the tour on Saturday morning, Mark’s headstone will be part of your visit, as his story is woven into the narrative of working people’s history. 

In Solidarity and Remembrance -
Michelle Melin-Rogovin
Mark’s wife
2021