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

<h2>Think Again</h2> December 3, 2026 - March 13, 2027 Think Again presents posters created by the Yugoslavian artist collective IRWIN for the 1989-90 Slovenian National Theatre season. In the year 1984 the IRWIN artists joined with other artists to form the Neue Slowenische Kunst (New Slovenian Art) political art collective, or NSK. Aware that the government was co-opting artwork and images to bolster their power, NSK intentionally used only recycled images to challenge the authoritarian establishment. This exhibit examines how the IRWIN Collective artists used their artwork and design to undermine the oppressive communist regime of former Yugoslavia. Think Again is centered around IRWIN Collective posters, held in the College of DuPage Permanent Art Collection, which will be contextualized with historical information and showcased alongside contemporary designs.&nbsp; The title “Think Again” is related to the term “doublethink” introduced by George Orwell in the novel 1984. Orwell presented “Doublethink” as the act of holding two opposing ideas in the mind at the same time, tricking oneself into accepting a false fact while forgetting you ever knew the truth. This concept parallels propaganda attempts by the Yugoslavia regime that the IRWIN Collective worked against.&nbsp;

Think Again

A representational painter inspired by the WPA and Regionalist artists of the 1930s, Dan Brinkmeier’s personal artwork often represents the spiritual connections that rural Midwestern people find within their landscape, and the small ceremonies and rituals performed by Illinois farmers in their everyday lives.The Secret World of Dan Brinkmeier&nbsp;is organized by Rockford Art Museum Chief Curator, Carrie Johnson. The exhibition is sponsored by Women’s Art Board and partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.

The Secret World of Dan Brinkmeier

Sylvia Neil and Daniel Fischel GalleriesSlow Dance&nbsp;features a group of artists who use performance to recover forms of slowness that resist contemporary demands to constantly perform. The exhibition approaches performance in two registers: as an artistic medium rooted in the live presence of bodies and as an economic imperative characterized by the pervasive demand for productivity, speed and efficiency. At any given moment, we might feel this pressure differently—it may inspire and motivate us, spur optimism or provoke anxiety and depression, induce fatigue or provide fuel to keep going in spite of it all. Through gestures of suspension, inaction and stillness, the artists in the exhibition investigate the politics of the body’s labor and maintenance.Featuring works by Brendan Fernandes, Gordon Hall, Geumhyung Jeong, Carolyn Lazard, Melanie McLain and Cally Spooner, this multidisciplinary exhibition includes painting, sculpture, video and live performance. Focused on how bodies wear away and how they endure, these artists contend with the near constant obligation to perform in labor markets, the protracted economies of waiting and fatigue’s latent potential as a form of resistance. While exploring conditions of failure, breakdown or exhaustion, artists in the show model new modes of reciprocity, intimacy and connection that challenge the weathering effects of our contemporary imperative to perform.The exhibition will include in-gallery performance activations throughout the run of the show.Slow Dance&nbsp;is organized by Jadine Collingwood, Pamela Alper Associate Curator.

Slow Dance

Life is an Art: The Collection of Jan Petry&nbsp;highlights 30 artworks donated to IAM by the late, long-time board member Jan Petry. Curated by IAM Chief Curator&nbsp;Alison Amick, the exhibition showcases paintings, drawings, and sculptures by major figures in American self-taught art, including Emery Blagdon, James Castle, Ulysses Davis, Charles Dellschau, William Hawkins, and Martín Ramírez, as well as Günther Schützenhöfer, a resident artist at Gugging, a progressive art studio in Austria. Those artworks are complemented by objects that reflect Petry’s passion for folk art, design, furniture, and maritime themes, offering a glimpse into the vision of a dedicated collector.

Life is an Art: The Collection of Jan Petry

<a href="https://imss.org/the-artistry-of-plastic-surgery/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Register Here</a> 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 <h1 class="ql-align-center"> </h1>

The Artistry of Plastic Surgery

This exhibition takes a groundbreaking look at the little-known history of printing on fabric from the fifteenth century to the present. These stunning artworks, books, broadsides, and maps were initially prized as unique luxury editions of works normally printed on paper. Fabrics were substituted for paper at great cost, often using imported materials.&nbsp;Printing on Fabric&nbsp;also investigates the intentional choices of the printers and commissioners, some of whom were female, and shows how the origins of these lavish materials reflected the global world of the early modern textile economy.Though the sheen of foreign silks enhanced the beauty of these objects for specific recipients, the techniques used to make them soon served wider audiences and cheaper fabrics equally well. Indeed, while surviving early examples are kept in museum and library collections, they inspired more recent printed wearables such as memorial imagery on t-shirts. From the ethereally unfamiliar to the everyday, exhibition audiences will find these fabric printings dazzling, intriguing, and thought-provoking.The accompanying exhibition catalog will be available in Fall 2026.<a href="https://www.newberry.org/calendar/printing-on-fabric" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Details</a>

Printing on Fabric

The Evanston Art Center (EAC) is excited to welcome the public to our upcoming exhibition, Contemporary Reflections on Tiffany Glass: Light, Color &amp; Form. The exhibition will be on display from January 10 - April 15, 2027, and will be free and open to the public. The Evanston Art Center and Richard H. Driehaus Art Exhibition Lending Foundation (AELF) are celebrating a collaboration between our institutions with a special loan exhibition creating a dialogue between historic Tiffany stained glass windows and contemporary artists. Contemporary Reflections on Tiffany Glass: Light, Color &amp; Form will be on view at the EAC from January 10 to April 15, 2027.

Contemporary Reflections on Tiffany Glass: Light, Color & Form

The Driehaus Museum announces dates for Emma Stebbins: Carving Out History, a touring exhibition that examines the full scope of Stebbins’s history‑making career as one of the most significant American sculptors of the nineteenth century. From 1857 to 1870, Stebbins created innovative marble and bronze sculptures while living in Rome and studying within the circles of historic sculptors. Her work models inventive and incisive interpretations of literary and biblical subjects, as well as unprecedented allegories of American industry. With the Bethesda Fountain in 1863, Stebbins became the first woman to earn a commission for a public sculpture from the City of New York. Organized by the Heckscher Museum of Art in Huntington, New York, earlier this year, Emma Stebbins: Carving Out History is curated by Karli Wurzelbacher, Chief Curator of the Heckscher Museum, and is the first museum exhibition devoted to the late artist’s work. Emma Stebbins: Carving Out History takes place at the Driehaus Museum, 50 E. Erie Street, from October 8, 2026 to April 18, 2027.&nbsp;&nbsp;The exhibition reunites Stebbins’s oeuvre of neoclassical works, including 13 marble sculptures from across the US and Europe, in addition to paintings and a wealth of archival materials contextualizing her practice, her network, and her popularity on both sides of the pond. Stebbins was married to renowned Shakespearean actress Charlotte Cushman and one section of the exhibition prominently displays Stebbins’s bust of Cushman along with photographs, rare works on paper, and first editions of Stebbins’s posthumous biography of her partner. As a professional sculptor in a female marriage in the nineteenth century, Stebbins reimagined what a woman’s life could be in the mid‑nineteenth century, embedding layers of meaning into her work that upend traditional understandings of gender, sexuality, and agency.“In her lifetime, Stebbins was widely celebrated, yet even by the time of her death she was beginning to slip from view, her contributions gradually left out of the history books. This exhibition seeks to correct that quiet erasure and restore her rightful place as a significant artist of her era. We are deeply grateful to Art Bridges for their partnership in bringing renewed attention to her work and ensuring her story is once again seen and valued,” says Driehaus Museum Executive DirectorLisa M. Key. “Stebbins’s life and art reflect enduring questions about recognition, memory, and identity. By revisiting her legacy, we hope to illuminate how easily even celebrated artists can be forgotten, and how vital it is to bring their voices back into focus to inspire future generations.”Generous support for Emma Stebbins: Carving Out History is provided by Art Bridges Foundation.Major Support is provided by the Driehaus Trust Company, LLC. and Clare Blessen Ayer and Laura Mandel.&nbsp;&nbsp;ABOUT THE DRIEHAUS MUSEUMThe Driehaus Museum engages and inspires the global community through exploration and ongoing conversations in art, architecture, and design of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its permanent collection and temporary exhibitions are presented in an immersive experience within the restored 1883 Nickerson Mansion, and the 1926 Murphy Auditorium. The Museum’s collection reflects and is inspired by the collecting interests, vision, and focus of its founder, the late Richard H. Driehaus. For more information, visit <a href="http://www.driehausmuseum.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204);" target="_blank">driehausmuseum.org</a> and connect with the Museum on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/pages/Driehaus-Museum/362867207176025" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204);" target="_blank">Facebook</a>, TikTok, and <a href="https://www.instagram.com/driehausmuseum/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204);" target="_blank">Instagram</a>.

Emma Stebbins: Carving Out History

Dr. Charles Smith served as a U.S. Marine in Vietnam, an experience that left lasting wounds and shaped his artistic vision. In the 1980s, he began transforming his Aurora, Ill., home into the African-American Heritage Museum and Black Veterans Archive—a monumental environment of nearly 600 sculptures and 150 monuments honoring African-American history and civil rights. Using found materials, Smith created life-sized figures and symbolic structures referencing slavery, the Middle Passage, the Underground Railroad, African American cultural and political figures, and everyday life. Through the concept of&nbsp;anti-monumentalism, Smith critiques traditional monuments and holds space for histories often excluded from civic memory.Curated by IAM Assistant Curator Christina Stavros,&nbsp;Monumental: The Work of Dr. Charles Smith&nbsp;features pieces from the Museum’s collection alongside select loans, including several recently conserved works now on view for the first time in years.

Monumental: The Work of Dr. Charles Smith

Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers&nbsp;is a major survey that covers nearly thirty years of Rashid Johnson’s (b, 1977, Chicago, IL; lives in New York) practice. Presented in the Griffin Galleries, the exhibition examines Johnson’s work from his perspective as a student of art history; a consumer and translator of Black popular, literary, and intellectual culture; and a cultural participant in the age of globalization and its aftereffects. With works including photographs, videos, large-scale installations, immersive paintings and multimedia assemblages,&nbsp;A Poem for Deep Thinkers&nbsp;asks fundamental questions about the fragile human psyche in the face of ineffable historic forces. Johnson often says that “the subject of my work is freedom,” and throughout the exhibition visitors will encounter pieces inspired by radical artistic and political movements from the 1960s to the 1990s that modeled how individuals and communities can resist established orders to carve new paths through history.&nbsp; A Poem for Deep Thinkers&nbsp;features over seventy-five artworks that span the full breadth of Johnson’s career, including works from his seminal&nbsp;The New Negro Escapist Social&nbsp;and&nbsp;Athletic Club&nbsp;series, the&nbsp;Cosmic Slops&nbsp;and other black-soap shelf paintings, spray-painted text works and the&nbsp;Anxious Menand&nbsp;Broken Men&nbsp;series. Additionally, Johnson’s film and video projects will be placed intermittently throughout the galleries. Johnson’s latest film,&nbsp;Sanguine (2024)&nbsp;explores familial dynamics through the lens of the artist’s relationships with his father, brother, and son, and features a poem by the poet and activist Amiri Baraka. The subtitle of the exhibition also refers to Baraka and his poem of the same name from 1977. A Poem for Deep Thinkers&nbsp;is Johnson’s third solo exhibition at the MCA, following his first institutional exhibition in 2002 as part of the museum's 12 x 12 series and his mid-career survey,&nbsp;A Message to Our Folks, as part of the Ascendant Artist series in 2012. Accompanying the exhibition is a catalogue that feature essays from exhibition curators Naomi Beckwith and Andrea Karnes, along with contributions by Nana Adusei-Poku, Hendrik Folkerts, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Kevin Quashie, and Odili Donald Odita. Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers&nbsp;was organized by Naomi Beckwith, Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Andrea Karnes, Chief Curator, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The MCA presentation is curated by Jack Schneider, Assistant Curator.

Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers

In 2027, The Block will present&nbsp;Pasados Presentes: Cultural Memory in the Americas, an original, bilingual exhibition that places colonial paintings from the Carl &amp; Marilynn Thoma Foundation’s Art of the Spanish Americas collection in dialogue with contemporary sculpture, textiles, photography, painting, and mixed-media installations by artists from across the Americas and the Philippines.Together, these works reveal how artists have used and adapted materials and artistic forms to transmit cultural memory, reinterpret inherited histories, and shape understandings of identity and place. By approaching materials and media as inseparable from a work's meaning,&nbsp;Pasados Presentes&nbsp;asks how art participates in shaping the history of the Americas and whose stories are preserved, obscured, or reimagined within those narratives.Pasados Presentes: Cultural Memory in the Americas&nbsp;is curated by Jesús Escobar, Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor in the Humanities, and Kyle Stephan, Steven and Lisa Munster Tananbaum Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at The Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University. Lead support for the exhibition is provided by the Carl &amp; Marilynn Thoma Foundation. Additional generous support is provided by the Illinois Arts Council and The Alumnae of Northwestern University.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Pasados Presentes: Cultural Memory in the Americas

Each spring The Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University is pleased to present the work of the Masters of Fine Arts candidates in the&nbsp;<a href="https://art.northwestern.edu/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Department of Art Theory &amp; Practice</a>.&nbsp;The exhibition marks an early milestone in these artists' careers, and also offers a glimpse into the future of contemporary art.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. The Block acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council, the Norton S. Walbridge Fund, the Myers Foundations, the Jerrold Loebl Fund for the Arts, and the Alsdorf Endowment.

2027 Art Theory and Practice MFA Thesis Exhibition

&nbsp;(Windows on Fifth Gallery)Using cut paper, Wisconsin-based Velliquette crafts a site-specific installation that explores the handmade, the ornamental, and the imagination.

Michael Velliquette: Intuitive Patterns

Stairwell GalleriesOccupying the three-story stairwell galleries in the MCA,&nbsp;From the Center: Looking at Lucy Lippard&nbsp;examines the wider impact of the research, writings, activism and exhibitions of renowned art historian, critic and curator Lucy Lippard (b. 1937, New York; lives in Galisteo, NM), who pushed the field of art history toward further inclusivity, through the lens of the MCA’s permanent collection. Over the past six decades, Lippard’s multidisciplinary career has been foundational to the histories of Conceptual, Feminist, Minimalist and Land Art practices of the 1960s and 1970s; the representation of artists of color in the Western canon; the intersection of art and activism; and placemaking for and by artists. Lippard’s work is widely appreciated due to its reach beyond the confines of art history to grapple with real world social issues through the lens of visual art and art criticism.&nbsp;From the Center: Looking at Lucy Lippard&nbsp;is split into three sections: “Form &amp; Feminism,” “The Art Worker as Activist” and “Site, Land, Place,” and will include works from the MCA Collection alongside archival materials, interviews, recordings and texts documenting Lippard’s career and work. “Form &amp; Feminism” will highlight Lippard’s efforts to incorporate women artists and issues in the art historical canon—including the publishing of feminist journal&nbsp;Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics, which ran from 1977 to 1993; her activism on behalf of women artists; and her own writing and curated exhibitions, including&nbsp;Twenty-Six Contemporary Women Artists&nbsp;(1971) and&nbsp;From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women’s Art&nbsp;(1976). The section “The Art Worker as Activist” will consider how artists are mobilized as activists alongside and as part of their artistic practices, as inspired by Lippard’s work within various activist groups such as the Art Workers Coalition and Ad Hoc Women’s Artist Committee. Lastly, “Site, Land, Place” relates to the politics of space—real, imagined or contested; the land and environment; and the power of placemaking. Lippard wrote several books concerned with these ideas, such as&nbsp;The Lure of the Local&nbsp;(1997);&nbsp;On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art, and Place&nbsp;(1999);&nbsp;Undermining: A Wild Ride through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West&nbsp;(2014); and two of her storied “Numbers” exhibitions,&nbsp;557,087&nbsp;(1969) and&nbsp;955,000&nbsp;(1970), which included several notable Land artists. Cumulatively, these presentations will provide a concise overview of select overriding themes that have driven Lippard’s practice throughout the arc of her prolific and singular career.Highlighted in the exhibition are over forty artists who have been featured in her scholarly or curatorial work, or are aligned with or inspired by her practice. Participating artists include Lynda Benglis, Andrea Bowers, Judy Chicago, Robert Colescott, Group Material, Fred Lonidier, Howardena Pindell, Robert Smithson, Michelle Stuart and Amanda Williams, among others. The exhibition will be supplemented by public programs, including a symposium, charting Lippard’s influence over several generations of artists, art historians and curators.&nbsp;From the Center: Looking at Lucy Lippard&nbsp;is organized by Jamillah James, Manilow Senior Curator, with Korina Hernandez, Curatorial Assistant.

From the Center: Looking at Lucy Lippard

What can artworks tell us about how people have sought to heal from past traumas and grief? How can the process of making art become therapeutic? In what ways can objects facilitate healing and protection? The exhibition How Do We Heal? addresses the connections between art and healing.

How Do We Heal?

The Smart Museum of Art is honored to present a site-specific installation entitled&nbsp;Between Us&nbsp;by artist Nina Chanel Abney, on view from September 22, 2026, through July 11, 2027. Commissioned as part of the Smart’s ongoing Threshold series, which brings large-scale installations of contemporary art annually to the Eunice Ratner Reception Gallery in the Museum’s lobby. Nina Chanel Abney&nbsp;takes the most familiar images of American life, drawn from advertising, sports, cartoons, and the news, and turns them against themselves, using humor and accessibility to draw viewers in before the harder questions surface. For the commission at the Smart, Abney created a large-scale 70-feet-wide and 40-feet-high mural, entitled&nbsp;Between Us,&nbsp;that borrows the visual language of childhood instruction, such as diagrams, wall charts, and educational puzzles. The forms stay recognizable, but their reassurances curdle the longer one looks. This site-specific installation will&nbsp;form the opening of Nina Chanel Abney’s major solo exhibition&nbsp;at the Smart,&nbsp;While Supplies Last, which will be on view March 23, 2027, through July 11, 2027.

Nina Chanel Abney: Between Us

Gallery Two, ChicagoPlease join for an opening reception for&nbsp;<a href="http://westernexhibitions.com/artist/paul-nudd/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255);" target="_blank">Paul Nudd</a>‘s sixth solo show at Western Exhibitions, the first focusing on his burgeoning ceramics practice, on Friday, November 6, 2026, 5 to 8pm. More information to come.Image: Paul Nudd ceramics

Paul Nudd

Opening reception August 7, 5-8pm To deeply know something or someone outside of yourself is intimate. You must open your perception to what’s around you, set yourself aside, listen closely, and consider what might misalign with your worldview. And then, a glimmer of connection. Through a series of nonobjective paintings on paper, Wolfkill asks audience members to bear witness to and participate in softness, intimacy, and openness. Pause in front of each painting and let them wash over you. Methods of self protection, the space we hold between ourselves and others, and the masking we engage in to enter social situations “appropriately” must fall away. Vibrant colors and rounded forms create a sense of delight and comfort while spatial relationships amongst elements change as the viewer looks. This body of work asks for tenderness, radical compassion, vulnerability, and joy. It is a space to pause and consider what is possible when we connect to each other with authenticity. Take your time, there’s no rush.

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