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

Brian Lathan's work can be described as powerful statements rendered in vibrant color. His prints grip the viewer and challenge their perception of the world. Wander and Wallow: Must We Dwell is an exhibition of Lathan’s work that dwells in the fragile space between escapism, indulgence, and restraint, tracing the quiet negotiations we make with ourselves in the name of self-care. It considers how presence and avoidance coexist, and how the desire for escape can gently, almost invisibly, eclipse the needs of the self we house within. Each figure contains a smaller version of themselves, dwelling inside an exposed headspace where a ramshackle interior offers both shelter and unease. The absent crown of the larger figure reveals this inner home at a suspended moment - just before neglect becomes recognizable, before damage announces itself. Fluorescent color and halftone imagery offer their brightness and patterning to soften and obscure the somber tenderness beneath. The viewer is invited to dwell and consider the things we dwell on or with, such as ourselves, our habits, and the inner spaces we construct for care and survival. The work positions the viewer as observer, mirror, and voyeur, allowing questions of coping, presence, and care to surface without resolution. Born and based in St. Louis, Brian Lathan is an artist and educator who explores printmaking, illustration, and sculpture. He examines the dynamics of print, print ephemera, digital illustration, and sculpture, persistently exploring these media as means of expressing personal and subjective commentary and narration. Currently, he teaches printmaking at several universities around St. Louis. Lathan recently received a grant from the Regional Arts Commission for a large mural, which can be seen on Cherokee Street in St. Louis. Wander and Wallow: Must We Dwell will open at Fine Line’s Kavanagh Gallery on Thursday, October 15, and run until November 20. The gallery is open Monday to Saturday from 10 am to 5 pm. A gallery reception will be held on Thursday, October 15, from 6–8 p.m. The artist, Brian Lathan, will be in attendance and speak at 6.30 pm about his art. The reception, like all Kavanagh Gallery receptions, is free and open to everyone.

Wander and Wallow: Must We Dwell – Brian Lathan

At RAM’s Wustum MuseumCynthia Toops is a polymer art pioneer who has been pushing the boundaries of the medium since the 1980s. The artist is well known for her micromosaic technique, which pieces together tiny shards of polymer into figurative or abstract compositions. Her distinctive style pulls inspiration from everyday events or objects, botanical subjects, folk art, and the cultural jewelry and ancient beads which she collects. While Toops works on her own, she also often collaborates with her husband, Dan Adams, who creates the glass beads and components featured in some pieces.

RAM Showcase: Cynthia Toops

at RAM’s Wustum MuseumStitched Stories: Narrative Quilts and Textiles&nbsp;brings together quilted, woven, and embroidered works from RAM’s collection that tell stories through fabric and thread. Whether incorporating representational imagery or utilizing abstraction, these small- and large-scale fiber works explore the multitude of ways in which textiles can be used to convey meaning. Drawing from both personal memory and imagined worlds, the artists represented in&nbsp;Stitched Stories&nbsp;demonstrate the versatility of fiber as a medium for storytelling as they transport viewers to faraway lands—from the bottom of the ocean to outer space. Significantly, several artists with Wisconsin ties are represented, underscoring the rich history of textile production in the state.

Stitched Stories: Narrative Quilts and Textiles

Chicago has long been an important center for comics and graphic storytelling. During the early decades of the twenty-first century, the publication Linework, under the guidance of acclaimed cartoonist, designer, and educator Ivan Brunetti, became a gathering point for many of the most compelling voices in Chicago’s contemporary comics scene. Bringing together emerging and established artists, the publication fostered a moment of creative exchange that helped shape the city’s reputation as a hub for alternative comics.This exhibition revisits the Linework publication and the artistic community that formed around it, highlighting both the collaborative spirit of the project and the paths its contributors have taken since. Among them is Chicago-based cartoonist Nick Drnaso, whose graphic novel Sabrina became the first graphic novel longlisted for the Booker Prize.Image: Ivan Brunetti, self-portrait

Linework: Chicago Comics and Community

<h2>Winter Camp</h2>A group exhibition of artworks and original screen prints featuring Wyatt Hersey, Anna Valdez, Melissa Lakey, and Esther Pearl Watson. In collaboration with&nbsp;<a href="https://www.thejaunt.net/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" target="_blank">The Jaunt</a>.&nbsp; October 23-November 21, 2026

Winter Camp

This one person show follows artist Barbara Tinger through 5 decades! Her body of work includes: figures, still life, cityscape, painting, drawing and mixed media in both representational and abstract executions. If you love art, you will love Barbara. Her move into abstraction occurred later in life, as a rare health condition affected her vision. Come witness the talent &amp; dedication to a practice spanning so long and so varied and always given With Love, Barbara A portion of sales will be given to The Chicago Lighthouse for the Blind

With Love, Barbara

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is excited to announce a solo exhibition by Mike Cloud (b. 1974, Chicago; lives in Chicago) for its latest&nbsp;<a href="https://mcachicago.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c24ba7c5a91cefd699dc985e1&amp;id=b49b61817e&amp;e=4ba592fe2a" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(0, 124, 137);" target="_blank">Chicago Works</a>&nbsp;presentation, titled&nbsp;Chicago Works | Mike Cloud: Worldless Obstruction.&nbsp;Opening on May 2, 2026, in the MCA’s Turner Gallery and closing on February 7, 2027, the exhibition presents a series of newly commissioned works that continue Cloud’s experimentation with abstraction, symbolic language and the sculptural dimensions of painting.&nbsp;Cloud challenges historical framings of abstract painting as pure and apolitical, approaching his works instead as products of their political contexts and the capitalist systems through which they circulate. Crudely constructed from wooden stretcher bars, thickly layered in painted signs, and protruding into three-dimensional space, Cloud’s sculptural paintings are objects, rather than pristine surfaces, that possess a deliberately improvisational and, in his words, “unschooled” aesthetic. The artist sources his subjects from online news outlets, often alluding to contemporary stories of suffering and tragedy through his enigmatic visual vocabulary, developed over two decades. Forms resembling snowflakes, rainbows, four-leaf clovers, hearts and hands densely cluster across his canvases, which are stapled to configurations of stretcher bars that hover between abstract structures and recognizable shapes.The new paintings made specifically for this exhibition extend these strategies while foregrounding three recent developments in Cloud’s practice: emojis, an “X”-shaped painting, and the protrusion of his works off the wall and on to the floor of the gallery. Through the use of hinges, the paintings become modular, endowed with the capacity to be folded, installed upright, and exhibited in multiple configurations. Cloud’s work embodies the slipperiness of symbols, the malleability of meaning, and the potential for freedom within ambiguity.&nbsp;Cloud will be in conversation with exhibition curator Nolan Jimbo on May 2, 2026, in the Edlis Neeson Theater.&nbsp;Mike Cloud is the 27th artist to participate in&nbsp;<a href="https://mcachicago.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c24ba7c5a91cefd699dc985e1&amp;id=dd5f8f7c3d&amp;e=4ba592fe2a" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(0, 124, 137);" target="_blank">Chicago Works</a>, a solo exhibition series at the MCA that features artists who are shaping contemporary art in the city and beyond.&nbsp;Chicago Works | Mike Cloud: Worldless Obstruction&nbsp;is organized by Nolan Jimbo, Assistant Curator. ABOUT THE ARTISTMike Cloud was born and raised in Chicago. He earned a BFA from the University of Illinois Chicago (2001) and an MFA from Yale University (2003). He is currently Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Art, Theory, and Practice at Northwestern University.&nbsp;Cloud’s solo exhibitions include&nbsp;Circle Chat, Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago (2025);&nbsp;Called Ahead, Fahrenheit Madrid (2024);&nbsp;The Myth of Education, Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago (2018);&nbsp;Bad Faith and Universal Technique, Thomas Erben Gallery, New York (2014);&nbsp;Systems, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln (2006); and&nbsp;Special Project: Mike Cloud, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2005). He has also participated in group exhibitions at Artists Space, New York; Xavier Hufkens, Brussels; Good Weather, Chicago; White Columns, New York; and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Cloud received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2024, the Richard Pousette-Dart Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ in 2023, and the Jules Guerin Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome in 2023.At the MCA, Cloud previously participated in the group exhibition,&nbsp;The Long Dream&nbsp;(2020), and his work,&nbsp;Cycle and Stable&nbsp;(2015), resides in the museum’s collection. His work is also held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York.&nbsp; SUPPORTGenerous support for&nbsp;Chicago Works | Mike Cloud: Worldless Obstruction&nbsp;is provided by the Sandra and Jack Guthman Chicago Works Exhibition Fund. Mike Cloud (b. 1974, Chicago, IL; lives in Chicago),&nbsp;Poison Arrows South Africa, 2026. Acrylic on canvas, hinges, pegs, rope, and watercolor tape; 48 × 47 × 75 in. (121.9 × 119.4 × 190.5 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Thomas Erben Gallery, New York. Photo: Colleen Keihm.

Mike Cloud: Worldless Obstruction

A Rare Master Print Portfolio from the Collection of the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and CultureThe National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture invites you to experience a rare and historically significant work from its permanent collection: the&nbsp;Primer Centenario de la Abolición de la Esclavitud&nbsp;(First Centenary of the Abolition of Slavery) print portfolio.This limited-edition portfolio commemorates&nbsp;March 22, 1873, the date Puerto Rico formally abolished slavery. Published in 1973 to mark the centennial of this historic event, the edition consists of only&nbsp;115 print portfolios. The Museum is honored to steward&nbsp;edition number 110, preserving this important cultural and historical document for public study, education, and collective memory.This collection was generously donated to the Museum in 2023 by Diego Figueroa, whose contribution has made this rare and significant portfolio accessible to the public, scholars, and future generations.

Abolición

This November, Monique Meloche Gallery presents Gaining Perspective, a major new exhibition by internationally acclaimed artist duo Arocha-Schraenen (Carla Arocha and Stéphane Schraenen), marking their first solo exhibition in Chicago in fifteen years and one of their most ambitious site-responsive projects to date. For more than two decades, Arocha-Schraenen have developed a practice that challenges perception through sculpture, installation, photography, painting, and drawing. Their work, held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago; the Walker Art Center; and numerous international institutions, investigates how reflection, architecture, and illusion shape our understanding of space and reality. Rather than filling the gallery with discrete objects, Gaining Perspective treats the gallery itself as the primary material. Developed specifically for Monique Meloche Gallery, the exhibition subtly dismantles viewers' assumptions about the familiar architecture through a series of precise interventions that destabilize depth, orientation, and perspective. Temporary walls become sculptural devices, wallpaper expands into optical fields, and sculptural forms appear to oscillate between painting, relief, and architecture. Throughout the exhibition, visitors are asked to continually renegotiate what is physically present and what exists only as reflection, projection, or perceptual illusion. As the artists describe it, the goal is to "minimally intervene the gallery architecture for maximum effect," encouraging viewers to question what they believe they are seeing before arriving at certainty. Central to the exhibition are two newly conceived bodies of work. Axis z(2026) transforms the gallery walls into a series of sculptural interventions visible differently depending on one's position in space, while Axis y(2026) employs custom wallpaper derived from Carla Arocha's 2003 painting Untitled (Brown Burst), a work originally exhibited by Monique Meloche Gallery more than two decades ago, to create an immersive environment where scale, pattern, and architectural surface become inseparable. The exhibition also carries particular significance for Chicago. Carla Arocha, a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA, 1991), has maintained a decades-long relationship with the city and has exhibited with Monique Meloche Gallery since its inception. Her ongoing dialogue with Chicago's artistic community culminates here in an exhibition that revisits earlier works while presenting a new chapter in the collaborative practice she has developed with Stéphane Schraenen. Gaining Perspective arrives at a pivotal moment for the artists. Last year, their expansive practice was the subject of the landmark 600-page publication Carla Arocha and Stéphane Schraenen: Monograph as Project, co-published by Mercatorfonds and Yale University Press, with its Chicago launch celebrated at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. This exhibition extends the scholarly reassessment represented by that publication into a fully realized spatial experience. At a moment when immersive installation has become ubiquitous, Arocha-Schraenen offer something fundamentally different. Rather than overwhelming viewers with spectacle, they employ subtle formal shifts that reward sustained looking, transforming ordinary architectural space into an unstable field where certainty dissolves into observation. Gaining Perspective invites audiences to reconsider not only how we experience art, but how perception itself is constructed.

Gaining Perspective

You’re Invited to Experience&nbsp;El Café&nbsp;Portfolio by Master Artist Rafael TufiñoThe National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture invites the public to experience&nbsp;El Café, a seminal linocut portfolio by master artist&nbsp;Rafael Tufiño—a foundational body of work rooted in community, cultural identity, and lived experience.Created between 1953 and 1954 in the barrio of Vegas Arriba, Adjuntas, one of Puerto Rico’s historic coffee-growing regions,&nbsp;El Café&nbsp;emerged from Tufiño’s immersive fieldwork among rural coffee workers. Living within the community, he documented the full cycle of coffee production—from cultivation and harvest to roasting, brewing, rest, and celebration—transforming everyday labor into a powerful visual narrative of dignity, care, and belonging.Through seven linocuts, Tufiño presents jíbaro life with intimacy and respect, emphasizing hands, bodies, and gestures rather than romanticized distance. Coffee becomes more than a crop—it is ritual, inheritance, hospitality, and cultural memory. The series culminates in a communal celebration marking the end of the harvest, where labor gives way to music, joy, and collective resilience.El Café&nbsp;stands as both an artistic and cultural document—affirming Tufiño’s belief that art should speak to the people, reflect their lives, and honor their knowledge.We invite you to visit the exhibition and encounter a profound visual meditation on Puerto Rican rural life, labor, tradition, and community—where art, history, and culture meet in everyday ritual.Collection of the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture (2023).Courtesy of the Rafael Tufiño Succession

Rafael Tufiño: El Café Portfolio

This exhibition will bring together for the first time the work of two artists who have dedicated their lives, through their multifaceted artistic processes, to healing.After a life of rambling, Emery Blagdon (1907–1986) settled on his family’s homestead in Garfield Table, Nebraska. Many members of his family had been afflicted with cancer. Convinced of the healing potential of the unseen forces of the earth, Blagdon spent forty years constructing “The Healing Machine.” Using largely tin foil, masking tape, Christmas decorations, and wire, Blagdon sought to harness magnetism, electricity, and other energies to surround visitors with positive forces. JMKAC has owned “The Healing Machine” since 2004.Guadalupe Maravilla migrated to the United States from El Salvador, unaccompanied, at age eight. At thirty-six, he was diagnosed with cancer, which he links to inherited trauma. During treatment, Maravilla connected with Indigenous healing practices, including sound baths—ceremonies that harness sonic vibrations from gongs, conch shells, and other instruments to restore calm and balance and release toxins in the body. He began making sculptures, paintings, performances, and large-scale installations that incorporate found objects related to his own migration story and various gongs and bowls, which he activates to conduct sound ceremonies. Blurring art, science, and medicine, he calls these activations “healing machines.”At the Arts Center, central to the exhibition is Maravilla’s Mariposa Relámpago, a school bus that has been reimagined as a healing temple. Throughout the exhibition, the healing machines will be activated by Maravilla and various other healers, playing the sculptures to turn on and amplify the energy in the gallery—transforming the space into an immersive healing environment.For the coinciding installation at the Art Preserve, Maravilla’s El Espíritu de Mariposa Relámpago Disease Thrower, a monumental bronze snake with a butterfly head, lightning bolt, and gong, serves as a central altar. Surrounded by Blagdon’s energy-focusing paintings and a selection of Maravilla’s retablos, this installation harnesses the energy held in the shed formerly occupied by Blagdon’s “The Healing Machine,” while it is on view at the Arts Center.

Guadalupe Maravilla with Emery Blagdon: The star exploding in the body

At the Art Preserve: May 5, 2026–January 10, 2027At the Arts Center: May 30, 2026–December 6, 2026 This exhibition will bring together for the first time the work of two artists who have both dedicated their lives, through their multifaceted artistic processes, to healing.After a life of rambling,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.jmkac.org/artist/blagdon-emery/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(38, 62, 148);" target="_blank">Emery Blagdon</a>&nbsp;(1907–1986) settled on his family’s homestead in Garfield Table, Nebraska. Many members of his family had been afflicted with cancer. Convinced of the healing potential of the unseen forces of the earth, Blagdon spent forty years constructing “The Healing Machine.” Using largely tin foil, masking tape, Christmas decorations, and wire, Blagdon sought to harness magnetism, electricity, and other energies to surround visitors with positive forces. JMKAC has owned “The Healing Machine” since 2004. Guadalupe Maravilla migrated to the United States from El Salvador, unaccompanied, at age eight. At thirty-six, he was diagnosed with cancer, which he links to inherited trauma. During treatment, Maravilla connected with Indigenous healing practices, including sound baths—ceremonies that harness sonic vibrations from gongs, conch shells, and other instruments to restore calm and balance and release toxins in the body. He began making sculptures, paintings, performances, and large-scale installations that incorporate found objects related to his own migration story and various gongs and bowls, which he activates to conduct sound ceremonies. Blurring art, science, and medicine, he calls these activations “healing machines.”At the&nbsp;Arts Center, central to the exhibition is Maravilla’s Mariposa Relámpago, a school bus that has been reimagined as a healing temple. Throughout the exhibition, the healing machines will be activated by Maravilla and various other healers, playing the sculptures to turn on and amplify the energy in the gallery—transforming the space into an immersive healing environment. For the coinciding installation at the&nbsp;Art Preserve, Maravilla’s El Espíritu de Mariposa Relámpago Disease Thrower, a monumental bronze snake with a butterfly head, lightning bolt, and gong, serves as a central altar. Surrounded by Blagdon’s energy-focusing paintings and a selection of Maravilla’s retablos, this installation harnesses the energy held in the shed formerly occupied by Blagdon’s “The Healing Machine,” while it is on view at the Arts Center.

<a href="https://www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/exhibitions/2026/picturing-the-modern-metropolis.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Details</a> In the 20th century, many artists working in the United States were drawn to the city as subject matter. Towering skyscrapers, crowded intersections, and dynamic street scenes that emphasize the fast tempo of urban life became familiar ways of representing the modern metropolis. Using exaggerated form and fragmentation, artists sought to convey the sensory experience of urban spaces. These artists were also proposing new ways of understanding the city by experimenting with modernist forms to represent the spaces that we share with one another. The exhibition includes over 100 prints and photographs from The Block's collection, focusing primarily on the 20th century. It brings together well-known artists, such as Edward Steichen, Vivian Maier, Ed Ruscha, and Andy Warhol, alongside Chicago-based artists including Henry Simon and Yuichi Idaka. Each consistently engaged with the city as a subject in their practice, focusing on the sensory and visual experiences of cities, but also bringing in representations of ideals long associated with life in the city–mobility, diversity, belonging, and individual expression. Together, the artworks invite us to reconsider how artists helped shape our own impressions of the city and found in it a democratized subject matter, full of possibilities for creativity and freedom. Picturing the Modern Metropolis: Prints and Photographs from The Block's Collection&nbsp;is curated by Eduardo Bello, 2025-26 Interdisciplinary Graduate Fellow, and Corinne Granof, Academic Curator, at The Block Museum of Art. The Graduate Fellow is generously supported by The Graduate School (TGS), Northwestern University. Image: Yuichi Idaka (American, 1914 - 2012), Untitled [detail] ca. 1946, Gelatin silver print 7 5/8 × 9 7/16 in. Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, gift of the Bauhaus Chicago Foundation, 2024.21.7. Courtesy of the Estate of Yuichi Idaka.

Picturing the Modern Metropolis: Prints and Photographs from The Block's Collection

Annual Small Print Show opening on Dec 5 - 6, from 11 AM to 7 PM at WING Studio, 4883 N. Lincoln (60625).

Annual Small Print Show

Each year, The Block Museum of Art acquires new artwork for the collection through a student-led process. The 2025–2026 cohort of students recommended the purchase of and you, all future tense, leak through (2023) by Chicago-based artist&nbsp;Antonius-Tín Bui (they/them), seen on this wall. Bui’s wide-ranging practice spans hand-cut paper, community engagement, performance, and soft sculpture, often engaging with hybrid identities and complex relationships with the past. As a Vietnamese American, queer, and genderfluid artist, Bui offers beauty as a place of refuge for others from marginalized communities.&nbsp; Bui’s work is presented here in conversation with other works from the museum’s collection that pull on different strands of their practice, such as cutting, weaving, and movement, as well as evolving histories of place and material belonging.&nbsp; The Block’s annual student acquisition is undertaken by the Block Museum Student Associates (BMSAs), an interdisciplinary group of Northwestern undergraduates. <a href="https://www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/exhibitions/2026/the-block-collects-2026.html" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(52, 47, 46);" target="_blank">Details</a> Image: Antonius-Tín Bui (born 1992) and you, all future tense, leak through, 2023. [detail] Mixed media on hand-cut paper 2025–2026 Block Museum Student Associates acquisition, purchase funds provided by Craig Ponzio, the Rubens Family Foundation, and the Block Student Impact Fund, 2026.9

The Block Collects 2026

“It was a matter of getting out on a damn limb and sawing it off behind you.” This memorable phrase is how Lee Miller—by turns a fashion model, magazine photographer, studio operator, Surrealist innovator, international adventurer, and battlefield correspondent—summed up her approach to life and creativity.&nbsp;Lee Miller: Fearless&nbsp;is the first comprehensive survey of her photographs in more than 25 years and gathers together the major episodes of her singular career. Miller was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1907. Intrepid from the first, she moved to Paris at barely 20 years old, simultaneously seeking work in front of and behind the camera. She pioneered Surrealist techniques and broached daring sexual subjects with a readiness that magnetized experimental artists and fashion editors alike. Miller excelled at portraiture as well and pictured a range of cultural figures in the 1930s, most of them personal friends, from Charlie Chaplin to Pablo Picasso.&nbsp; By age 30 Miller had run commercial studios on both sides of the Atlantic; taken a star turn in art cinema and become an haute couture icon; and moving on from Paris to Cairo, influenced Egyptian modern art while reinvigorating her own work through travels in Egypt’s deserts.&nbsp; Yet she undertook a challenge of an entirely different order during World War II, especially as a correspondent for&nbsp;Vogue&nbsp;accredited with the United States Army in 1944–45. The inhumanities Lee Miller witnessed in Europe, especially at the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps, brought out her courage and deeply contradictory emotions; the experience, which she chronicled in extensive written and photographic dispatches from the German front, also left her traumatized for a number of years. Following the war, Miller remade herself once more, gaining renown in England as a chef and gardener, while quietly continuing to lead an artistic life through her final years. Lee Miller died in 1977 on the East Sussex farm she owned with her husband, artist Roland Penrose.Lee Miller: Fearless&nbsp;is organized by the Art Institute of Chicago in collaboration with Tate Britain and Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris.&nbsp; The exhibition is curated by Matthew S.&nbsp;Witkovsky, Richard and Ellen Sandor Chair and Curator, Photography and Media,&nbsp;and vice president for strategic art initiatives,&nbsp;the&nbsp;Art Institute of Chicago,&nbsp;and Hilary Floe, senior curator, Modern and Contemporary British Art, Tate Britain,&nbsp;with Saskia Flower, assistant curator, Modern and Contemporary British Art, Tate Britain, and Michal Goldschmidt, former assistant curator, Modern British Art, Tate Britain. SPONSORSLead support is provided by the Harris Family Foundation in memory of Bette and Neison Harris.&nbsp;Major support is provided by Barbara Bluhm-Kaul and Don Kaul, Suzette and Ally Bulley, Tara Hirshberg, and The Opatrny Family Foundation.&nbsp;Additional support is contributed by Anne L. Kaplan.&nbsp; Image: Self-Portrait with Headband&nbsp;(detail), about 1932Lee MillerLee Miller Archives. © 2026 Lee Miller Archives, England. All rights reserved.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.leemiller.co.uk/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(181, 9, 56);" target="_blank">www.leemiller.co.uk</a>

Lee Miller: Fearless

Prairie State College Art Faculty Exhibition will be held from November 16 to December 10. There will be a public reception on Wednesday, November 18, from 11am to 1pm.

Prairie State College Art Faculty Exhibition

A new exhibition of works by painter Eleanor Spiess-Ferris and her son, sculptor Michael Ferris.

Unfamiliar Patterns

The show brings together a wide range of original artworks and artist-made objects, including prints, jewelry, small sculptures, ceramics, decorative pieces, and other gallery-appropriate works. Most pieces are priced at $500 and under, with many available at lower price points, including works around $20 and up. Whether you are looking for the right gift for a loved one or a small piece to bring joy into your own home, this event offers it all! Admission: Free

Small Wonders: Year-End Gift Show

The Raclin Murphy Museum of Art is honored to announce the landmark exhibition of internationally acclaimed Italian artist Mimmo Paladino (b. 1948). A leading figure of the Italian avant-garde, Paladino’s paintings, sculptures, installations, films, prints, and illustrations are held in renowned public and private collections worldwide, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern, and the Vatican Museums. He is also highly regarded for his site-specific commissions, which include the mosaic, stained-glass, and wall drawings of the&nbsp;Mary, Queen of Families Chapel&nbsp;at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art. An overview of Paladino’s career will introduce audiences to the artist’s repertoire and highlight his position within the currents of art history through his paintings and sculptures. Following that contextualization, the exhibition will illuminate the master’s passion with literature and the art of the book through illustrations including his imagery for the&nbsp;Roman Messale&nbsp;for Pope Francis and a special edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy.&nbsp; The final section will examine the commission and creation of the&nbsp;Mary, Queen of Families Chapel, including the premier presentation of Paladino’s unique handmade vestments that he has donated to the Museum and University. Although Paladino is not exclusively a religious artist, this exhibition highlights his commitment to the great humanistic and spiritual traditions that have shaped his work while also acknowledging the contribution his contemporary voice has added to the history of art. “We are deeply honored to have worked with Mimmno Paladino for many years on many site-specific commissions and now this extraordinary exhibition. Most of this work—a celebration of humanity through art—has never been shown in the United States”,&nbsp;shares Joseph Antennucci Becherer, Director and Curator of Contemporary Art, Raclin Murphy Museum of Art. Born and trained in southern Italy, Paladino first gained critical acclaim in the 1980s as a member of the Transavanguardia movement, whose artists sought a renewal of figurative art and a willingness to experiment with materials in the wake of successive waves of abstraction in America and Europe. Living briefly in New York, Paladino’s life and work have always maintained a close connection to Italy’s broad artistic heritage, its people, and traditions. Although commissions from the Vatican and the University of Notre Dame have focused attention on his liturgical work, Paladino’s oeuvre is vast; he explores history, literature, and dream imagery through his iconography, creative vision, and innovative use of materials.

Mimmo Paladino: Present into Past

Number One at Tandem Press&nbsp;celebrates the vision of Tandem Press founder William Weege and the groundbreaking work of the press’s first collaborating artist, Sam Gilliam. Their partnership established a spirit of experimentation and technical innovation that continues to define Tandem Press today. Featuring works that reflect Gilliam’s bold approach to abstraction alongside Weege’s commitment to collaborative printmaking, the exhibition honors the creative foundation upon which the press was built. Together, these works trace the beginning of a legacy that has shaped generations of artists and printers.Sam Gilliam&nbsp;(1933-2022) was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. Since the early sixties, Sam Gilliam has been a pillar of the Washington D.C., the modern, and the contemporary art communities. He has tested the boundaries of color, form, texture, and the canvas itself over the course of his long, productive career. Gilliam was a major contributor to the Washington Color School, a group of Washington D.C. artists that developed a form of abstract color field painting during the late 1950s through mid-1970s.His inventive approach to creating art has also had a great impact on the field of Abstract Expressionism. One of the most important African-American artists of the twentieth century, Sam Gilliam was the subject of a 1983 retrospective exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C.,&nbsp;Modern Painter at the Corcoran: Sam Gilliam. His works are included in prestigious collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Beymans Museum in Rotterdam,&nbsp;the Phillips Collection, the Corcoran Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum, the National Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison, and the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris among many others.William Weege&nbsp;(b. 1935, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; d. 2020, Arena, Wisconsin) was a pillar in the printmaking and papermaking fields in the United States. He exuberantly explored unconventional printmaking processes, adding paint, collage, handmade paper, and sewn elements to various printed surfaces to create vibrant abstract expressions. He was also an early practitioner in the revival of handmade paper, which started in the 1960s.Although he is best known for his later abstract works, much of his early art commented on social and political issues. Weege studied engineering and city planning and worked at a commercial printing firm before returning to school to study printmaking. He received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1970, Weege represented the United States at the Venice Biennale before joining the UW-Madison Art Department faculty in 1971. He founded Tandem Press in 1987. In addition to being a distinguished professor, Weege had a very successful career as an artist. He exhibited widely, and his work is included in many museum collections throughout the United States including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Sam Gilliam & William Weege

Terry Karpowicz “Recent Works” is an upcoming event scheduled to take place from November 5th to December 18th. The event will showcase recent works by the artist Terry Karpowicz.

Terry Karpowicz Recent Works

Madron Gallery presents&nbsp;The Fine Art of [Madron Gallery], an exhibition celebrating Madron’s 25th anniversary and the legacy of the 19th and 20th century artists we represent.&nbsp;On view October 15 through December 18th, 2026, the exhibition&nbsp;explores twenty-five artworks by twenty-five artists that Madron has analyzed, discussed, and exhibited.&nbsp;Madron endeavors to create connection across decades, mediums, and genres - exploring the humanity captured by generations of artists through scholarly research and debate.Art serves as both a reflection of culture and a catalyst actively shaping future thought. Artists communicate universal truths and authentic moments, creating work that transcends time, inspires audiences, and builds community. Individual objects can be powerful tools—gateways into unknown or forgotten narratives. Researching the provenance and cultural context of historical works involves exploring archives, libraries, exhibition catalogues, personal letters, newspaper articles, and oral histories. Madron Gallery works diligently to uncover these stories. Through our monthly newsletter,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.madrongallery.com/the-fine-art-of-" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(21, 45, 68);" target="_blank">The Fine Art of [&nbsp;]</a>, we highlight 19th and 20th-century artists whose work remains as relevant today as the day it was created.The Fine Art of [Madron Gallery]&nbsp;will begin with an opening reception held on October 15th in conjunction with the 5th annual&nbsp;<a href="https://www.madrongallery.com/events" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(21, 45, 68);" target="_blank">Lincoln Park Art Night</a>&nbsp;(participating venues include&nbsp;<a href="https://www.oldtowntriangle.com/leslie-wolfe-gallery/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(21, 45, 68);" target="_blank">Leslie Wolfe Gallery/Old Town Arts Association</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.chicagoartsource.com/our-story" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(21, 45, 68);" target="_blank">gallery 1871</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://artcitychi.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(21, 45, 68);" target="_blank">Art City</a>&nbsp;and,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artonsedgwick.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(21, 45, 68);" target="_blank">Art on Sedgwick)</a>. The reception is free and open to the public and will be held from 5:30 – 8:30 pm.Madron is home to Madron Gallery, Madron Press, and the Skolnik family’s private art collection. The Skolnik family, the founders of Madron, is committed to supporting contemporary and Jewish artists, as well as acting as stewards of nineteenth and twentieth-century American art. Through scholarship-informed programming and exhibitions, Madron has carved out a unique place in Chicago’s artistic landscape, sparking dialogue about the ongoing significance of nineteenth and twentieth-century art in today’s world. Exhibiting Artists:&nbsp;Aaron Bohrod&nbsp;(1907 – 1992),&nbsp;Karl A. Buehr&nbsp;(1866 – 1952),&nbsp;Theodore Earl Butler&nbsp;(1861 – 1936),&nbsp;Philip Evergood&nbsp;(1901 – 1973),&nbsp;Harriet Whitney Frishmuth&nbsp;(1880-1980),&nbsp;Todros Geller&nbsp;(1889–1949),&nbsp;William Glackens&nbsp;(1870 – 1938),&nbsp;Childe Hassam&nbsp;(1859 – 1935),&nbsp;Joseph Hirsch&nbsp;(1910 – 1981),&nbsp;Frederick D. Jones, Jr.&nbsp;(1913 – 1996),&nbsp;Jack Levine&nbsp;(1915–2010),&nbsp;Harriet Randall Lumis&nbsp;(1870–1953),&nbsp;Reginald Marsh&nbsp;(1898 – 1954),&nbsp;Jerome Myers&nbsp;(1867 – 1940),&nbsp;Lawton Parker&nbsp;(1868 – 1954),&nbsp;Jane Peterson&nbsp;(1876 –1965),&nbsp;Robert Philipp&nbsp;(1895 – 1981),&nbsp;Henry Ward Ranger&nbsp;( 1858 – 1916),&nbsp;Robert Reid&nbsp;(1862- 1929),&nbsp;Harry Sternberg&nbsp;(1904 – 2001),&nbsp;Anthony Thieme&nbsp;(1888 – 1954),&nbsp;John Henry Twachtman&nbsp;(1853 – 1902),&nbsp;Bessie Potter Vonnoh&nbsp;(1872 – 1955),&nbsp;Robert Vonnoh&nbsp;(1858 – 1933), and&nbsp;James McNeill Whistler&nbsp;(1834 – 1903)&nbsp;

The Fine Art of [Madron Gallery]

For more than six decades, Mernet Larsen has been painting. Her representational, yet idiosyncratic, compositions exist largely outside mainstream trends, drawing from 15th-century Italian painting, wide-ranging arts of Asia, media, art theories, and her own memories and photos. Larsen’s subjects range from cafes and cafeterias to bedrooms and meeting rooms, and they capture a sense of the mundane as they nod to pictorial antecedents. By merging various perspectival systems, Larsen generates figures that appear as geometric solids in disorienting contexts. The scenes lack horizons and they refuse to center a viewer.&nbsp;As the artist has written,&nbsp;“I want nonspecific viewpoints, a sense of vertigo, so that you are holding each situation in your mind almost as if you are wearing it.”&nbsp;As a result, her figures can be disproportionately large or small, flattened, or even upside down, allowing them to exist believably in space.Larsen’s personages undertake the activities of life. They have meals, pursue hobbies, gather in malls, homes, or outdoors–but they simultaneously imply a passivity or lack of affect that is unsettling, while still familiar. The bored expressions—or at least poker faces—on many of the figures suggest an underlying critique of society, yet the paintings can also make one laugh out loud. This affect contributes to a stillness that elevates each figural gesture to something more monumental than the mundane activity it represents.Larsen frequently uses abstract images as springboards for her compositions. Treating found motifs as Rorschachs (the famous psychological “inkblot test”), she draws out spatial structures and unconscious attitudes toward subject matter that would not have occurred to her otherwise. The zig- zag angles of the seamstress and client in&nbsp;Getting Measured, 1999, for example, derive from an architectural element in a 13th-century Japanese scroll that she inverted and reimagined. Larsen clarifies that her appropriation of such forms does not pretend to be an interpretation or alliance with the original. Instead, this is a kind of “reverse abstraction” in that Larsen gives recognizable meaning to a detail she has incorporated as pure shape. In more recent works like&nbsp;Cézanne’s House, 2023, she does make explicit reference to an earlier artist, but subverts his frameworks at the same time. Such works honor her fascination with Cézanne, for example, but remain deeply original. Across these various strategies, Larsen has invented constructs that reconsider the way daily life is perceived and depicted. Her desire is at once to defamiliarize and honor the ordinary.Larsen has been the subject of more than 30 solo gallery and museum exhibitions. The current focused retrospective highlights many of her greatest works, emphasizing Larsen’s subjects from everyday life. It includes about 20 paintings made from 1986 to the present belonging to private and public collections, as well as a number of recent works that have yet to be exhibited. The exhibition is scheduled to run from September through December 2026. It will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with text by award-winning novelist Lauren Groff.The exhibition is curated by Janine Mileaf, Executive Director &amp; Chief Curator of The Arts Club of Chicago. About the ArtistMernet Larsen (b. 1940, Houghton, Michigan) has exhibited extensively since the late 1970s and has been the subject of over thirty solo exhibitions, including&nbsp;Mernet Larsen: The Ordinary, Reoriented,&nbsp;Akron Art Museum, 2019, and&nbsp;Mernet Larsen: Getting Measured,&nbsp;1957-2017,&nbsp;Tampa Museum of Art, 2017. Her work is in numerous collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel; and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, the X Museum, Beijing, China, among others. Larsen received her BFA from the University of Florida, and her MFA from Indiana University. She lives and works between Tampa, Florida and Jackson Heights, New York.

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