CGN's 2026 Culture List
By CGN Staff
There will be a lot to see at home and on the road this year. Highlights for 2026 include a wealth of under-the-radar shows, anniversary celebrations, international art fairs, and shining moments for artists throughout the Midwest. The Obama Presidential Center will finally open, a famed local museum turns 50, and this fall visitors to the Art Institute will see an Impressionist in a new light.
There are also many shows yet to be announced in the galleries, and events are frequently added to chicagogallerynews.com
To stay up to date with galleries and museums in 2026 subscribe to CGN or purchase a copy of the print edition of our annual Arts Guide, out now.
Happy 2026!
• MoCP at 50: Collecting Through the Decades
Since opening in 1976 and initiating collecting in 1979, the Museum of Contemporary Photography has acquired over 18,000 objects by more than 2,000 artists and engaged in conversations across political, social, and cultural landscapes. To celebrate MoCP at 50 examines the evolving practice of building a dynamic collection. Together, these selections question and reflect on the role of cultural institutions in shaping the photographic canon.
Museum of Contemporary Photography
Jan 22–May 16, 2026 • mocp.org
• Edra Soto: The Place of Dwelling
Edra Soto alters and recontextualizes common functional objects—wrought-iron screens, plastic lawn furniture, and electric fans, ubiquitous in her native Puerto Rico—to create objects and environments that celebrate the voices of working-class communities. Soto’s installation, the place of dwelling, is commissioned for Kemper Museum’s tenth annual Atrium Project and invests the space with personal memories of her Catholic upbringing, a gesture that both questions methods of colonial indoctrination and celebrates sacred sites filled with signs and symbols offering guidance and direction.
Kemper Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO
January 30, 2026—January 2, 2027
Left: Alex Chitty; right: Norman Teague.
• Chair-ish: Alex Chitty and Norman Teague
Chair-ish is an exhibition of Chicago-based artists Alex Chitty and Norman Teague. Working together for the first time, in this exhibition Chitty and Teague explore material, memory, and spatial dialogue through distinct yet complementary practices. While Chitty’s sculptural investigations often disrupt perception and gesture toward the poetic in the everyday, Teague’s work draws on vernacular design, cultural heritage, and the social histories embedded in form.
Cleve Carney Museum of Art
Jan 22–Apr 11, 2026 • theccma.org
Andrea Carlson, Red Exit, 2019, acrylic, ink, oil, gouache, watercolor, colored pencil, marker and graphite on paper, 10’ x 14’. Collection of Whitney Museum of Art
• Andrea Carlson: Endless Sunshine
Through a practice that combines intergenerational history, archival research, and the histories and theories of art and film, Andrea Carlson (b. 1979) creates incisive works of resistance and sovereignty that disempower colonial storytelling and practices of erasure. A descendant of the Grand Portage Ojibwe and Scandinavian settlers, Carlson centers an institutional critique and perspective that has been systematically excluded from or historically romanticized in narratives, practices, and presentations of American art.
Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAMSTL)
Mar 6 – Aug 9, 2026 • camstl.org
Orin Pinhassi, Truth Teller (detail), 2024. Steel, burlap, sand, polymer and rock. 93 x 30 x 24 in (236.2 x 76.2 x 60.9 cm). Photo by Elisabeth Bernstein. Courtesy of the artist and Lehmann Maupin Gallery.
• Oren Pinhassi
Artist Oren Pinhassi sculpts anthropomorphic forms at great scale that appeal to the senses and intellect at once. He brings to The Arts Club a series of figural/architectural works that occupy the gallery in an encompassing configuration, aiming to trigger the physical engagements of desire and fragility. Pinhassi’s towering or sprawling creatures draw upon such ordinary materials as sand, stone, or vinyl. In a process he has named “erotic construction,” Pinhassi uses sensual appeal, rough texture, suggestive pose, and intimate detail to press against the confines of a restrictive society.
Mar 31–Aug 8, 2026 • The Arts Club of Chicago • artsclubchicago.org
• RenBen: Maurizio Cattelan
Maurizio Cattelan will conceive and orchestrate The Renaissance Society’s RenBen 2026 during Chicago’s EXPO Art Week. RenBen is the institution’s annual artist-centered gala and most important fundraising event. Each edition invites a single artist to design every aspect of the evening, from the space and performances to the food and choreography.
The Renaissance Society
April 8, 2026 • renaissancesociety.org
• EXPO CHICAGO
Under the vaulted architecture of Navy Pier’s Festival Hall, and under the new leadership of Director Kate Sierzputowski and Curator Essence Harden, EXPO CHICAGO will bring together global galleries and unrivaled programming, alongside unforgettable events citywide.
Festival Hall, Navy Pier
April 9–12, 2026 • expochicago.com
• The Opening of the Obama Center
The much anticipated opening of President Barack Obama's Obama Presidential Center in the heart of the South Side of Chicago will be a defining event in Chicago this spring. Bits and pieces about the opening, as well as the artists who have been commissioned to create various works and installations for the Center, have been arriving regularly leading up to the actual opening. The Center is touted to be a lively community hub, economic anchor, and beacon of democracy on the South Side, bolstering a great deal of the cultural nexus in the city for years to come.
Spring 2026
Mary Cassatt, Sleepy Nicolle, c. 1900
• Mary Cassatt: After Impressionism
Marking the centennial of her death, Mary Cassatt: After Impressionism examines her paintings, pastels, and prints when she took her art making in new directions. In the prime years of her career—the late 1880s through the early 1900s—Cassatt explored the theme of mothers and caretakers with children, creating complex color prints, and undertaking a mural commission for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
The Art Institute of Chicago
Sept 6, 2026–Jan 3, 2027
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