West Town, Wicker Park, Ukrainian Village, Kinzie Corridor, Humboldt Park

West Town

Wisconsin

IL • MI • IN

West Loop, Fulton Market, East Garfield Park

West Loop and West Side

Evanston, The North Shore, Northern, Western and Southern Suburbs

Suburbs

Old Town, Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Roscoe Village, Bucktown, Wicker Park, Logan Square, Lincoln Square, Ravenswood, Uptown, Edgewater, Andersonville, Rogers Park

North Side

Michigan Avenue, Streeterville, The Gold Coast, The Loop, and South Loop

Michigan Avenue

Pilsen, Bridgeport, Chinatown, plus Hyde Park, Jackson Park/Dorchester, and Bronzeville

South Side

Superior and Franklin streets, West Chicago Ave, and down to Merchandise Mart and the River

River North

Last Chance to See! Presented by ShadowBoxx Gallery at ShadowBoxx Gallery, Waukegan ILCome to the closing night exhibition for the astounding Mirror Mirror show at ShadowBoxX Gallery! This is the final chance to see a collection shown by 30 accomplished artists from across the US. Each artist submitted two self-portraits, separated by time. The portraits are unexpected, abstract, symbolic, realistic, surrealistic, humorous and sometimes disturbing. The goal was to portray a change in state of mind, progress, or change of any kind. Draw your own conclusions!&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.manvshadow.com/mirror-mirror-exhibition-artists-a-z" target="_blank">Have a look at the artists.</a> Free to the public.&nbsp;

Closing Night: Mirror Mirror

Timeless Bodies&nbsp;First Annual Midwest Ceramic Exhibition&nbsp;OLIVA GALLERY3816 W. Armitage Ave., Chicago, IL 60647847-922-5736Nov. 7-Dec. 13, 2025 PROGRAMMING:&nbsp;<ul><li>ARTIST TALK – Saturday, Nov. 15th, 2025 – 3-5pm</li><li>FIGURE DRAWING – Sunday, Dec. 7th&nbsp;– 3-6pm.&nbsp;&nbsp;Live Model - FEE: $20</li><li>CLOSING: Saturday, Dec. 13 - 5-9pm</li><li>HOLIDAY/GIFT PARTY – Friday, Dec. 19th, 2025 – 5-9pm</li></ul> Gallery Hours:&nbsp;Friday 5–8 PM, Saturday 12–4 PM, or by appointmentTimeless Bodies&nbsp;interprets the human form through sculptural realism and abstraction. Throughout history, the human form has been symbolized as a container of life, emotion, and spirit, reflecting both fragility and resilience. How does the body hold and convey our stories, memories, or cultural history? Artists were encouraged to celebrate the interplay of form and storytelling in clay.&nbsp;Juror &amp; Curator:&nbsp;Nancy Pirri is an artist from Chicago, working primarily in ceramics and creating figures of all sizes. Pirri has won awards from the Beverly Arts Center and the Rockford Art Museum, including work published in ‘500 Figures in Clay’ V2. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including SOFA in Chicago representing women's rights anniversaries, and has acquired collectors from all over the world.&nbsp;She has exhibited with numerous galleries in the Midwest and is currently represented by Oliva Gallery, J. Petter Galleries (MI), Design at 329/Primitive/The Stalls, and Inner Haven Gallery.&nbsp; ARTISTS EXHIBITING:Nikki Renee AndersonMonica BalcLynn BasaAaron BeckerSharon BladholmDebbie BurkLisa FarrisAutumn HorwathLynda Lawson KarrJayne KingDawn LiddicoattLinda MarcusJohannah Tomita MartinAmber MatthewsSuzanne MauroCarole McCurdyBobbi MeierArny NadlerAndryea NatkinAlexis Lee Ortiz-DuarteRoberta Ulrich-de OliveiraSusan VolkChristopher WilliamsRunhi XuThomas Zamiar Image: Arny Nadler (associate professor of Art Sam Fox School of Art and Design at Washington University St Louis Mo )&nbsp;&nbsp;

Timeless Bodies, Closing Event

<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://renaissancesociety.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=28258b64874e626df0979c0de&amp;id=80f2f54649&amp;e=375d06b725" target="_blank">PERFORMANCES</a>SAT, DEC 6: 1-5PMSUN, DEC 7: 1-5PMSAT, DEC 13: 2-4PMSUN, DEC 14: 2-4PM Moriah Evans, an artist and choreographer based in New York, creates innovative performances for a wide variety of contexts. Building on a series of projects that she has staged in different cities in recent years, Evans continues to explore how performance can offer different ways of sensing our bodies and our relationships to one another. Throughout her work, Evans approaches choreography as an expansive social process, drawing on wide-ranging somatic practices and feminist critiques of dance and visual culture, while seeking out the “knowledge our bodies hold.” She aims to heighten perception beyond the visual, embracing embodied forms of awareness and felt sense.This winter, for an expanded edition of the&nbsp;Intermissions&nbsp;series, Evans spends two weeks at the Renaissance Society with a small ensemble of dancers. For this new project,&nbsp;Scrimmage, Evans stages a pattern of private rehearsals and public presentations that shifts during the span of her time in the gallery space. Each weekend, she offers a different format to visitors as she opens the doors to the public on Saturday and Sunday afternoons. The first two performances (December 6th and 7th) will have an open-ended durational form, fluid and still evolving in real-time. The later performances (December 13th and 14th) offer a concentrated version, staged as a more bounded event. Visitors are encouraged to come multiple times and experience both formats.Through her scored performance structures and a set of scenographic interventions created specifically for this space, Evans invites an active state of perception—grounded in one’s body and attuned to a larger milieu and social infrastructures—along with hints of reverie where things do and don’t make sense. In the vaulted gallery, she is composing with both material and immaterial ingredients: hanging scrims, enveloping sound, dancers in motion and in stillness, lines of sight, textures of light, and a public that stays or passes through. Dance, here, is both fleeting and visceral, evoking bodies at once fragile and forceful. Evans aims to create a setting for&nbsp;Scrimmage&nbsp;that has a related set of wavering qualities: heavy and light, monumental and ethereal. In doing so, she considers the frame and the format in tandem, the contents of her work and its container, the body and what’s beyond it.Within her choreographic scores, often developed collaboratively with her dancers, Evans draws on a variety of movement patterns and methods from different contexts. In doing so, she assembles them as a series of floating signifiers or somatic catalysts rather than explicit references. At times, the dancers work together or move apart, drawing out different internal and external states of being, variously individual and collective. Evans foregrounds the ways dance can create different kinds of sociality between people, running interference in the ways our relationships and social connections are mediated through technology, learned behavior, and language. For her this involves recognizing the multiplicity of things that make up a person, complete with inevitable dissonance or incoherence.&nbsp;Scrimmage&nbsp;negotiates how we are always deep within our bodies and also beyond them, constantly feeling and perceiving, figuring out ourselves and others, being affected by micro and macro forces and affecting them in turn.Curated by Karsten Lund.Launched in 2017, Intermissions&nbsp;is an ongoing programming series devoted to performance and other inventive time-based works, staged in the Renaissance Society’s empty gallery in between exhibitions. This recurring platform features two artists every year, supporting a wide variety of live projects.Renaissance Society programs are supported by the Teiger Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://renaissancesociety.us11.list-manage.com/track/click?u=28258b64874e626df0979c0de&amp;id=2f3074f866&amp;e=375d06b725" target="_blank">Learn more</a>.

Intermissions: Moriah Evans

The Evanston Art Center (EAC) is excited to welcome the public to A Tragedy of Religious Fanaticism.Her paintings narrate the stories of the contemporary situation of the systematic persecution of the Iranian Baha’i community after the 1979 Iranian revolution. Safajoo's paintings narrate these stories which are a result of her conversations and interviews with the people who were near or in these actual events. Many of the incidents she depicts only exist in the memory of those who experienced them and have no pictorial existence. In many cases if visual records did exist, they have been confiscated by the Iranian authorities in raids of homes. Her depictions are often the first time these events have taken visual form. She records the details of this history. For example, the shoes, clothes, artifacts, and environments seen in her paintings are very close to those that were there in the event.A Tragedy of Religious Fanaticism will be exhibited in the Second Floor Gallery of the Art Center. The opening reception is free and open to the public. This exhibition is partially funded by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the EAC’s general membership.

A Tragedy Of Religious Fanaticism

The Evanston Art Center (EAC) is excited to welcome the public to Outta Here“The work in this show explores the need to rise up and escape from the troubles below. Following the impulse to hide away. The sculptures imply the ability to move away as needed for protection. Branches, gestural and twisted, rise up the woven vessels of safe enclosure. The vessel form represents a refuge for the human consciousness. The state of this refuge speaks to the condition and needs of the consciousness within. I have been creating sculptural works exploring our relationship with Nature since the early ’90s. I have attempted to share my ideas about our need to create a better relationship with Nature as a way to find peace within ourselves and with each other.”Outta Here will be exhibited in the Second Floor Gallery of the Art Center. The opening reception is free and open to the public. This exhibition is partially funded by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the EAC’s general membership.

Outta Here

Reception and Gallery Talk: December 4, 7-9pm The Lewis University Department of Art and Design is proud to present the Senior Capstone Exhibition. This biannual art show coincides with the capstone course, Senior Project. The course challenges graduating students to put their newly acquired skills and understanding of art to the test by participating in a professional exhibition experience. Featured Artists: Isaiah Nolan and Elizabeth Spencer Image by Isaiah Nolan

Senior Capstone Exhibition

This year’s The Block Collects installation features two projects featuring works selected by students:2025 Student AcquisitionThe Block Museum of Art’s collection supports learning across disciplines through exhibitions, research, and class and co-curricular visits. One of the ways we grow this resource is through an annual student-led collecting initiative undertaken by the Block Museum Student Associates (BMSAs), an interdisciplinary group of Northwestern undergraduates. Throughout the academic year, they learn about museum interpretation, gallery teaching, and collecting practices, culminating in their recommending the purchase of one or more works of art that invite sustained looking and multiple avenues of inquiry.The 2024–2025 BMSAs recommended the purchase of three works by artist Chitra Ganesh inspired by images from the comic book series Amar Chitra Katha, which popularizes Indian epics and folklore. These comics seek to educate children in India and across its diaspora on South Asian history, culture, religions, and mythologies. Like many stories written for children, Amar Chitra Katha reinforces conventional models of gender relations and sexuality as well as citizenship, nationalism, religious expression, and public behavior. Ganesh subverts these narrative traditions and their embedded patriarchal norms by constructing alternative worlds where women, girls, and other marginalized communities are empowered. Ganesh has cited canonical and contemporary feminist and queer scholarship as sources of inspiration for her work.

The Block Collects 2025

KNOTS, a joint female exhibition by local artist&nbsp;Ann Latinovich&nbsp;and Spanish artist&nbsp;Eli Pla.&nbsp; KNOTS is a portrait of relationship. It is a record of what becomes possible when two people&nbsp;choose to meet through presence, through creation, and through a visual language that arrived&nbsp;before spoken words. The artists connected through a shared creative language over a spoken one as neither really speaks the other's native tongue.&nbsp;The knots in this exhibition represent both entanglement and care. Each artist brought their own&nbsp;knots into the relationship, carried from memory, history, and personal experience.Their dialogue turned into art.&nbsp; Knots is a record of presence, of process, and of the quiet intimacy that becomes possible when we allow ourselves to be fully seen. Opening Reception:&nbsp;Thursday, November 20th from 6:00–9:00 PM.&nbsp; Exhibit&nbsp;will be on view&nbsp;from&nbsp;November 21st through December 14th. Location: T.Mari Gallery,&nbsp;1023 N Western Ave, Chicago, IL 60622

KNOTS: Ann Latinovich and Eli Pla

✨🎄 ¡Wepa! Get ready for the magic of the season at Navi•Arts en el Barrio: Puerto Rican Artisan Market at the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture! 🎶🇵🇷 📅 Mark your calendars: Saturdays: December 6 &amp; 13 | 11 AM – 5 PM Sundays: December 7 &amp; 14 | 11 AM – 4 PM Every weekend brings new Boricua artisans and vendors, so you’ll discover fresh treasures each time—perfect, one-of-a-kind handmade gifts straight from the corazón of our community. 🛍️🎁 Come celebrate our cultura and traditions with: ✨ Hands-on workshops ✨ Delicious comida ✨ A festive photo booth ✨ Gift for the first 50 people each day ✨ Visit inspiring exhibitions ✨ Live Parranda Music This isn’t just holiday shopping—it’s a full Puerto Rican holiday experience, en el corazón de Barrio Borikén. Bring your familia, bring your alegría, and let’s make this season unforgettable together! For more info: <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="mailto:info@nmprac.org ?subject=Ornament%20Rsvp%20CGN" target="_blank">info@nmprac.org</a> or visit <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://nmprac.org/event/" target="_blank">nmprac.org/event</a>

Navi Arts Holiday Market

December 13+1410am to 5pm both days 1340 W WashingtonChicago, IL Indoor Find the most unusual and stylishly crafted mix of vintage and modern decorative objects, housewares, fashion for men/women/children, art, hostess gifts and more from 125 vendors! Browse vendors on three floors in the Plumbers Hall building! Tickets on sale soon. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://randolphstreetmarket.com/schedule/#" target="_blank">Details</a>

Randolph Street Holiday Market 

We are pleased to host Doug Fogelson and Jeffrey Lubow to discuss their collaboration for Fogelson’s&nbsp;Signal/Noise&nbsp;installation, recently on view at old friends.&nbsp;Signal/Noise&nbsp;was originally conceived as a series of color photograms on analog film created between 2023 and 2025. Using gridded materials and brief exposures to color-filtered light, Fogelson works in darkness, combining elements by feel and chance. In collaboration with video editor Matt Volla, the artist then translates the photograms into moving images—crossfading, shifting saturation, cropping, and fragmenting forms.&nbsp;Jeffrey Lubow is an interdisciplinary designer, researcher, and artist concerned with the space between the body and emergent technology. In response to Fogelson’s video piece, Lubow designed software that translates the photograms’ visual edge patterns and color weights into sound, effectively facilitating the imagery to “play itself.”Please join us on Zoom on Saturday, December 14th, 4pm CST for a discussion on collaborative relationships between artists and between technologies. The conversation will be recorded and available on&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://oldfriendsgallery.com/" target="_blank">oldfriendsgallery.com</a>.

Virtual Artist talk: Doug Fogelson in conversation with Jeffrey Lubow

Hyde Park Art Center announces a group exhibition curated by&nbsp;Dr. Rikki Byrd&nbsp;from its first Radicle Curatorial Residency. Inspired by Toni Morrison’s canonical text&nbsp;Beloved, the exhibition’s title&nbsp;Mark Me, Too&nbsp;reflects on how the marks of legacy and heritage are imprinted on the identities of five Black femme/nonbinary artists, told through their personal histories. Spotlighting works by Lisa DeAbreau,&nbsp;Ciarra K. Walters,&nbsp;Lex Marie,&nbsp;Natasha Moustache, and&nbsp;Lola Ayisha Ogbara, the exhibition runs from&nbsp;August 9 through December 14&nbsp;in the Kanter Family Foundation Gallery on the second floor of the Art Center. Admission is free.Drawing on their connections to Nigeria, Seychelles, the Caribbean, the Philippines, and the United States, these artists bring a diasporic point of view to mining the marks imprinted on their respective identities. While artists such as Lex Marie and Natasha Moustache offer distinct perspectives to tracing maternal connections and African American histories of motherhood, respectively, Ciarra K. Walters offers an exploration of what she calls "daughterhood," and how it informs her own self-making. Lola Ayisha Ogbara stretches this further in her work, drawing on adornment practices of Black girls and femmes, using acrylic nails, mannequin heads, and jump ropes, offering Black beauty as a form of critique, as well as an art form. Continuing the consideration of maternal lineage, Lisa DeAbreau draws on motifs of respectability and architecture to reflect on memory-making and archival encounters.Taken together, the artists' responses to the tradition of mark-making are twofold: through the representation of their own hand in the work, as well as marks of migration, movement, hybridity, legacy, and identity. By extending brushstrokes, threads, and unlikely materials––from birthing blankets to egg shells––the artists repurpose materials to reflect on how they carry these marks through their practice. The final works leave seams visible, overturn popular emblems, or obscure materials only to make them palpable under the surface, bringing forth the ways the past is never the past, what Morrison called "rememory."An opening reception will take place on&nbsp;Saturday, August 9, 2 - 4 p.m., free and open to all with no registration required.Mark Me, Too&nbsp;and Dr. Rikki Byrd’s residency are made possible due to the generosity of the Guida Family Fund for Creativity. The Radicle Curator is rooted at the Art Center for a sixteen-month period to participate in programs with the cohort of resident artists, conduct studio visits with artists around Chicago pertaining to their curatorial interests, and be in critical dialog with the Exhibitions and Residency team to curate an engaging group exhibition that addresses pressing civic issues of the time. ABOUT THE CURATORDr. Rikki Byrd is a writer, educator, and curator. She is the founder of Black Fashion Archive and the co-founder of the Fashion and Race Syllabus, and is currently an Assistant Professor of Visual Culture Studies at the University of Texas at Austin in the African and African Diaspora Studies Department, with a courtesy appointment in the Department of Art and Art History.&nbsp;Across&nbsp;her writing, teaching, and curatorial projects, she draws connections between Black aesthetic practices, including 20th and 21st century art, fashion studies, and performance.

Mark Me, Too: Five Artists

This fall, The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University presents&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://northwestern.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=904f932038284b4d9eea69636&amp;id=80aae993fa&amp;e=ec81127d70" target="_blank">Pouring, Spilling, Bleeding: Helen Frankenthaler and Artists’ Experiments on Paper</a>, on view September 17–December 14, 2025. The exhibition explores how artists have used printmaking—and works on paper more broadly—as a site for experimentation, improvisation, and aesthetic risk. The exhibition centers on the pioneering print practice of&nbsp;Helen Frankenthaler(American, 1928–2011). Known for her signature “soak-stain” technique in painting, Frankenthaler brought a similar sensibility to printmaking, embracing fluidity, chance, and the variable interaction of materials in her works on paper. Her lithographs, etchings, and woodcuts reflect a dynamic, process-oriented approach—what she has described as “pouring, flooding, spilling, bleeding.” The presentation marks the debut of a recent gift of 34 works from the&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://northwestern.us9.list-manage.com/track/click?u=904f932038284b4d9eea69636&amp;id=4e47ecce69&amp;e=ec81127d70" target="_blank">Helen Frankenthaler Foundation</a>, part of the Frankenthaler Prints Initiative. In 2023, The Block was one of ten university art museums nationally to receive a portfolio of Frankenthaler’s prints and working proofs, along with funding to support interpretation and public engagement.&nbsp; Pouring, Spilling, Bleeding&nbsp;places this new acquisition in dialogue with over 30 works from The Block’s permanent collection, highlighting artists who have similarly challenged the boundaries of control and gesture in their artwork. Prints, drawings, and watercolors by artists of Frankenthaler’s close circle, including&nbsp;Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, Robert Motherwell,&nbsp;and&nbsp;David Smith, provide a broader&nbsp;context for Frankenthaler’s contributions to postwar abstraction and printmaking. The conversation expands beyond the historical frame of Frankenthaler’s contemporaries, bringing in artists who have since drawn inspiration from Frankenthaler’s approach—Lynda Benglis&nbsp;and&nbsp;Amy Sillman—as well as artists who have welcomed chance and the unexpected in their artistic practice, such as&nbsp;John Cage, Max Gimblett,&nbsp;and Frankenthaler’s studio&nbsp;assistant&nbsp;Kikuo Saito. Curated by&nbsp;Stephanie S.E. Lee, 2024–25 Block Museum Graduate Fellow in Art History, and&nbsp;Corinne Granof, Academic Curator, the exhibition draws from in-depth research, including time spent in the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation archives. There, the curators uncovered visual and textual documentation of Frankenthaler’s collaborative print process, insights that shape the presentation of&nbsp;Divertimento&nbsp;(1983), shown alongside a full suite of working proofs. "In many ways, these working proofs show what the editioned print cannot: they are traces of decision-making, experimentation, and artistic dialogue between Frankenthaler, her circle, and the print workshop. That is what we wanted to bring to life in the exhibition,"&nbsp;said Stephanie S.E. Lee.&nbsp; <img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1757532227/camxlmonrdqcxz3uud6e.jpg">

Pouring, Spilling, Bleeding: Helen Frankenthaler and Artists’ Experiments on Paper

Artists from around the country submit two self-portraits that depict change, progress, growth or other personal developments in a wide range of styles and media.

Mirror Mirror Exhibition

Offered several times a year, Editions &amp; Works on Paper celebrates the possibilities of the multiple, showcasing editioned works by some of the 20th century's most significant artists. This auction features artists' books, prints, portfolios, sculpture, and more, offered at a variety of price points accessible to every collector. Interested in selling in this auction? Our specialists will be glad to provide a complimentary evaluation.

Editions & Works on Paper

Free; registration recommended&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://46316.blackbaudhosting.com/46316/Third-Wednesday-Night-17Dec2025" target="_blank">HERE</a>Visitors are invited to bring a book of choice and get ‘hygge’ with the Driehaus Museum in this silent book club inspired by Scandinavia's cozy yule traditions. Cookies and warm beverages will be served. After an hour of cozy quiet, stick around to chat and meet fellow readers.

Third Wednesday | Hygge Silent Book Club

Work alongside IAM educators to make your own holiday gifts inspired by artists in our&nbsp;collection.&nbsp;&nbsp;Create&nbsp;Polaroid and&nbsp;colored-pencil&nbsp;portraits inspired by&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://qjxtjxbbb.cc.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001k15k-0_Na8Vpo_gjcW8EGycYeR81IBKdDDPoWKzAwQRsmp-pT63Yf3BCCbpI0Q1hQPNzkdb6dS50pQz77c8nTuTqV6UNBAWZxMdSzZxI_rQ1NgrOVmI_MzKogJwWJt82IQIJUKk29rIY1MWWewfSbXpqSiqYDHgb5_nlzGUXqnczVza661xQ4tQaasOAbGMh&amp;c=jTlOnrv1tdYqx44kTS88frVkDB57a4USZ20EUYr8PvLOlfot6H47uw==&amp;ch=AF6FzvIHS3-gn7fE1i2d7gnhYxjGweBIybglC7hseGFMWeNrUElReA==" target="_blank">Lee&nbsp;Godie</a>, paintbrush ornaments influenced by&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://qjxtjxbbb.cc.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001k15k-0_Na8Vpo_gjcW8EGycYeR81IBKdDDPoWKzAwQRsmp-pT63Yf3BCCbpI0Q1hhWvwHsE21yUhWqj_zmKG-WgdSxcc0iL_JDA7Xmb6WwZ4-AukaHu1sblRWxTsw6ZXr3z98rx0eq96mIQRJ7NSVl2Li_w1XG5oqt1suceeJeiHs6Z7ZaxkFmzTqq13sB8Sw9fYJKxtbgyY9BOjszBlqQ==&amp;c=jTlOnrv1tdYqx44kTS88frVkDB57a4USZ20EUYr8PvLOlfot6H47uw==&amp;ch=AF6FzvIHS3-gn7fE1i2d7gnhYxjGweBIybglC7hseGFMWeNrUElReA==" target="_blank">Mr. Imagination</a>&nbsp;and mobile ornaments based on&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://qjxtjxbbb.cc.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001k15k-0_Na8Vpo_gjcW8EGycYeR81IBKdDDPoWKzAwQRsmp-pT63Yf3BCCbpI0Q1hR9HdBC5pZbe8YN6eoCF85HkjsB2nMlqjCU_hP1oa782PhmspIJs9x_UR5IZ3wT4xMOmLEtZc3HvR9PqkwPY1I4h1uWuqEexSdMNKbKxp482HbsT-TtFeQi33GOqICY-OeG5xzFELjYAAFe_66Nolxg==&amp;c=jTlOnrv1tdYqx44kTS88frVkDB57a4USZ20EUYr8PvLOlfot6H47uw==&amp;ch=AF6FzvIHS3-gn7fE1i2d7gnhYxjGweBIybglC7hseGFMWeNrUElReA==" target="_blank">Emery Blagdon’s</a>&nbsp;Healing Machine. No experience&nbsp;needed.&nbsp;Join&nbsp;us to&nbsp;make&nbsp;something personal and learn more about the&nbsp;IAM&nbsp;collection.&nbsp;&nbsp;Free with Museum admission and for Members. Registration is&nbsp;required.&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://qjxtjxbbb.cc.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001k15k-0_Na8Vpo_gjcW8EGycYeR81IBKdDDPoWKzAwQRsmp-pT63Yf3BCCbpI0Q1hCVSX_T2kQ_Fv0ZoESektA9yESb29GvpMrW_F6Z2mmEmsHjih2_TozL9T2LehxVby30R-qFsIjW5x_ANKW7zVmj-GbksKU-Kdii869FeU_vI=&amp;c=jTlOnrv1tdYqx44kTS88frVkDB57a4USZ20EUYr8PvLOlfot6H47uw==&amp;ch=AF6FzvIHS3-gn7fE1i2d7gnhYxjGweBIybglC7hseGFMWeNrUElReA==" target="_blank">Register</a>

Art After Work: IAM crafting

The more abstract is form, the more clear and direct is its appeal.”&nbsp;— Wassily Kandinsky, Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1912&nbsp; Exhibiting Artists : <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.michellebolinger.com/" target="_blank">Michelle Bolinger </a>(b.1981), David Burlick (1882-1967), <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://marisolcervantes.com/home.html" target="_blank">Marisol Cervantes </a>( b.1996), Gerald Coarding (1911-1986), Joseph Friebert (1908 – 2002), <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.marygriffin.net/" target="_blank">Mary Griffin</a> (b.1986), John D. Graham (1881/86/88-1961), <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.staciemayajohnson.com/" target="_blank">Stacie Maya Johnson</a> (b. 1977), William S. Schwartz (1896-1977), Charles Green Shaw (1892-1974), and<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.brucethorn.com/" target="_blank"> Bruce Thorn </a>(b.1952).&nbsp;&nbsp;Madron Gallery presents Conversations in Abstraction, a group exhibition that brings together contemporary and historical artists whose abstract paintings create a visual communication that transcends the barriers of time, geography, and theory. At its core, abstraction invites the viewer to peel back the layers of color, line, shape, and texture, discovering deeper meaning and connection—compositions designed to spark dialogue. The 23 paintings on display serve as markers that span more than a century of artistic creation. Over the past five years, Madron has been collecting artworks produced during the early exploration of abstraction in America. By exhibiting historical and contemporary artworks alongside each other, we not only examine how abstraction has developed over time but also explore how artworks created decades apart remain relevant to one another.&nbsp; Image: Bruce Thorn (b. 1952), Flamingo, 2025, acrylic on linen, 54 x 144 inches.

Conversations in Abstraction

In her first solo exhibition in the Midwest, Lagos-based artist Temitayo Ogunbiyi draws our attention to the medicinal capacities and visual complexities of local flora, showing exquisite drawings, paintings, and sculpture that respond to the social and natural environments of Chicago. While honoring the cancer journey of a close friend who was based in Chicago, Ogunbiyi considers the conventions of botanical documentation and the health trends associated with such North American plants as paw paw, echinacea, and milkweed.In a larger sense, the exhibition considers exchanges of friendship and translations of language by referencing various geographies that the artist has occupied. Thereby, Ogunbiyi aspires to forge new connections. In Chicago, she plans to engage a variety of viewers through community programming, including the manufacture and distribution of a bespoke ice cream flavor, communal food practice, and the incorporation and recirculation of vintage furniture in the exhibition display.For the first time, the Arts Club will concurrently feature a garden commission as part of the gallery exhibition. Taking the rough form of an abacus, Ogunbiyi’s installation on the western exterior wall is composed of cast grinding stones made of melted plumbing fixtures sourced in Nigeria. Through reference to the ancient mathematical tool, the abacus, the artist asks “Who counts?”—considering ‘counts’ as a verb and state of being. She invites all to enter the conversation.The exhibition is curated by Janine Mileaf, Executive Director and Chief Curator at The Arts Club of Chicago. It is made possible by a grant from Conor O’Neil; specific programming is supported by the Goethe-Institut. A version of the exhibition, curated by Rebecca Lowery, will travel to the Wexner Center for the ArtsColumbus, Ohio, in 2026.

Temitayo Ogunbiyi: You will have revelations along felled branches and longer roots/routes

McCormick Gallery is pleased to present Melanie Pankau’s fourth solo exhibition, The Many Are One. The exhibition features a suite of paintings that is grounded in her daily meditation and automatic drawing practice. For over a decade she has studied a variety of meditation traditions and techniques and integrates this parallel practice into her paintings. Every morning, after a 30 minute meditation, she draws in her sketchbook. The drawings are an inner dictation where rough geometric sketches and patterns become the basis for the compositions in the paintings. Through the investigation of geometric forms and an emotive use of color, Pankau translates information from the meditations into images that are containers for quietude, stillness, and our multidimensional nature.&nbsp;The paintings in the exhibition center around the interlacing of repeated geometric patterns. Through the process of making, each shape is meticulously taped and layered with multiple colors creating a relief of lines and brush strokes on the surface of the panels. In their final stages, the woven iterative marks are sanded down to reveal the underlying patterns that sit just below the surface. The crux of this work centers around using the language of abstraction to counter a cultural narrative of separatism, destruction, and polarity. By creating non-hierarchical images, the paintings unveil lattice-like structures that symbolize our innate interconnectedness, reciprocity, and unity.

Melanie Pankau: The Many Are One

Over the past six years, artist Derrick Adams has created nearly twenty vibrant prints in collaboration with Tandem Press. This exhibition highlights the results of that partnership—works that celebrate leisure, domestic life, and personal style through bold color, repeating patterns, and cadenced compositions.Adams first came to Tandem Press in 2019, following a recommendation from artist Mickalene Thomas. His first print with the studio,&nbsp;Self-Portrait on Float, shows him lounging on a unicorn pool float—gold-leaf accents, rainbow details, and all—Adams gazes out at the viewer with his head gently tilted, surrounded by a sea of vivid teal.&nbsp;Throughout these prints, we see a celebration of rest, domesticity, recreation, and style—recurring motifs in his larger body of work—filtered through the medium’s rich graphic possibilities. Working closely with Tandem’s collaborative printmakers, Adams has taken full advantage of the studio’s technical resources and experimental spirit, resulting in prints that pulse with color and rhythm.&nbsp;Silver Lining&nbsp;not only documents a significant chapter in Derrick Adams’s artistic practice but also celebrates the democratic and expansive nature of printmaking. Through these works, viewers are invited into scenes that affirm rest as resistance, leisure as power, and joy as a vital, everyday act.&nbsp; About the Artist:Derrick Adams&nbsp;(b. 1970, Baltimore, Maryland) is a multidisciplinary artist who closely considers the influence of popular culture on the formation of self-image. His work also questions how African American experiences intersect with art history, American iconography, and consumerism. He received a BFA from Pratt Institute and an MFA from Columbia University. He is also an alumnus of the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and the Sharpe-Walentas Studio program. He has received multiple notable awards, including a Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Residency (2019), Gordon Parks Foundation Fellowship (2018), Joyce Alexander Wein Artist Prize from the Studio Museum in Harlem (2016), and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award (2009). Derrick Adams has been exhibiting extensively since 2001, including solo exhibitions at the California African American Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art, Milwaukee Art Museum, Hudson River Museum, The Gallery in Baltimore City Hall, Museum of Arts and Design, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver. His work has also been included in numerous important exhibitions at institutions such as the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, The Studio Museum in Harlem, MoMA PS1, and the Brooklyn Museum. His work is held in many permanent public and private collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Baltimore Museum of Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Derrick Adams lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. This exhibition is supported by the Anonymous Fund.

Silver Lining: The Prints of Derrick Adams

HOLIDAY/GIFT PARTY:&nbsp;Friday, Dec. 19th, 2025 – 5-9pm Timeless Bodies interprets the human form through sculptural realism and abstraction. Throughout history, the human form has been symbolized as a container of life, emotion, and spirit, reflecting both fragility and resilience. How does the body hold and convey our stories, memories, or cultural history? Artists were encouraged to celebrate the interplay of form and storytelling in clay.&nbsp;Juror &amp; Curator:&nbsp;Nancy Pirri is an artist from Chicago, working primarily in ceramics and creating figures of all sizes. Pirri has won awards from the Beverly Arts Center and the Rockford Art Museum, including work published in ‘500 Figures in Clay’ V2. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including SOFA in Chicago representing women's rights anniversaries, and has acquired collectors from all over the world.&nbsp;She has exhibited with numerous galleries in the Midwest and is currently represented by Oliva Gallery, J. Petter Galleries (MI), Design at 329/Primitive/The Stalls, and Inner Haven Gallery.&nbsp; Photo credit: Suzanne Mauro

Timeless Bodies Holiday Gift Party

Join us for an electrifying evening at Bridgeport Art Center's Monthly Open Studios, where creativity knows no bounds. Immerse yourself in a vibrant creative ecosystem where artists, designers, and innovators converge to showcase their latest works, ongoing projects, and groundbreaking processes. Walk through multiple studios, engage directly with talented professionals, and experience the dynamic artistic energy that makes our community truly unique.<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://bridgeportart.acemlnb.com/lt.php?x=4lZy~GDMV6Gh65F5zADMgRVw2nNSut~wj~hhjqTHI3Gi7p37zEy.zuJv2I2jj_I~ju5AXXPJJuHNUp780_v4llFt" target="_blank">RSVP - FREE EVENT</a>

Open Studio

Scott Burton: Shape Shift, a&nbsp;critically acclaimed exhibition surveying the seminal—and subversive—art of Scott Burton (1939-1989), opens on Friday,&nbsp;October 3, 2025, at&nbsp;Wrightwood 659 in Chicago.&nbsp;&nbsp;Burton,&nbsp;who once&nbsp;described his work as “sculpture in love with furniture,”&nbsp;was a true American original. By the time of his death at the age of 50 from an AIDs-related illness, he had succeeded as sculptor, public artist, performance artist, social choreographer, art critic, and exhibition curator.&nbsp;This landmark exhibition&nbsp;spans that career,&nbsp;bringing together&nbsp;works from the 1960s to the ‘80s, including some 30 sculptures and more than 40 photographs, drawings, and ephemera.&nbsp;The exhibition is installed on Wrightwood 659’s third and fourth floors.As the most comprehensive survey of the late artist’s work ever mounted in the United States,&nbsp;Scott Burton: Shape Shift&nbsp;is curated by Jess Wilcox, independent curator, and Heather A. Smith, Assistant Curator, Pulitzer Arts Foundation. It premiered last fall at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis,&nbsp;and is presented at Wrightwood 659 by&nbsp;Alphawood Exhibitions.The ExhibitionRather than progressing chronologically, the installation of&nbsp;Shape Shift&nbsp;responds to the architecture of Tadao Ando, as did the Pulitzer Arts Foundation’s presentation in 2024. The Pulitzer Prize winning architect designed both art spaces, the Pulitzer in 2001, and Wrightwood in 2018.Among the highlights of the fourth floor are two groupings of chairs that illustrate Burton’s ideas about community. Placed in front of a curtain glass wall looking out to the street is a tableau of steel chairs—among them two curved chairs installed face-to-face and a solo minimalist take on the wire bistro chair. In another grouping, Wrightwood brings together a variety of Burton’s chairs for visitors to sit on.On the third floor, the visitor encounters&nbsp;Two-Part Chair&nbsp;(1986/2002), a pair of granite polygon slabs balancing one atop the other for mutual support. Although highly abstract, when viewed in profile the sculpture loosely resembles two bodies in a sexual embrace.&nbsp;On the same floor, the sculpture and performance element&nbsp;Bronze Chair&nbsp;(1972/75) is displayed next to a photograph showing it on a cobbled-stone street in New York City’s Soho neighborhood in the early ‘70s. Burton had found the Queen Anne-style armchair abandoned in an apartment, cast it in bronze, and put it outside on the street, where it sat enigmatically against a brick wall. At Wrightwood, this installation is echoed&nbsp;by the brick wall of Tadao Ando’s gallery.Burton’s anthropomorphizing of furniture was linked to his study of proxemics, the inquiry into the relational systems and nonverbal cues inherent in social spaces. As he once said, “You could say that people are like furniture. They take different poses and suggest different genders.” In&nbsp;Shape Shift, this dictum is illuminated in an array of furniture forms, each conveying a distinct character and connotation through form, material, surface finish, scale, and stylistic lineage.Demonstrating Burton’s radical, but elegant, formal inventions is&nbsp;Two-Part Chaise Lounge&nbsp;(1986-87),&nbsp;where&nbsp;a pair of V-shaped pieces of&nbsp;pink Rosa Baveno granite, setflush with each other, transform into&nbsp;stable seating. In an example of the expressiveness of finish, the visitor will find&nbsp;Spattered Table&nbsp;(1974-1977), a simple wooden table that Burton found, splattered with primary colors, and exhibited atop a large horizontal pedestal, transforming it into minimalist sculpture. As Burton intended, Wrightwood 659 will display the work so that visitors will be able to glimpse its white underbelly, which playfully contrasts with its Abstract Expressionist-inspired outer surfaces.&nbsp;Installed nearby is&nbsp;the diminutive&nbsp;Child’s Table and Chair(1978), which could be an example of a Bauhaus playroom set, were it not for its scale and red, blue, and yellow stretchers and splats.Still another play on the formal possibilities of a vernacular form is seen in&nbsp;Onyx Table&nbsp;(1978-1981), a Parsons-style table so massive and heavy that it morphs from a piece of furniture into a work of art. At once opulent in its fine surface and luminosity and humorous in its mixed functionality, it anticipates the materiality and approach of Burton’s later public works.A star of&nbsp;Shape Shift,&nbsp;the spectacularly extroverted&nbsp;Five-Part Storage Cubes&nbsp;(1982), dominates a landing leading from the third to fourth floor. The&nbsp;stack of large yellow, red, orange, blue, and green cubes will be displayed with one of its doors open.The artist continually riffed off the American vernacular, seen here in homages to the Adirondack chair, including one&nbsp;fabricated in yellow Formica and&nbsp;others conceived as abstract experiments—like&nbsp;Aluminum Chair&nbsp;(1980-1981), where the shape echoes the Adirondack sloping form, but the chair is constructed from&nbsp;triangular aluminum plates punctured by large circular apertures.Scott Burton: Shape Shift&nbsp;features an array of little- or never-before-seen video, photographs, Polaroids, a poster, notes, and sketches related to Burton’s proscenium performances. These include an oak table found and altered by Burton and repurposed as a performance prop; sketches that diagram movement and directions for performances; and&nbsp;Individual Behavior Tableaux&nbsp;(1980), the only known video of Burton’s performance oeuvre, which documents the artist’s last performance before he turned to furniture/object making full-time. Shot at the Berkeley Art Museum, the video captures the glacially slow enactment of a variety of gestures, poses, and behaviors. The poses stem not only from Burton’s study of nonverbal communication but also allude to the bodily cues that signal sexual availability within gay cruising culture.Wall and case displays document Burton’s writings for&nbsp;Art in America&nbsp;magazine and other publications; seminal performances, including his early, site-specific installationFurniture Landscape&nbsp;(1970) at the University of Iowa where he brought pieces of furniture outdoors; the exhibition he organized of works by Brancusi at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) (1989); and his own sculpture, installed in MoMA’s sculpture garden (1989).&nbsp;The MoMA garden installation featured his Parallelogram chairs, two of which have been added to the Wrightwood showing.&nbsp;Finally, a slideshow presents views of Burton’s many public art installations, including major works on the grounds of the Des Moines Art Center, Princeton University, the University of Houston, and the Waterfront Plaza at Battery Park City, in New York.&nbsp;The ArtistRemembered as an artist, critic, and curator, Scott Burton was born in 1939 in Greensboro, Alabama, spent his formative years in Washington, DC, and received a BA degree from Columbia University (1962) and MFA from New York University (1963).His critical writing appeared regularly in&nbsp;ARTnews&nbsp;and&nbsp;Art in America&nbsp;and in exhibition catalogues, including that for Harald Szeemann’s landmark post-minimalist exhibition,&nbsp;Live in Your Head: When Attitudes Become Form&nbsp;(1969 Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland).By the early 1970s, Burton was exhibiting in New York City, first with like-minded artists on the street, then in galleries and museums including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, P.S. 1, and, in a solo exhibition, Artists Space. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Burton created an array of performances, furniture as sculpture, and public art environments inspired by his studies of body language, art history, and design. He also curated the inaugural exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art’s now-lauded Artist’s Choice series. Burton died of an AIDS-related illness in 1989.His work is in dozens of collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, National Gallery of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Princeton University Art Museum, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Tate, and the Walker Art Center. Almost all of the archival photographs, diagrams, drawings, and ephemera in the exhibition are on loan from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Archives, which maintains the Scott Burton Papers, its largest single-artist holding.Performances and Special EventsOn October 24 and 25 at Wrightwood 659, the New York-based founder of the Center for Experimental Lectures, Gordon Hall, will present a performance meditating on the condition of waiting and Burton’s legacy.&nbsp;Public programs will also include a talk by art historian David J. Getsy, author of&nbsp;Queer Behavior: Scott Burton and Performance Art&nbsp;(University of Chicago Press, 2022). Getsy’s lecture will take place at the Art Institute of Chicago at 6pm on October 9. Getsy will co-lead a tour ofScott Burton: Shape Shift&nbsp;the following day with the exhibition’s curator Jess Wilcox. (Registration to come.)PublicationScott Burton: Shape Shift, the accompanying publication, is expected to serve as an essential source for scholars, artists, and others interested in the intentions and legacy of Scott Burton. The volume features essays by David J. Getsy and Jess Wilcox; writings by the artists Brendan Fernandes and Gordon Hall; contributions by Jeremy Johnston and Heather Alexis Smith; and a never-before-published excerpt from the transcript of a 1988 lecture by Burton.&nbsp;The volume is co-published by the Pulitzer Arts Foundation and Alphawood Exhibitions and distributed by Yale University Press. Price $50.Also on View at Wrightwood 659The Joffrey + Ballet in the U.S.&nbsp;is a large-scale exhibition celebrating the rich history of The Joffrey Ballet and the life of Robert Joffrey. The exhibition premiered at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center in 2024, marking the first major retrospective of the company. Drawing from the Joffrey archive, acquired&nbsp;by the Jerome Robbins Dance Division in 2017 as the Library’s largest acquisition in a decade, the exhibition offers an in-depth look at the Joffrey’s contributions to ballet in the U.S. Highlights include rare film from the original performance of the groundbreaking ballet&nbsp;Astarte&nbsp;and Anna Sokolow’s&nbsp;Opus 65,&nbsp;as well as costumes, props, pointe shoes, posters, correspondence, and other ephemera from the company and Robert Joffrey’s life.&nbsp;The Joffrey + Ballet in the U.S.&nbsp;is organized by The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and curated by Dr. Julia Foulkes with assistance from Nicole Duffy. It is presented at Wrightwood 659 by Alphawood&nbsp;Exhibitions.Ellen Altfest: Forever&nbsp;is a selection of 15 oil paintings by the American representational painter Ellen Altfest, known for her painstakingly labor-intensive canvases and her observation of things in the world often overlooked in art. From roughly tactile rocks, tangled branches, and tree bark, to the smoothness of houseplants, fabric, and men’s skin—she condenses everyday essences into expressions of absolute clarity and intensity. Her paintings are characterized by surprising pairings of subjects, unorthodox cropping, and, perhaps most notably, scrupulously rendered naturally occurring textures and intricate surface features. Working directly from observation without photographic sources or references, she often spends months—and sometimes more than a year—on a single painting.&nbsp;Ellen Altfest: Forever&nbsp;is organized by the Frist Art Museum, Nashville, Tennessee, where it premiered earlier this year, and is curated by Mark Scala, Chief Curator, Frist Art Museum.&nbsp;Ellen Altfest: Forever&nbsp;is presented at Wrightwood 659 by Halsted A&amp;A Foundation.About Wrightwood 659Wrightwood 659 hosts exhibitions on socially engaged art and architecture, on issues facing LGBTQ+ communities, and on Asian art and architecture. Located in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood in a building transformed by Pritzker Prize winner Tadao Ando, Wrightwood 659 encourages visitors to engage with pressing issues of our time in an intimate and beautiful space.&nbsp;For additional information, please visit<a style="color: blue;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/___https:/wrightwood659.org___.YzJ1Om5ld3N3ZWJsbGM6YzpvOjkxNmUxZTI1MGM2ZWQyZjc3MDI3ZjM5MDk0MDAxNzBjOjY6MjcwMjo2MjhjZDA1ZDgwMzI1MTE5ZDdkNThkYmQ3N2YzYzg1NDQyOTgwMmQyMDlkOTA1ZWM3ZDg4OTYwYmMzZGNlYTFhOnA6VDpG" target="_blank">wrightwood659.org</a>. Hours of Operation and TicketsWrightwood 659 is open Thursdays 12 noon-7 pm; Fridays 12 noon-7 pm;&nbsp;Saturdays 10 am-5 pm.&nbsp;Tickets for the trio of exhibitions opening October 3 go on sale Thursday, September 4. Admission is $20 and is available online only at<a style="color: blue;" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://protect.checkpoint.com/v2/___https:/tickets.wrightwood659.org/events___.YzJ1Om5ld3N3ZWJsbGM6YzpvOjkxNmUxZTI1MGM2ZWQyZjc3MDI3ZjM5MDk0MDAxNzBjOjY6ZTM3NTo1ODVkZTEzMTZkZTNkMTU1ZTU4MTZhNmM5ZjI5N2I3NTQzODExNGFmNjY5MTllMDUzZWZmNWQwNGU5ZDgwMThkOnA6VDpG" target="_blank">https://tickets.wrightwood659.org/events</a>. Please note, admission is by advance ticket only.&nbsp;Walk-ups are not permitted.

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