A celebratory EarlyWork dinner kicks off the weekend.

By GINNY VAN ALYEA

The third annual Chicago Exhibition Weekend, hosted by Gertie and EarlyWork, features 50 participating galleries and creative spaces across the city September 19–21, 2025 spotlighting Chicago’s vibrant cultural landscape and artistic spirit. Last year’s edition attracted 5,000 attendees over three days. 

This year CXW25 expands its footprint with more galleries, demonstrating the vitality and diversity of the city’s growing commercial art scene. There are more partnerships in place, as well as a central hub space. At the heart of this year's event is a mission to take Chicago's reputation as the heart of "fly-over country" and bust it open, using art history as a means to show that Chicago is and has always been a vibrant, and most of all, significant player in the country's creative and cultural history.

Part walk down memory lane, part super-party, and part civic flag-waving, CXW25 promises to be a busy, art-centered weekend that gathers more staying-power and vibrancy each year. 

September 18–21, 2025

chicagoexhibitionweekend.com

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Special Exhibition

Over My Head: Encounters with Conceptual Art in a Flyover City, 1984–2015, curated by Iris Colburn and Gareth Kaye, will revisit some key moments of Chicago’s own art history in order to put them back on the map. The exhibition, which will run for three weeks and be free and open to the public, explores key post-conceptual exhibitions staged by pioneering Chicago dealers such as Rhona Hoffman, Donald Young, Feature Inc., Feigen Inc., and Robbin Lockett. focusing on works that marked pivotal moments in an artist’s practice, reflected enduring dealer-artist relationships, or engage themes of temporality, transmission, and memory.

Located at 400 N. Peoria Street, CXW’s hub site, Over My Head examines Chicago’s oft-forgotten position as a nerve center for post-conceptual art in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The exhibition opens to the public on Friday, September 19, 2025 and is on view through October 11, 2025.

CXW Hub and Opening Weekend

400 N. Peoria – CXW’s central hub – is set within a raw industrial site in Fulton Market. The site will host an exhibition as well as conversations produced in partnership with Independent Curators International (ICI), curator-led walk-throughs as well as programming in conjunction with the Chicago Art Book Fair. The space is intended to be a resource before and after visiting galleries, offering a look at history as well directions to participating local galleries.

The exhibition’s opening weekend promises to be as layered as the art on the walls.

Public hours run September 19 (12–8 pm), September 20 (10 am–6 pm), and September 21 (10 am–6 pm), followed by regular hours through October 11.

A September 18 preview dinner—led by acclaimed chef Agustin Mallmann, traveling to Chicago just for the occasion—offers an intimate prelude and keeps up the weekend's super-party rep. Tickets are sold out.

Faheed Majeed and Monique Brinkman-Hill

CXW is also launching a conversation series with Independent Curators International (ICI), curated by Scott Campbell, ICI’s Midwest Programs Manager.

Two marquee talks bookend the weekend:

• Zoom Out: Sept 19, 6 pm: Faheem Majeed and Monique Brinkman-Hill reflect on the South Side Community Art Center’s historic and evolving role in supporting Black artists.
• Zoom In: Sept 21, 3 pm: Hamza Walker and John Corbett revisit the friendships and cultural networks that helped shape Chicago’s conceptual art scene.

Also don't miss:

• Maintenance Works: Art, Labor, and Care, Saturday, September 20, 2-3pm at SECRIST | BEACH: 1801 West Hubbard Street Chicago, IL 60622

Artists Brendan Fernandes and Molly Gochman in conversation, moderated by Samara Furlong. Maintenance Works: Art, Labor, and Care will delve into caregiving, collective memory, and the role of art as an act of maintenance and connection. Together, Fernandes and Gochman will reflect on how performance, participation, and collaboration shape their practices—examining how undervalued gestures of care, cleaning, and tending become sites of dignity, connection, and transformation.

Books

Adding another dimension, the Chicago Art Book Fair (CABF) will set up shop inside the hub. Known for championing independent publishers, zinemakers, and printmakers, CABF offers an international yet distinctly Chicago showcase of experimental printed matter—from zines and books to limited-edition prints. The partnership this year with CXW will raise the fair's profile and be sure to exchange audiences.

A Biennial

CXW also coincides with the opening of the 6th Chicago Architecture Biennial: SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change, which has a base at the Chicago Cultural Center but also offers programming city-wide out of a commitment to showcase the collective strength of over 60 citywide partners, fom museums and cultural institutions to architecture firms and government agencies. The Biennial officially opens to the public on September 19, 2025, with exhibitions at the Chicago Cultural Center, Graham Foundation, Stony Island Arts Bank, a site-specific installation on the grounds of the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, and special performances throughout the day. In case opening weekend is busy enough, CAB is on view through February 2026.

CXW's route curators

The Invitation

For CXW organizers and curators the hub is more than a venue. It’s a launch pad: a place to meet friends, soak up context, and set out to explore the city’s galleries and institutions during a weekend that celebrates the people and stories making Chicago’s art scene second to none – finally a destination in its own rite and not flyover on the way to somewhere else. There are also many opportunities to go into dozens of spaces and businesses that make Chicago what it is. Visitors will also have the option of choosing a curated route from one of Chicago’s cultural movers and shakers to help guide you to destinations around the city. Trust these route curators for their selections, from participating galleries and institutions to under-the-radar restaurants and shops.

To view the full list of participating galleries and their own programs and exhibition openings, visit chicagoexhibitionweekend.com.