Using Art to View History America’s 250th Birthday
Several area galleries and institutions are hosting exhibitions in 2026 timed for the 250th birthday of the United States. Inspired by permanent holdings as well as contemporary themes, several exhibitions demonstrate how art can be a bridge between the past and the future. Following are a few exhibitions, in Chicago and beyond, that are not your typical sesquicentennial celebration.
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Cutting and Pasting a World: The Paper Craft of Henry Darger at Intuit Art Museum is part of the 250th anniversary celebration of American craft, Handwork 2026, organized by Craft in America. The exhibition explores the connection between Henry Darger’s art and traditional American paper crafts. Drawing on research by guest curator and art historian Dr. Mary Trent (College of Charleston), the exhibition illustrates how the turn-of-the-century practices of making paper dolls and paper dollhouse scrapbooks may have influenced Darger’s evolution as an artist and maker. By showcasing both finished artworks and original source materials, the exhibition demonstrates how Darger adapted these humble pastimes into sophisticated methods for constructing large-scale, mixed-media narratives. The exhibition provides context for these crafts within the early 20th-century movement to instill middle-class American “taste” in a burgeoning immigrant population. Likely exposed to these practices within social welfare institutions as a child, Darger ultimately subverted them—transforming decorative domestic crafts into a profound and complex commentary on the vulnerabilities of marginalized children.
Apr 22–Jan 31, 2027
Conceived in Liberty: Cartoons, Caricatures, and Illustrations in the Wartime US, 1812-1918 draws on the Newberry’s collection to show how artists living through wartime “conceived” cartoons, caricatures, and illustrations that grappled with questions about liberty. Whether patriotic or dissenting, available to the masses or only to a few, wartime imagery reveals in dramatic, visually compelling ways how the people of the US have used the occasion of war to question, revise, challenge, and champion this core value of the country since its founding 250 years ago.
Jun 11–Sept 19
For the People, By the People: America at 250 looks to the nation’s impending semiquincentennial as an opportunity to reflect on America’s enduring ties to liberty, justice, and identity. Drawing inspiration from the democratic ideals articulated in the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the national anthem, The Star-Spangled Banner, this exhibition considers how the promise of freedom has been expressed, questioned, and reimagined across generations. Organized into four thematic sections, For the People, By the People brings together artworks from the KIA’s collection and loans of historic significance and bold contemporary voices to examine the symbols, struggles, and aspirations that shaped and continue to inform American life.
Spanning photography, printmaking, painting, sculpture, and installation-based works, this exhibition juxtaposes notable artists such as Dorothea Lange, Jacob Lawrence, Alfred Stieglitz, Hank Willis Thomas, and Andy Warhol with rising artists like Erica Lord, Julio Cesar Morales, and Cara Romero, among many others.
Jun 27, 2026 - Oct 4, 2026
On the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the Chicago History Museum is asking questions about our nation’s democracy in progress. Are all people equal in our city? What happens in Chicago when workers or people of color stand up for their rights? How do we honor the Indigenous stewards of the land we now call Chicago? What can we do to create “a more perfect union” today in Chicago and the United States?
Anchored in CHM’s collection materials relating to the United States’ founding and Chicago’s civic legacies, US at 250: Civic Action in Chicago invites visitors to engage with these questions and their own lived experiences through artistic interpretation, exhibitions, and educational programming, including lessons from historical clothing and stories of ongoing civic participation.
Ongoing in 2026
