CGN Art Preview: March 2026
Spring is coming, finally! Even if the weather is cold, it's nice to know we are moving through the calendar towards a new season and new beginnings. Notably in March, we're seeing a lot of tattoos and photography...It makes us miss artist Tony Fitzpatrick.
Also coming soon this spring, CGN's Spring/Summer magazine, covering April-August. Subscribe now to get a copy by mail and support CGN's work!
CGN adds to its calendar of art events daily, and there is no shortage of new exhibitions, openings, art fairs, talks and family art events to explore. We have put together a preview of what is coming up the rest of this month. Even though it's winter and we are looking to stay in and cozy, there is plenty to see. Events happen throughout the city as well as in the suburbs and within a day's drive.
Highlights are organized by event type. Dates vary and are subject to change.
– Ginny
CGN Publisher
• Exhibitions
MMM....
Mar 6, 2026 - Mar 28, 2026
Opening: Friday, Mar 6, 2026 5:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Oliva Gallery marks its ten-year anniversary with MMM…., a group exhibition presented in conjunction with International Women’s Day. The exhibition opens March 6, 2026, and features work by Melanie P. Brown, Mia Capodilupo, and Michelle Stone. The title references both the shared first initials of the participating artists and the visual and sensory richness of their work.
George Klauba
Mar 6, 2026 - Apr 4, 2026
Opening: Friday, Mar 6, 2026 5:30 PM – 8:00 PM
The Art Center Highland Park is proud to announce its forthcoming exhibition KLAUBA, a survey of the works of painter and tattoo artist George Klauba. This show will be on view at The Art Center from March 6 to April 4, 2026.
Curated by gallerist Teresa Hofheimer, this large exhibition of paintings and sculpture spans over two decades, referencing George Klauba’s life works as a Navy officer, a tattoo artist, and eventually a celebrated painter and fine artist.
Running concurrently at TACHP is Beyond the Needle, an exhibition featuring ten tattoo artists from across the United States.
The Division Street Riots
Mar 6, 2026 - Apr 12, 2026
Opening: Friday, Mar 6, 2026 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM
This exhibition by Chicago-based artist Carlos Rolón features new graphite and charcoal drawings, works on aluminum, a DIY bicycle sculpture with audio, and a hand-embroidered textile inspired by the 1966 Division Street uprising in Humboldt Park and West Town.
LENS 2026
Mar 7, 2026 - Mar 29, 2026
Opening: Saturday, Mar 7, 2026 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Photographic artists from around the U.S. will be on display for LENS2026, the gallery’s 16th annual juried international exhibition of fine art photography. The show opens Thursday, March 5th, with an Opening Reception and Awards Ceremony on March 7th from 5 to 7 p.m.
Juror Ann M. Jastrab, the Executive Director at the Center for Photographic Art (CPA) in Carmel, California, selected 28 artists from the 299 photographers who submitted over 1430 images. This year there were entries from 38 states and several international countries.
Vertical Gallery's 13-Year Anniversary Show
Mar 13, 2026 - Apr 19, 2026
Opening: Friday, Mar 13, 2026 5:00 PM – 9:00 PM
Vertical’s 13-Year Anniversary Show marks the gallery’s return to Chicago, where its story began. All work will be displayed inside Jackson Junge Gallery, located in Wicker Park. This is Vertical's first show of 2026, and the first show back in Chicago since owner Patrick Hull changed the business model to online and special exhibitions.
Roger Brown: Weathervane
Mar 19, 2026 - Jun 13, 2026
Opening: Thursday, Mar 19, 2026 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Roger Brown: Weathervane is the first monographic exhibition at the gallery dedicated to Brown since announcing exclusive representation of the artist’s estate. Weathervane explores the artist’s vision of an emotionally charged contemporary life set at the tense border between the built environment and the natural world. Featuring eleven paintings from the 1980s and 1990s, the exhibition reflects Brown’s clarity of vision as an artist both unafraid to face sociopolitical headwinds and unable to ignore ecological destruction.
Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas
Mar 24, 2026 - Jul 5, 2026
Alma Thomas (1891–1978) is a singular figure of twentieth-century American art. She developed her form of abstraction – characterized by the dazzling interplay of pattern and hue – late in life, after retiring from a long career as a schoolteacher. Her vibrant and rhythmic art transcended established genres, incorporating elements of gestural abstraction and color field painting and creating a style distinctly her own.
Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas draws on the extensive holdings of the artist’s paintings at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) and offers an intimate view of Thomas’s evolving practice during her most prolific period, from 1959 to 1978.
Cheryl Pope
Mar 28, 2026 - May 9, 2026
Cheryl Pope is an interdisciplinary visual artist who questions and responds to issues of identity as it relates to the individual and the community, specifically regarding race, gender, class, history, power, and place. Her practice emerges from the act and politics of listening and recently introduces a novel material to explore the artist’s memories. Referencing the familiar repertoire of the French Post-Impressionist, Intimist, and Imagist paintings, Pope recreates deeply personal recollections that cinematically compose the silent complexities of beautiful and tragic oscillations between love and loss in our everyday lives. Images of couples are drawn from memory, referencing the artist’s own relationships and moments of disconnect, anxiety, and desire, while beach scenes depicting a mother and child accentuate a tender stillness of caregiving. In these scenes, the figures exist in a nest of choreography–a rotating stage of mystery, tragedy, and poetry of day-to-day living with feelings of presence and absence woven throughout.
• Talks
Ornament & Identity: From Tiffany Studios to Tattoo Studios
Thursday, Mar 5, 2026 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM
Join a conversation with tattoo artist Beth Mintzer and Elizabeth McGoey, Ann S. and Samuel M. Mencoff Curator, Arts of the Americas at the Art Institute of Chicago. Together, they’ll explore the legacy of Tiffany lamps from decorative art icons to contemporary tattoo inspiration.
Beth Mintzer will also be guesting at Dwelling Tattoo on 3/3 & 3/4 and has created special tattoo designs inspired by lamps from The Driehaus's current exhibition, Tiffany Lamps: Beyond the Shade. Visit www.bethmintzer.com for more info
Not ready for the real thing? The museum is also selling temporary Tiffany tattoos designed by the artist; visit the Museum Store in person to shop.
Lecture in Photography: Bob Thall
Thursday, Mar 12, 2026 6:00 PM
Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP)
• Tours
Weekend Art Walk: West Town Galleries
Saturday, Mar 21, 2026 11:00 AM – 12:45 PM
Get to know Chicago's galleries and the contemporary art world at large with our interactive Weekend Art Walks! On March 21, we'll view and discuss sculptures, photographs, embroidery, and more in four West Town locations: Andrew Rafacz Gallery, Western Exhibitions, Document Gallery, and the newly-opened Elise Seigenthaler Gallery.
• Auctions
Picture This: Fine, Vintage & Vernacular Photography
Thursday, Mar 12, 2026
Potter & Potter Auctions, Inc.
Potter and Potter will be offering a range of fine and vintage photography in this auction, curated by Eric Robbins. Highlights include archives of space photography, Lewis Hine photographs, iconic pop culture imagery, studio and vernacular photographs of the 19th and 20th century in a range of subjects, panoramas, a comprehensive collection of "headless" trick photography, and photo albums.
The Fathers and Saviors of Our Country: A Presidential Sale
Thursday, Mar 26, 2026
