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

Soft Evidence is a solo exhibition by Mami Takahashi that brings together video, textile-based installation, performance documentation, and collaborative works to explore how women’s bodies communicate, resist legibility, and carry memory within everyday life. Rooted in attentiveness rather than spectacle, the exhibition considers the body as both a site of expression and a surface onto which social expectations, histories, and perceptions are projected.

Soft Evidence

This exhibition marks the first time Matisse’s&nbsp;Jazzwill be shown in its entirety since the Art Institute acquired it in 1948. One of the most important artist books of the 20th century,&nbsp;Jazz&nbsp;joins more than 50 works from the museum’s renowned collection of paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, illustrated books, and textiles to showcase Matisse’s commitment to continual innovation and the expressive power of color and line.

Matisse’s Jazz: Rhythms in Color

<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://qvrzaq.clicks.mlsend.com/tj/cl/eyJ2Ijoie1wiYVwiOjM4NzU1NixcImxcIjoxNzMyNDE4MTEyMDcxOTM2NjMsXCJyXCI6MTczMjQxODIzMzYxMjM4NTIwfSIsInMiOiJiODA1ZjgyMzJkOTJmODAxIn0" target="_blank">Sarah Smelser: Sandia</a>Sandia&nbsp;is&nbsp;an ongoing series of monotypes begun in 2023. For Smelser, contemplation of the situational experience of being in&nbsp;a specific physical space is central, and to this end she seeks out impactful landscapes. Her daily ritual of walking becomes a method of attuning to the shifting qualities of light, smell, sound, and the subtle rhythms of a place; the unpacking of these sensory perceptions into visual form is the basis of her practice.Though the works in the "Sandia" series were born of a particular place, they do not attempt to describe it. Instead, the visual and physical experience of place—its memories, impressions, and contrasts to familiarity—feeds Smelser’s abstract sensibility. Fifteen works from the series are shown in this collection.The "Sandia" prints emerged from the artist’s lifelong love of the high desert environments of the American Southwest and, more specifically, from several weeks she spent at an artist residency in Albuquerque, NM, in 2022. Albuquerque sits on land that slopes from the Sandia Mountains down to the Rio Grande. The Sandias—Spanish for watermelon—were named for their warm pink-red color at sunset. The city presses up against the mountains, and harsh desert conditions permeate the urban environment. The intersection of the urban and natural landscapes became a particular focus for Smelser during her daily plantigrade perambulations.

Sarah Smelser: Sandia (online exhibition)

Celebrating a remarkable fifty-year period of artistic invention, this exhibition largely comprises drawings never before seen outside of Dunham’s own studio and highlights a more holistic look at his career. This show will strengthen our understanding of Dunham’s explorations of figuration to abstraction and everything in between.

Carroll Dunham: Drawings, 1974–2024

In partnership with Chicago Housing Authority, during the summer of 2025 Hyde Park Art Center carried out a mural production program. Artist and educator&nbsp;Dorian&nbsp;Sylvain led a select group of young adults to design and complete a mural on the exterior of Hyde Park Art Center’s building. The education of individuals of all ages and backgrounds is core to Sylvain’s practice, with a particular focus on students within the age group of 18 – 25 years old. Sylvain’s teaching and leadership with this group centered on developing artistic skills and professionalism, while working with Art Center community to carry out a design process towards a finished mural. Through hands-on experience, this summer cohort were provided with materials, resources, and instruction to complete a large-scale mural while being exposed to professional artists, public art in Chicago through, and the Art Center’s expansive community.

Nature is Arts Muse

DOCUMENT is delighted to present&nbsp;Dabin Ahn’s first solo exhibition with the gallery, opening on Friday, March 27.Dabin Ahn (b. 1988, Seoul, Korea) lives and works in Chicago, IL. He creates paintings populated by flora, fauna, vessels, candles, and ceramic fragments, motifs that function as representations of the self. Ahn’s paintings also incorporate sculptural elements such as hand-built frames that part to reveal images along the canvas edge. Light plays a central role in the artist’s lexicon, suggesting an illuminating presence even when its source is hidden. These elements collectively blur the boundaries between the material and the imagined, evoking an emotional depth reflective of the human experience. Ahn received a BFA and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Selected solo exhibitions include François Ghebaly, Los Angeles; OCHI, Los Angeles; Harper’s, New York; 1969, New York. Recent group exhibitions include Make Room, Los Angeles; Harper’s, East Hampton; and The Hole, Los Angeles. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GE; X Museum, Beijing, China.

Dabin Ahn

Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks is a groundbreaking new exhibition featuring nearly 60 futuristic footwear designs pushing the boundaries of what footwear can be. Exhibiting an incredible mix of fashion, design, gaming, new media, architecture, and material arts as well as sustainable and collaborative practices, the exhibition showcases work by designers as diverse as Rem D. Koolhaas and Zaha Hadid, innovators Mr. Bailey and Salehe Bembury, as well as designs made in collaboration with fashion icons Rick Owens, Stella McCartney, and Yohji Yamamoto, and top gaming and innovation companies such as PlayStation, Gravity Sketch, and more.Future Now features sections exploring Innovation, Sustainability, Transformative, and Virtual shoes. Exhibition highlights include the self-lacing Nike MAG (first conceived for the movie Back to the Future Part II), digitally designed and 3D-printed shoes, sneakers made from mushroom leather and reclaimed ocean plastics, virtual footwear, and more.“The future is always being shaped by the present. The exhibition includes many incredible and innovative new footwear designs that are promising to transform what we will wear tomorrow. From sneakers created to address issues related to sustainability and inclusion to shoes that blur the line between the real world and the metaverse, this exhibition explores how forward-looking creators are helping us step into the future.”—Elizabeth Semmelhack, Director and Senior Curator, Bata Shoe Museum

Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks

The sun was formed 4.6 billion years ago. It takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds for its light to travel to Earth. The calendar as we know it, based on cycles of the solar year, was first implemented four and a half centuries ago in 1582. Days still track our planet’s rotation. Years follow our orbit around the sun. Months originally matched lunar cycles. The average human life span equals 26,784 nights or sunrises. In some places, where people have to watch the sky for other reasons, it’s 12,000 less. The oldest person on record lived 122 years. The oldest living now is 115. The clock is a device that constitutes time as it measures it. Time used to be local, based on the sun’s position. That changed on “The Day of Two Noons,” in 1883, when U.S. railroads adopted standardized time zones. Four people who woke up this morning can say they’ve been on the moon. No one has stood there since 1972. Up to 6500 stars are visible to the naked eye at any one location. In most cities around the world, one sees only a fraction of this. Palomar Observatory, on a California mountain, once had the largest optical telescope in the world. It lost the title in 1976, but it’s still used to observe celestial objects, collecting incoming light. Italo Calvino wrote a book about a person, a seeker of the cosmic in the everyday, who shares his name with that place. At 118 pages,&nbsp;Mr. Palomar&nbsp;takes maybe 3 to 4 hours to read. AI doesn’t experience time as a continuous flow, or have a concept for it like we do. Its perception of “now”, if one can say that, will change as its processing speed increases. We can predict where all the stars in the sky will be a hundred years from now. There isn’t a good count for the number of fireflies every summer, but it’s easily in the hundreds of millions, or more. Each one lives for only a few weeks after emerging from the ground. Once there were 3 to 5 billion passenger pigeons flying overhead in America. Now there are none. Palomar&nbsp;is a group exhibition in two parts. Curated by Karsten Lund. Friends of Palomar Patron Circle: Maria Christina &amp; Guy-Karim Caland Puymartin. Renaissance Society programs are supported by the Teiger Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Image: Sarah and Joseph Belknap,&nbsp;4 Months of the Sun, 2014

Palomar (Part 1)

GRAY is pleased to announce&nbsp;Roger Brown: Weathervane, the first monographic exhibition at the gallery dedicated to Brown since announcing exclusive representation of the artist’s estate.&nbsp;Opening at GRAY Chicago on March 19,&nbsp;Weathervane&nbsp;explores the artist’s vision of an emotionally charged contemporary life set at the tense border between the built environment and the natural world.Featuring eleven paintings from the 1980s and 1990s, the exhibition reflects Brown’s clarity of vision as an artist both unafraid to face sociopolitical headwinds and unable to ignore ecological destruction.The exhibition opens with a public reception from 5-7 PM on March 19 and remains on view through June 13.&nbsp;Roger Brown: Weathervane&nbsp;will travel to GRAY New York for a presentation at the gallery’s Madison Avenue space opening on July 8.<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ennouncement.exhibit-e.com/t/y-l-ajdujlt-sykijfhl-t/" target="_blank">Learn More</a> Image: Roger Brown,&nbsp;Lake Effect, 1980. © The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Brown Family.

Roger Brown: Weathervane

John Stezaker, the British artist known for his groundbreaking conceptual collage cycles,&nbsp;debuts a new body of work&nbsp;at GRAY Chicago this spring. Titled&nbsp;Raft, the exhibition features a series of uncanny landscapes that mend together two images from the artist’s archives to create a single composition. Sourced from nineteenth-century British books—ostensibly about world travel, but flaunting the geographic extent of the empire—Raftis a continuation of the radically incisive collage techniques Stezaker has been pursuing for nearly six decades. The exhibition opens at GRAY Chicago on Saturday, March 28 with an artist walkthrough at 2:30 PM and a public reception from 3-5 PM. <a style="color: rgb(70, 70, 70);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://ennouncement.exhibit-e.com/t/y-l-atiikhl-sykijfhl-t/" target="_blank">Learn More</a>

John Stezaker: Raft

Ann Toebbe’s ongoing series,&nbsp;Cooler by the Lake,&nbsp;is set in Hyde Park. For nearly two decades, Toebbe has lived in this Southside Chicago neighborhood with her husband, working and raising her two daughters and stepson. Toebbe’s domestic paintings explore the people, places, culture, and climate that are woven into her daily routine as a working artist and mother—home, garden, studio, grocery store, bakery, park, and local school. Her densely composed multi-point-of-view vignettes capture the sensory impressions and memory layers accumulated in hours and days spent in Hyde Park, meditating on the realization that this is the neighborhood her children know as home and where Toebbe and her husband will grow old.

Ann Toebbe: Cooler by the Lake

The storied city of Djenné, a center of Islamic learning, study, and scholarship since the twelfth century, is the hometown of Bamako-based photographer&nbsp;Hamdia Traoré&nbsp;(b. 1992, Mali).&nbsp;The thirty portraits in Traore’s series&nbsp;Des marabouts de Djenné (Marabouts of Jenne)&nbsp;reflect his intimate connections to the city’s people and deep history. Learned and devout, marabouts teach in Djenné’s over 50 Qur’anic schools, offer spiritual guidance, and treat ailments through their knowledge of the Qur’an.Made during a time of political and social upheaval in Mali, these portraits reflect enduring cultural resilience. Each image depicts a marabout seated with the tools of his practice—books, Qur’an boards, amulets, and prayer beads—framed by the architecture and atmosphere of Djenné. The consistent format underscores their collective identity, while individual poses and captions highlight personal roles and neighborhoods.Traoré’s work will be shown alongside mid-20th-century black-and-white portraits of marabouts by Malian photographers&nbsp;Mamadou Cissé, Abdourahmane Sakaly, and&nbsp;Tijani Sitou. Drawn from the Archive of Malian Photography, these earlier images share visual parallels and deepen the historical context.&nbsp;Together, these images illuminate evolving perspectives on spiritual authority, identity, and visual representation in Mali.This exhibition is developed in collaboration with the artist and professor Candace Keller, co-founder of the&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://amp.matrix.msu.edu/" target="_blank">Archive of Malian Photography</a>.

Hamdia Traoré’s “Des marabouts de Djenné” and Muslim Portraiture in Mali

2025 Master of Fine Arts degree candidates — present their thesis projects and conclude their residencies in the Department of Art, Theory, and Practice at Northwestern University.This exhibition and the associated events are co-organized by the Department of Art, Theory, and Practice and the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University. Support provided by the Norton S. Walbridge Fund; the Myers Foundations; the Jerrold Loebl Fund for the Arts; and the Alsdorf Gallery Endowment.

Art, Theory, and Practice

This exhibition foregrounds the University of Chicago’s pivotal role in studying and exhibiting contemporary Chinese art since the mid-1990s. In February 1999, Wu Hung, Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Chinese Art History at the university, opened his first exhibition at the Smart Museum of Art. Entitled&nbsp;Transience: Chinese Experimental Art at the End of the Twentieth Century&nbsp;(1999),&nbsp;&nbsp;the exhibition – and many more Wu curated in the ensuing years – was field-defining and forged new avenues for situating Chinese art within a broader global contemporary framework.Taking these earlier exhibitions as points of departure,&nbsp;Beyond Boundaries: Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art at the Smart&nbsp;reflects on the enduring adaptability of contemporary art from China as it continues to grow within and beyond cultural and academic institutions. Bringing together artworks acquired by the Museum over the last three decades, archival materials, ephemera, as well as new work,&nbsp;Beyond Boundaries&nbsp;explores how artists navigate and challenge physical limitations across cultural, environmental, and political terrains. Through strategies of fluidity, they confront dominant social expectations and political hegemonies – not only within a rapidly transforming China, but also amid broader global uncertainties. In doing so,&nbsp;Beyond Boundaries&nbsp;invites us to revisit fleeting moments, environments, and actions, and urges us to reconnect, return, and remember.SUPPORTSupport for&nbsp;Beyond Boundaries&nbsp;is provided&nbsp;by Markovitz Family Foundation for the Arts and Education. Additional support is provided by the Smart Museum's Board of Governors, and SmartPartners.&nbsp;Presented in&nbsp;the Robert and Joan Feitler Gallery, and the Joel and Carole Bernstein Gallery.

Beyond Boundaries: Three Decades of Contemporary Chinese Art at the Smart

From a 6th-century gilt bronze Buddhist sculpture to white porcelain and contemporary paintings of the late 20th century, the works of art in this exhibition demonstrate the artistic legacy produced on the Korean peninsula over millennia. Among the 140 artworks on view, 22 are officially recognized as National Treasures or Treasures by the Korean government.

Korean National Treasures: 2,000 Years of Art

Alma Thomas (1891–1978) is a singular figure of twentieth-century American art. She developed her form of abstraction – characterized by the dazzling interplay of pattern and hue – late in life, after retiring from a long career as a schoolteacher. Her vibrant and rhythmic art transcended established genres, incorporating elements of gestural abstraction and color field painting and creating a style distinctly her own.Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas&nbsp;draws on the extensive holdings of the artist’s paintings at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) and offers an intimate view of Thomas’s evolving practice during her most prolific period, from 1959 to 1978. At a deeply politicized moment in American life, Thomas’s abiding sources of inspiration became the cosmos, nature, and music. As she stated, “Through color I have sought to concentrate on beauty and happiness, rather than on man’s inhumanity to man.” The exhibition&nbsp;invites visitors to see the world through the eyes of Alma Thomas.SUPPORTComposing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas&nbsp;is organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Generous support has been provided by the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, Chris G. Harris, the Wolf Kahn Foundation, and Susan Talley.

Composing Color: Paintings by Alma Thomas

The Shape of Color, A Formalist Painting Exhibition

The devastation of the two world wars played a pivotal role in shaping the field of modern plastic surgery. In the early twentieth century, surgeons became artisans—suturing torn flesh like tailors mending fabric, reinforcing facial structures like carpenters restoring damaged frames. These groundbreaking reconstructive techniques laid the foundation for a discipline that would evolve beyond necessity into the realm of aesthetics.Simultaneously, artists—painters, sculptors, and draftsmen documenting the wars—engaged in parallel work. They studied the human form, deconstructing and reimagining faces and bodies through drawings, sculpture, and canvas. Anatomical study, once central to classical realism, became a bridge between art and medicine, guiding surgeons in their quest to restore symmetry, balance, and expression. The artist’s eye informed the surgeon’s hand, just as surgical reconstructions inspired new artistic interpretations of the human body.By the latter half of the twentieth century, plastic surgery had moved beyond reconstruction to self-reinvention. Like artists shaping raw material into beauty, surgeons refined and reshaped faces and bodies to align with personal desires and cultural ideals. The line between restoration and enhancement blurred, and the human body itself became a canvas for transformation.With the dawn of the new millennium came once-unimaginable feats—most notably, full-face transplantation. Surgeons, like sculptors working in living clay, not only rebuilt faces but gave patients entirely new ones. These innovations merged medicine, aesthetics, and identity in unprecedented ways.Today, the relationship between plastic surgery and art continues to evolve. Surgeons and artists share a common pursuit: to shape, refine, and redefine the human form. Whether working with marble or muscle, canvas or cartilage, both seek to capture the essence of beauty, resilience, and identity in constant flux.The International Museum of Surgical Science is proud to present these coinciding exhibitions as&nbsp;"A Year of Plastic Surgery"—a yearlong exploration of this remarkable field. Through monthly programs, we celebrate the masters of both flesh and form, bridging the worlds of surgical innovation and figurative art. Header Image: A soldier of Company K, 110th Regt. Infantry (formerly 3rd and 10th Inf., Pennsylvania National Guard), just wounded, receiving first-aid treatment from a comrade. Varennes-en-Argonne, France, on September 26, 1918. U.S. Army / U.S. National Archives

The Artistry of Plastic Surgery

From Cobalt to Indigo: The Power of Blue in East Asia is an exploration of one of the most enduring and influential colors in global art history. Spanning centuries of Chinese and Japanese creativity, the exhibition traces how the color blue—once among the rarest and most prized pigments—shaped artistic innovation, cultural exchange, and aesthetic identity across East Asia.From the luminous depths of cobalt-painted porcelain to the brilliance of carved lapis lazuli and the bold Prussian blue of Japanese ukiyo-e prints, this exhibition brings together works that illuminate the remarkable journey of blue across materials and artistic traditions. From Cobalt to Indigo will explore symbolism, craftsmanship, technological advancements, and cross-cultural influences. It showcases blue as both a material and an evolving metaphor. This exhibition invites audiences to see a familiar color anew and to experience the profound beauty and cultural resonance of blue in East Asian art.

From Cobalt to Indigo: The Power of Blue in East Asia

Weeds Grow in All Directions&nbsp;is an exhibition of Cydney Lewis's collage works and large-scale assemblages. Using everyday materials found in her daily life–plastic bags, packing paper, magazine cutouts, as well as rhinestones and textiles–Lewis creates otherworldly landscapes that prompt meditation on the destruction and resilience of the natural world. The works in the exhibition reward close looking—to find the extraordinary in the overlooked, to reconnect with energies around us, and to feel the pulse of our shared ecology through playful wonder and poignant reflection. In this body of work, the resilient weed is both metaphor and guide, challenging our perceptions of the disregarded and revealing the quiet spirit inherent in all natural matter. In Lewis's work, the material world intersects with the realm of elemental spirits, creating a layered tapestry of human emotion and urgent ecological awareness.

Cydney M. Lewis: Weeds Grow in All Directions

<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.hydeparkart.org/" target="_blank">Hyde Park Art Center</a>, the renowned non-profit hub for contemporary art located on Chicago’s vibrant South Side, is proud to announce a major solo exhibition by interdisciplinary artist Alison Ruttan. Visualizing the catastrophic impact of global warming on coastal communities, the immersive installation places visitors at the center of a submerged suburban neighborhood to invite reflections on the climate crisis. On view from&nbsp;April 4-July 12, 2026, the expansive exhibition takes up 2300 sq. ft. gallery space with over 160 cast ceramic forms. A free public opening reception with the artist will take place on&nbsp;Saturday, April 4, 2026 from 1-4 p.m.Throughout her career, Ruttan has created many visual representations of massive traumatic events, such as the Gombe Chimpanzee War, the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon, the “Highway of Death” in Kuwait, and the Syrian Civil War.&nbsp;For Ruttan, the labor involved in rendering these events visible is an attempt to emphasize their urgency for herself and viewers. The title&nbsp;The Paradox of Inaction&nbsp;refers to a mistaken belief that doing nothing is risk-free, while in reality, failing to act has consequences, increases risks, and limits ways forward. She hopes the exhibition, which took more than two years to complete, is a call to action for shifting unsustainable habits and preventing further inaction toward climate issues.Composed of over 160 cast ceramic forms, this installation is arranged in low-lying platforms throughout the gallery. At first glance, the ceramic forms appear abstract; seen collectively, they create the illusion of a submerged suburban neighborhood. Works from Ruttan’s earlier series&nbsp;High Water&nbsp;(2023 - 2024), a group of miniature ceramic sculptures of flooded homes, will be on view on the second floor of the Art Center, complementing the large-scale installation on the first floor. With an otherworldly appearance, the glazed surfaces of the ceramics are suggestive of pools of blackwater and mildewed walls.Ruttan shares why she believes an immersive art installation is a powerful tool for change:&nbsp;“To know something is not the same as comprehending it. I work with the belief that art can sometimes do a better job of convincing than facts alone. In looking at a work of art, we allow our intuitive thinking to mingle with factual thinking. We go back and forth between the contemplation of the physical objects' form and the suggested context that exists outside the art gallery. In bridging these different ways of thinking, we often feel we are coming closer to the truth”.This exhibition is part of an ongoing annual series of large-scale artworks commissioned by Hyde Park Art Center, which in the past included new works by Edra Soto, Faheem Majeed, Lan Tuazon, and Yasmin Spiro, among others. A series of public programs will offer opportunities for audiences to further engage with the exhibition.&nbsp;Alison Ruttan: The Paradox of Inaction&nbsp;is generously supported by the Graham Foundation.ABOUT THE ARTISTAlison Ruttan is a project-based artist whose work focuses on topical investigations. Her work has been exhibited in Chicago at the Riverside Arts Center, Chicago Cultural Center, Weinberg Newton Gallery, The Museum of Contemporary Photography, and Document Gallery, among others. Nationally, her work has been presented at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; Crystal Bridges Art Museum in Bentonville, AR;&nbsp;Elmhurst Art Museum, IL; Kent State University Art Museum, OH; The Frist Museum, TN; and The Drawing Center, NY. International presentations of Ruttan’s work have included Galerie Wit in Wageningen, Netherlands, and Rocket Gallery in London, UK. Ruttan has received awards and residencies from the Illinois Arts Council, Jerome Foundation, Art &amp; Technology Residency; Wexner Museum, Artists Residency; and Wild Animal Park. She is an associate professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she has taught for over 25 years.

Alison Ruttan: The Paradox of Inaction

The sun was formed 4.6 billion years ago. It takes 8 minutes and 20 seconds for its light to travel to Earth. The calendar as we know it, based on cycles of the solar year, was first implemented four and a half centuries ago in 1582. Days still track our planet’s rotation. Years follow our orbit around the sun. Months originally matched lunar cycles. The average human life span equals 26,784 nights or sunrises. In some places, where people have to watch the sky for other reasons, it’s 12,000 less. The oldest person on record lived 122 years. The oldest living now is 115. The clock is a device that constitutes time as it measures it. Time used to be local, based on the sun’s position. That changed on “The Day of Two Noons,” in 1883, when U.S. railroads adopted standardized time zones. Four people who woke up this morning can say they’ve been on the moon. No one has stood there since 1972. Up to 6500 stars are visible to the naked eye at any one location. In most cities around the world, one sees only a fraction of this. Palomar Observatory, on a California mountain, once had the largest optical telescope in the world. It lost the title in 1976, but it’s still used to observe celestial objects, collecting incoming light. Italo Calvino wrote a book about a person, a seeker of the cosmic in the everyday, who shares his name with that place. At 118 pages,&nbsp;Mr. Palomar&nbsp;takes maybe 3 to 4 hours to read. AI doesn’t experience time as a continuous flow, or have a concept for it like we do. Its perception of “now”, if one can say that, will change as its processing speed increases. We can predict where all the stars in the sky will be a hundred years from now. There isn’t a good count for the number of fireflies every summer, but it’s easily in the hundreds of millions, or more. Each one lives for only a few weeks after emerging from the ground. Once there were 3 to 5 billion passenger pigeons flying overhead in America. Now there are none. Palomar&nbsp;is a group exhibition in two parts. Curated by Karsten Lund. Friends of Palomar Patron Circle: Maria Christina &amp; Guy-Karim Caland Puymartin. Renaissance Society programs are supported by the Teiger Foundation and The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Image: Sarah and Joseph Belknap,&nbsp;12 Months of the Sun, 2024

Palomar (Part 2)

Martin Wong: Chinatown USA&nbsp;traces the development of the work of the queer painter and poet, highlighting Wong’s connection with the art and&nbsp;culture&nbsp;of&nbsp;Asia,&nbsp;inparticular through&nbsp;his&nbsp;collecting&nbsp;of&nbsp;pre-modern&nbsp;Asian&nbsp;art and antiquities and his explorations of the Chinatowns of New York and San Francisco from 1970 through the 1990s. A large portion of the exhibition is devoted to his Chinatown paintings, which were the subject of a major exhibition titled&nbsp;Chinatown USA&nbsp;presented at P.P.O.W. Gallery in New York City and the San Francisco Art Institute in 1993. These works depict notable architecture such as the Chinese pagoda-style building at 241 Canal Street, iconic actor Bruce Lee and Peking opera performer Mei Lanfang, festivities like the Chinese New Year Parade, and&nbsp;street&nbsp;scenes. The exhibition also explores Wong’s interest in counterculture communities (such as Puerto Rican poets and graffiti artists) and language through his poetry and American Sign Language paintings. The latter are presented alongside a&nbsp;small&nbsp;selection&nbsp;of works by artists of the modern graffiti movement from Wong’s personal&nbsp;collection,&nbsp;which he donatedto&nbsp;the Museum&nbsp;of the City of New York in 1994. Wong died in 1999 at the age of 53 from an AIDS-related illness.&nbsp;Martin Wong: Chinatown USA&nbsp;is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue published by Halsted A&amp;A Foundation and Gregory R. Miller &amp; Co. Edited by Yasufumi Nakamori, it includes six essays by leading scholars Solomon&nbsp;Adler, Lisa Hsiao Chen, Mark&nbsp;D.&nbsp;Johnson,&nbsp;Vivian&nbsp;Li, Margo Machida, and Lydia Yee.

Martin Wong: Chinatown USA

Lavar Munroe&nbsp;is a Bahamian interdisciplinary artist whose work explores the human condition through a blend of immersive travel, cultural research, and material experimentation. Working across mixed media painting, sculpture, and drawing, Munroe&nbsp;operates&nbsp;in the spirit of an anthropologist—integrating into communities across Africa, including Tanzania, Senegal, and Zimbabwe, to engage firsthand with local rituals, ceremonies, and belief systems. These encounters, combined with his upbringing in the Bahamas, fuel a practice rooted in storytelling, folklore, and mythology.&nbsp;Munroe’s richly layered works—often described as hybrids between painting and relief sculpture—combine&nbsp;everyday&nbsp;and symbolic materials such as glass, synthetic flowers, feathers, and&nbsp;newspaper&nbsp;with acrylic, oil pastel, and house paint. These elements, many drawn from his childhood and travels, are woven into fantastical, dreamlike compositions that examine themes of home, utopia, escape, and belonging. His work challenges viewers to navigate multiple narratives that span personal memory, cultural identity, and collective imagination.&nbsp;&nbsp;Munroe (b.1982, Nassau, Bahamas) earned his BFA from Savannah College of Art and Design (2007) and MFA Studio Art at Washington University, St. Louis (2013).&nbsp;He also attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (2013) and was awarded a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (2016), Benny Andrews Fellow from the MacDowell Colony (2016), and The Carolina Postdoctoral Program for Faculty Diversity-University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill NC (2014). Recent solo exhibitions include&nbsp;Larkin Durey, London, UK (2024);&nbsp;moniquemeloche, Chicago, IL (2023);&nbsp;Jack Bell Gallery, London, England (2022, 2021, 2014); Walters Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD (2021); NOMAD, Brussels, Belgium (2017); Meadows Museum of Art, Shreveport, LA (2018); SCAD Museum of Art and Gutstein Gallery, Savannah, GA (2016); and The Central Bank, Nassau, Bahamas (2010).&nbsp;Munroe’s work has been exhibited widely nationally and internationally at&nbsp;The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, Detroit, MI;&nbsp;Kunstmuseum Basel, St. Alban-Graben, CH;&nbsp;Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, SA;&nbsp;The&nbsp;National Art Gallery of&nbsp;The Bahamas; Centre Pompidou Metz, FR; Ichihara Lakeside Museum; Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art, Virginia Beach, VA; Perez Art Museum Miami, FL; Jack Bell Gallery, London, UK; and Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, NC, among others.&nbsp;Munroe will have a solo show with&nbsp;moniquemeloche&nbsp;in 2026 and will co-represent&nbsp;The Bahamas at the 2026 Venice Biennale.&nbsp;Munroe’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, MD;&nbsp;Fondation&nbsp;de France;&nbsp;Fondation&nbsp;Gandur&nbsp;pour&nbsp;l’Art, Genève, Switzerland; The Studio Museum of Harlem, New York, NY; The Central Bank of the Bahamas, Nassau, BA; The National Art Gallery of the Bahamas, Nassau, BA; and the MAXXI Museum, Rome, IT. He is the recipient of honors and awards including the Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts in honor of Robert De Niro, Sr., (2023), the Sondheim Artscape Prize Finalist (2021), Distinguished Alums Award from Sam Fox School of Art and Design from Washington University of St. Louis (2018), Postdoctoral Award for Research Excellence from the University of North Carolina (2015), Sam Fox Dean’s Initiative Fund (2013), Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant (2013), Joan Mitchell Foundation Scholarship (2012), The Kraus Family Foundation Award (2011), and The National Endowment for the Arts Grant (2011). Munroe lives and works between Baltimore, MD, and&nbsp;The Bahamas.&nbsp;

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