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

A visionary journey into the history of clubbing in Italy that starts with a look at its ruins spread across Italy. Its rise and fall, as told by the history’s key players; a tale that lasted 40 years, between nights on the highway and days consumed in after hours clubs. It was a seemingly unstoppable rise, like house music coming out of New York. It’s a story of four generations yearning to be added to a list to get into places of gathering and perdition, where what counts is not what you do during the day, but only who you turn into at night. Forty years of “planet disco” producing culture, art, music and style, among plenty of contradictions and aberrations. Year: 2021Duration: 115′Language: Italian with English subtitlesCountry: ItalyGenre: documentary The screening is part of the series Moto Continuo Film Showcase, inspired by the theme leading the 2026 programming of the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago. The selected titles explore the concept of movement through recent works by Italian film directors: epic journeys, emotional tensions, and cultural currents intertwine to convey the complexity of the historical and social processes that have contributed to shaping the Italian cultural identity. Free with registration

Moto Continuo Film Showcase / “Disco Ruin” by Lisa Bosi and Francesca Zerbetto

This summer, the&nbsp;Driehaus Museum&nbsp;presents&nbsp;Ink &amp; Outrage: 18th&nbsp;Century Satirical Prints in London &amp; Dublin,&nbsp;an exhibition that explores the wit and graphic brilliance displayed by English graphic satirical artists such as James Gillray (1765-1815) and Thomas Rowlandson (1757-1827) to lampoon civics, society, and culture in Georgian London. The exhibition places original prints in dialogue with plagiarized works by artists in Ireland, evoking conversations about piracy, originality, and reproduction that have become more relevant than ever today. Organized by guest curators&nbsp;Silvia Beltrametti&nbsp;and&nbsp;William Laffan&nbsp;and following its debut at the Irish Architectural Archive in Dublin in 2025,&nbsp;Ink &amp; Outrage: 18thCentury Satirical Prints in London &amp; Dublin&nbsp;takes place at the Driehaus Museum, 50 E. Erie Street, from&nbsp;May 15 to September 13, 2026.&nbsp;Now ubiquitous in Internet meme culture and modern-day satire, the groundbreaking use of image and text during the Georgian period was a powerful form of storytelling, holding those in power accountable, and fostering bonds between classes and communities.&nbsp;Ink &amp; Outrage: 18th&nbsp;Century Satirical Prints in London &amp; Dublin&nbsp;includes approximately 100 original prints and features loans from The William A. Gordon Library of British Caricature, the collection of the O’Brien family, and the Richard H. Driehaus Art Exhibition Lending Foundation.The exhibition places original prints alongside plagiarized works made in Ireland,&nbsp;where copyright law of images did not apply and business for replicas flourished. These pirated copies provoked historic debates around authorship and plagiarism that set the stage for current conversations around artificial intelligence, intellectual property, and mass reproduction today.In the context of the Driehaus Museum, the exhibition presents Georgian satirical prints as a vital precursor to the art, architecture, and ideas that shaped the United States during the Gilded Age. The works reflect the visual and political culture of an influential period in Britain and Ireland that went on to inform American taste and civic life.&nbsp;Executive Director of the Driehaus Museum&nbsp;Lisa M. Key&nbsp;says, “Ink &amp; Outrage: 18th&nbsp;Century Satirical Prints in London &amp; Dublin&nbsp;is a model for meaningful international collaboration, strengthening the Museum’s commitments to rigorous scholarship, shared stewardship, and cross-cultural exchange.&nbsp;We hope visitors see the trajectory from these early forms of satire to the present day, and the importance of satire as a public forum for debate and connection.” Co-curator&nbsp;Silvia Beltrametti&nbsp;adds, “Caricature is the intellectual vehicle that speaks truth to power in the fastest, funniest, and most piercing way possible. Behind the blasts of color in these prints lie a remarkable copyright story-- free from the legal constraints, Irish publishers could copy original productions from London.”Major support for this exhibition is provided by the Driehaus Trust Company, LLC. ABOUT THE CURATORSSilvia&nbsp;Beltrametti&nbsp;is&nbsp;a&nbsp;lecturer&nbsp;in&nbsp;the&nbsp;Department&nbsp;of&nbsp;Art&nbsp;History,&nbsp;Theory&nbsp;and&nbsp;Criticism&nbsp;at&nbsp;the&nbsp;School&nbsp;of&nbsp;the&nbsp;Art&nbsp;Institute&nbsp;of&nbsp;Chicago. Beltrametti is an expert on art law and her research focuses on the international trade of art as well as intellectual property, specifically on how copyright shapes artistic production. She has published in the&nbsp;Columbia&nbsp;Journal&nbsp;of&nbsp;Law&nbsp;and&nbsp;the&nbsp;Arts&nbsp;andNorthwestern&nbsp;Journal&nbsp;of&nbsp;Technology&nbsp;&amp;&nbsp;Intellectual Property.&nbsp;In&nbsp;2025&nbsp;she&nbsp;contributed&nbsp;to&nbsp;Myth&nbsp;and&nbsp;Marble,&nbsp;Ancient&nbsp;Roman Sculpture from the Torlonia Collection&nbsp;(ed. Lisa Ayla Çakmak and Katharine&nbsp;A.&nbsp;Ruff,&nbsp;Yale&nbsp;University&nbsp;Press).&nbsp;With&nbsp;William&nbsp;Laffan,&nbsp;she has published two substantial articles on Dublin caricatures in&nbsp;Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies.William Laffan&nbsp;is a cultural historian and the author of numerous books on Irish art and architecture. He served as editor of&nbsp;Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies&nbsp;and has published extensively across a wide variety of cultural topics.&nbsp;In 2014 he co-authored&nbsp;Russborough:&nbsp;A&nbsp;Great&nbsp;Irish&nbsp;House,&nbsp;Its&nbsp;Families&nbsp;and&nbsp;Collections&nbsp;and&nbsp;the following year was historical adviser to the landmark exhibition at the Art&nbsp;Institute&nbsp;of&nbsp;Chicago,&nbsp;Ireland, Crossroads of Art and Design, 1690- 1840&nbsp;and edited the show’s catalogue.&nbsp;In 2024 he curated&nbsp;Thomas Frye, An Irish Artist in London&nbsp;at&nbsp;Dublin&nbsp;Castle.&nbsp;With&nbsp;Silvia&nbsp;Beltrametti, he has published two substantial articles on Dublin caricatures in&nbsp;Irish Architectural and Decorative Studies.&nbsp;Image: After James Gilray,&nbsp;Oh! that this too too solid flesh would melt, Published by William McCleary, Dublin.

Ink & Outrage: 18th Century Satirical Prints in London & Dublin

The Prix Pictet is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading photography awards. Founded in 2008 by the Pictet Group, it seeks to harness the power of photography to draw global attention to critical sustainability issues. To date, the award has completed eleven cycles, each organized around a theme that highlights a distinct facet of sustainability.&nbsp;Storm&nbsp;is the theme of the eleventh cycle.Storm&nbsp;is both a natural phenomenon and a metaphor for the unseen and relentless forces shaping the world today. As a theme, it speaks to the growing volatility of our age, encompassing environmental collapse, political upheaval, economic instability, and social unrest, situating us perpetually on the brink of crisis.The theme challenges photographers to capture the raw energy and far-reaching consequences of these turbulent conditions. Whether addressing the devastation of climate disasters, experiences of displacement, or the simmering tensions within divided societies,&nbsp;Storm&nbsp;reveals not only disruption but also its generative force: the possibility of transformation, renewal, and hope that can emerge in its aftermath. The twelve shortlisted artists are:Takashi Arai (Japan/Germany)Marina Caneve (Italy)Tom Fecht (Germany/Italy)Balazs Gardi (Hungary/USA)Roberto Huarcaya (Peru)Alfredo Jaar (Chile/USA)Belal Khaled (Palestine)Hannah Modigh (Sweden)Baudouin Mouanda (Republic of the Congo)Camille Seaman (Denmark/USA)Laetitia Vançon (France)Patrizia Zelano (Italy)Alfredo Jaar was announced as the winner for his series&nbsp;The End, 2025 Support for this exhibitionMoCP is supported by Columbia College Chicago, MoCP Advisory Board, Museum Council, individuals, private and corporate foundations, and government grants.The 2025–2026 exhibition season is sponsored in part by the Comer Family Foundation, Efroymson Family Fund, Henry Nias Foundation, the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation, the Pritzker Traubert Foundation, Rowan Foundation, United States Artists, and Venable Foundation. MoCP also acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council and a CityArts grant from the city of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. Image: Takashi Arai, 6 April 2013, Trinity Site, White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, 2013, from the series “Exposed in a Hundred Suns”

Prix Pictet Storm

Our Free Days Are Taking The Night Shift!From March through November, we’re returning to Free First Tuesdays.On the first Tuesday of every month, enjoy extended hours from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm - admission is free for all, no residency restrictions.

Free First Tuesdays

Mystic Meadows is an ethereal exhibition with dark undertones. Featuring work from four Swedish artists - Hanna Liljenberg, Karin Roy Andersson, and Märta Mattsson and Sofia Bjorkman - the exhibition addresses themes of repetition, transience, rebirth, and the tension that lies between beauty and decay.&nbsp;

Mystic Meadows

In 1776, the Declaration of Independence defined “unalienable rights” as “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” And five years after the end of the Revolutionary War, the founding generation ratified a new Constitution to, among other things, “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” What it meant to dedicate a country to liberty was immediately contested and continues to be contested to this day. For whom were these “Blessings of Liberty” to be secured? Under what circumstances could individuals expect the inalienable right of liberty to be recognized? What justifies limitations on liberty, and what does a dedication to liberty demand of us?Though Americans grappled with these issues in all times and places, nothing crystallized the tensions around liberty quite like war. President Abraham Lincoln, in his address at the newly dedicated Gettysburg National Cemetery in the midst of the Civil War, centered his reflection on this very question: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” At the site of so much death and destruction, he wondered whether a nation, “so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.”Conceived in Liberty: Cartoons, Caricatures, and Illustrations in the Wartime US, 1812-1918&nbsp;will draw on the Newberry’s collection to show how artists living through wartime “conceived” cartoons, caricatures, and illustrations that grappled with questions about liberty. These images appeared throughout broader print culture (newspapers, magazines, sheet music, broadsides, posters) as well as in more private contexts, such as diaries, letters, or sketchbooks. Whether patriotic or dissenting, available to the masses or only to a few, wartime imagery reveals in dramatic, visually compelling ways how the people of the US have used the occasion of war to question, revise, challenge, and champion this core value of the country since its founding 250 years ago.<a href="https://www.newberry.org/calendar/conceived-in-liberty" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">DETAILS</a>

Conceived in Liberty: Cartoons, Caricatures, and Illustrations in the Wartime US, 1812-1918

Willem de Kooning Drawing&nbsp;is the first exhibition to explore the full scope of Willem de Kooning’s drawing practice and how it was foundational to his boundary-breaking artistic career. Featuring more than 200 artworks including rarely-seen drawings—alongside paintings, sculptures, and prints—this exhibition offers an unprecedented opportunity to experience the totality of his graphic production over seven decades and sheds light on his experimentation with materials, tools, and techniques.

Willem de Kooning Drawing

Bergman Family GalleriesKenzi Shiokava&nbsp;is the first museum solo exhibition dedicated to artist Kenzi Shiokava (b. 1938, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, Brazil; d. 2021, Los Angeles), gathering over fifty sculptures made across five decades, from the 1970s to the 2010s. A second-generation Japanese Brazilian, Shiokava departed São Paulo in 1964—narrowly evading the military coup d’état—and relocated to Los Angeles just months prior to the 1965 Watts Riots. After earning a BFA from the Chouinard Art Institute (now California Institute of the Arts) and an MFA from the Otis Art Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design), he spent the next fifty years working with found materials in Los Angeles while serving as a longtime artist-in-residence at the storied Watts Towers Arts Center, where his peers included assemblage artists John Outerbridge, Noah Purifoy and Betye Saar.Through intuitive acts of carving and arranging, Shiokava unearthed what he described as the “inner movement” of discarded objects, revealing their spiritual vitality and reinvigorating them with life. Deeply attuned to his materials, which ranged from telephone poles to plastic toys, Shiokava allowed them to guide his sculptural process, which he compared to archeology—both patient practices of excavation, recovery and revelation. Reflecting the artist’s career-long embrace of wood carving and assemblage, the exhibition is anchored by two core bodies of work: abstract totems meticulously sculpted from wood and enigmatic box installations animated by miniature figurines, dried plants and stones. The exhibition also underscores the transcultural nature of Shiokava’s practice, which melds the aesthetic sensibilities of wood carving in Japan, assemblage in South Los Angeles and multiple belief systems, including Candomblé, Catholicism and Zen Buddhism.Kenzi Shiokava&nbsp;is organized by Nolan Jimbo, Assistant Curator.

Kenzi Shiokava

Our Free Days Are Taking The Night Shift! From March through November, we’re returning to Free First Tuesdays! On the first Tuesday of every month, enjoy extended hours from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm - admission is free for all, no residency restrictions.

Free First Tuesday

Third Wednesday: Music in Motion from Ireland to Chicago is inspired by Ink &amp; Outrage: 18th-Century Satirical Prints in London &amp; Dublin. This program features the interplay of the Irish harp and the accordion.<a href="https://driehausmuseum.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=32343bbcd4e3063e18cdf64bf&amp;id=9111c600f4&amp;e=d1db3f815c" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">TICKETS</a>

Third Wednesday: Music in Motion from Ireland to Chicago

Go behind the scenes of printmaking during this special offsite visit to the <a href="https://driehausmuseum.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=32343bbcd4e3063e18cdf64bf&amp;id=b8ba843115&amp;e=d1db3f815c" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Chicago Printmakers Collaborative</a>. <a href="https://driehausmuseum.us3.list-manage.com/track/click?u=32343bbcd4e3063e18cdf64bf&amp;id=27beada8e3&amp;e=d1db3f815c" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">TICKETS</a>

Chicago Printmakers Collaborative Tour

Step into the sharp, subversive world of satire, past and present, in this lively panel inspired by the Driehaus Museum’s exhibition&nbsp;Ink &amp; Outrage: 18th-Century Satirical Prints in London &amp; Dublin. Using the exhibition as a springboard, writers and contributors from&nbsp;The Onion&nbsp;and&nbsp;The New Yorker&nbsp;will bring the conversation into the present day, exploring how satire is crafted, circulated, and received in today’s fast-moving media landscape.&nbsp; This discussion focuses on the enduring mechanics of satire, its targets, its techniques, and its cultural impact. Panelists will reflect on how their own practices echo (or diverge from) historical traditions, revealing how, in many ways, the more things change, the more they stay the same.&nbsp; Moderated by Colin Barr of the University of Notre Dame, whose scholarship bridges Irish and English history, the conversation offers audiences a unique opportunity to connect the incisive humor of the 18th century with the satirical voices shaping public discourse today. Whether you’re a longtime fan of contemporary satire or newly curious, this program invites you to see both past and present with fresh eyes.&nbsp; About the Panelists Colin Barr (Moderator)&nbsp;is professor of modern Irish history in the Keough School of Global Affairs at the University of Notre Dame and the Thomas Moore and Judy Livingston Director of the Keough School’s Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies. Barr was born in Canada and raised in the United States. He holds a B.A. from Stonehill College and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, and has held academic appointments in Ireland, the United States and the United Kingdom. Barr’s work seeks to place the history of the island of Ireland and its peoples in the widest possible context, including that of the United Kingdom, the continent of Europe, the Roman Catholic Church and the global Irish Diaspora.&nbsp; Tom Bachtell&nbsp;is a freelance cartoonist and caricaturist and illustrator. His distinctive drawings appeared in The New Yorker’s Talk of the Town section for 25 years, and he contributes regularly to the New York Review of Books. His work also appears in Politico and i-D Magazine. Tom illustrated Bag Man (Crown 2020) by Rachel Maddow, and recently published his first children’s book, The WhyBecause Book - Das Warum-Weil Buch in Germany (Tanja Langer 2025).Mike Gillis&nbsp;is head writer for The Onion. He’s also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Tricycle, ClickHole, and the Supreme Court (in the form of a recent amicus brief in defense of parody and free speech).&nbsp; Rob Knoll&nbsp;is a staff writer at The Onion. He has also written for the website ClickHole.

Exploring Satire with The Onion and The New Yorker

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

Explore the role of satire as a visual record of social mores, tastes and opinions on fashionable dress with Alex Aubry, Director of SAIC’s Fashion Resource Center.

Mad Fashions, Stylish Eccentrics, & Those Who Satirized Them

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.

Mernet Larsen

What if Emmett Till lived? What if&nbsp;he had returned home still a child, alive and free?&nbsp;If Emmett Till Lived…&nbsp;is an exhibition and a civic invitation. The very statement invites a range of questions, a reckoning with the past, and a probing investigation of the current state of American life.&nbsp;This exhibition, and the invitation it offers to viewers, creates a collective arena to consider how freedom has been secured on American ground. In 1955, Emmett Till, then fourteen years old, had traveled from Chicago to the Mississippi Delta region to visit his family during the summer, bought candy at Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market, and was accused of whistling at a shopkeeper, a white woman working in the store. The accusation violated the racial caste system of Jim Crow rule that kept the economic, civic, and social subordination of black Americans the law of the land. Days later, the woman’s husband, Roy Bryant, his brother-in-law John William (J.W.) Milam, and one other man kidnapped Till from the home of his uncle Moses Wright near Money, Mississippi, and took him to a barn where they brutally tortured, mutilated, and killed him with the force of a mob lynching. Till’s body was thrown in the Tallahatchie River weighed down by a 75- pound cotton gin fan wrapped around his neck with barbed wire. The next month, Bryant and Milam were acquitted by a jury in Sumner, Mississippi. In&nbsp;January&nbsp;1956,&nbsp;they confessed to the murder in&nbsp;Look&nbsp;magazine with pride. Till’s lynching was a warning: in Mississippi, Jim Crow rule would remain. In 2017, the Till case was reopened by the Justice Department when new information emerged that the woman who had accused him of whistling at her had recanted. While her statement did not lead to any persecution after the FBI investigation—the statute of limitations had run out and perjury in a state court is not a federal crime—it did result in the Justice Department’s statement that “the government does not take the position that the state court testimony the woman gave in 1955 was truthful or accurate.”&nbsp; There were many Tills, yet his murder was the one made visible to all. “Let the world see what I’ve seen,” his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley said. Till-Mobley asked for an open casket funeral for her son in Chicago and 100,000 attended—the largest civil rights event and the most impactful for mass mobilization to date in the United States.&nbsp; Racism had been clear; Till’s death gave many new resolve coming as it did a year after the 1954&nbsp;Brown v. Board of Education&nbsp;Supreme Court case that legally outlawed segregation. Till’s murder became the event that shook the consciousness of the nation enough to enforce it.&nbsp; “We were the Till generation,” Congressman John Lewis said, echoing the sentiments of many. When Rosa Parks explained why she refused to give up her seat in the front of the bus to a white customer, launching the Montgomery Bus Boycott, she said, “I thought of Emmett Till and I couldn’t go back.” Picture it. What would it have required for Till to live?&nbsp;If Emmett Till Lived…&nbsp;honors Till and the history born of his sacrifice. The show—drawn entirely on work in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago—imagines what could have come in his life: photographs of different restaurants pay homage to the last meal Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, packed for him before he left Chicago, others show his favorite pastimes, meditate on the love he might have experienced, on days spent enjoying life in Chicago, on the playground, at the beach, attending prom, living free. There are images of railway lines that mark his one-way trip from Illinois to Mississippi and the travels that might have one day taken him around the world. There are photographs of the&nbsp;full range of&nbsp;life events Till missed: from the Chicago Bulls as a cultural phenomenon to the love we imagine he might have known as he grew into a man, to the election of Barack Obama and the extended Civil Rights protest and movement today.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The show deliberately draws upon the work of a vast array of photographers who emblematize the full range of American life including: Hanif Adbur-Rahim, Tom Arndt, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Uta Barth, Endia Beal, Dawoud Bey, Christian Boltanski, Keith Carter, Teju Cole, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Peter Cochrane, Barbara Crane, Paul D’Amato, Bruce Davidson, Paul Dahlquist, Erica Deeman, Jack Delano, Jess T. Dugan, Jim Dine, Elliott Erwitt, Terry Evans, Walker Evans, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Rachel Feirman, Scott Fortino, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Leonard Freed, Kris Graves, Guillaume Simoneau, Todd Hido, Earlier Hudnall, Jr., Janna Ireland, Dorothea Lange, An-My Lê, Danny Lyon, Sally Mann, Stephen Marc, Diana Matar, Robert Mapplethorpe, Martin Hyers + William Mebane, Julie Moos, Kurt Markus, Natasha Moustache, Zora J Murff, Laurel Nakadate, Arteh Odjidja, Gordon Parks, Alexis Peskine, David Plowden, Marc PoKempner, Sheila Pree Bright, Walker Rosenblum, Anastasia Samoylova, Jon Saudek, W. Stephen Saunders, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Arthur Shay, Sara Shamsavari, Aaron Siskind, Victor Skrehneski, Joel Sternfeld, Alfred Stieglitz, Bob Thall, Ruth Thorne-Thomsen, Charles Traub, Jerry Uelsmann, Todd Webb, Carrie Mae Weems, and Garry Winogrand.&nbsp; If Emmett Till Lived…&nbsp;is an exhibition that mounts a civic invitation through an online component of the show that allows&nbsp;viewers in Chicago and beyond to craft their own displays in response to three prompts:&nbsp;<ul><li>How would you have hoped Till&nbsp;could&nbsp;have lived after 1955?</li><li>What do you wish Till, and the many Tills, might have never had to experience?&nbsp;</li><li>What would that life have required of us all? How have we challenged the force of Jim Crow rule and its legacy today?</li></ul>These&nbsp;invitations are crafted to consider the sacrifice of his life, and what it wrought, and what work remains.-Sarah Lewis ﻿About the curatorSarah Lewis is the founder of Vision &amp; Justice and the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities and Associate Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She has authored and edited over 60 publications including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674238343" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America</a>,&nbsp;which won the American Book Award; the bestseller,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Rise/Sarah-Lewis/9781451629248" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery</a>; and the award-winning volumes,&nbsp;<a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/carrie-mae-weems" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Carrie Mae Weems</a>&nbsp;and “Vision &amp; Justice.” As founder of Vision &amp; Justice, Lewis has organized landmark convenings and founded a Vision &amp; Justice Book Series, launched in partnership with Aperture. Her writing has been published in the&nbsp;New Yorker,&nbsp;The New York Times,&nbsp;Artforum, and the&nbsp;New York Review of Books, and her work has been the subject of profiles from&nbsp;Vogue&nbsp;to&nbsp;The Boston Globe&nbsp;to&nbsp;The New York Times. Lewis’s influence resonates widely: a chapter on her life is included in Laura Lynne Jackson’s&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;bestseller,&nbsp;Guided: The Secret Path to an Illuminated Life&nbsp;(2025) and her work has been highlighted in Brené Brown’s&nbsp;Strong Ground: The Lessons of Daring Leadership, the Tenacity of Paradox, and the Wisdom of the Human Spirit&nbsp;(2025).

If Emmett Till Lived: Freedom on American Ground

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

Our Free Days Are Taking The Night Shift! From March through November, we’re returning to Free First Tuesdays! On the first Tuesday of every month, enjoy extended hours from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm - admission is free for all, no residency restrictions.

Our Free Days Are Taking The Night Shift! From March through November, we’re returning to Free First Tuesdays! On the first Tuesday of every month, enjoy extended hours from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm - admission is free for all, no residency restrictions. Want more chances to visit? Take a look at our full lineup of 2026 Free Days below and mark your calendar! From March through November, we’re returning to Free First Tuesdays! On the first Tuesday of every month, enjoy extended hours from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm - admission is free for all, no residency restrictions.

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

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>

Calendar

Chicago Gallery News