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

The Renaissance Society is thrilled to announce that artist&nbsp;Maurizio Cattelan&nbsp;will conceive and orchestrate&nbsp;RenBen 2026, taking place on&nbsp;Wednesday, April 8, 2026, during Chicago's EXPO Art Week.&nbsp;Known for his provocative and darkly humorous approach to contemporary art, Cattelan has spent four decades creating works that spark conversation, to say the least. From his infamous solid gold toilet&nbsp;America&nbsp;to his hyperrealistic sculptures, Cattelan's work consistently captivates audiences while questioning authority, religion, celebrity, and the art world itself.&nbsp;RenBen is the Renaissance Society’s annual artist-centered gala and the institution’s most important fundraising event, vital to sustaining its experimental exhibitions and programs throughout the year. Each edition invites a single artist to design every aspect of the evening, from the space and performances to the food and choreography. Past editions have been conceived by Meriem Bennani (2025), Kevin Beasley (2024), Adam Linder (2023), and Piero Golia (2022), each expanding what an artist-driven benefit can be.&nbsp;For RenBen 2026, Cattelan will draw on his established signature forms of playful inversion, surprise, and surrealist elegance. Guests can expect his subversive wit and theatrical sensibility. “BEING AN ARTIST IS NOT A JOB, IT'S A MALFUNCTION,” he shared.&nbsp;Maurizio Cattelan's work has been featured in major museums and exhibitions worldwide, including solo shows at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and the Beyeler Foundation in Basel. His collaborations through&nbsp;Toiletpaper&nbsp;magazine and with brands including Kenzo, Berluti, Longchamp, and Seletti—demonstrate his ability to merge high art with popular culture, making him an ideal artist to reimagine RenBen.&nbsp;All proceeds from RenBen 2026 support the Renaissance Society's program of exhibitions,&nbsp;Intermissions, concerts, public programs, and publications—all free and open to the public.&nbsp;RenBen 2026 takes place during Chicago's EXPO Art Week, in alignment with EXPO CHICAGO contemporary art fair, attracting cultural figures from around the globe.&nbsp;Additional details will be announced in early 2026.&nbsp;Corporate sponsorships and in-kind gift opportunities are available.&nbsp;Please contact Polina Kasian at&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="mailto:pkasian@renaissancesociety.org" target="_blank">pkasian@renaissancesociety.org</a>&nbsp;for more information.&nbsp;Underwriter and Benefactor sponsorships and individual tickets are now available&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://secure.lglforms.com/form_engine/s/TqGCpLmdPWCEh8kci33nKQ" target="_blank">here</a>.&nbsp; Photo:&nbsp;Maurizio Cattelan by Alberto Zanetti.

RenBen 2026

Leah Ke Yi Zheng’s upcoming exhibition presents a complete series of 64 paintings based on the hexagrams of the&nbsp; I Ching (Book of Changes), a foundational text in Chinese philosophy that offers insights into the changing nature of existence. Each painting reflects on a hexagram not through literal representation, but through an evolving visual language shaped by abstraction, intuition, and the interplay of light and material. As she works with silk and hand-built hardwood stretchers, in continual difference, the exhibition becomes a meditation on change itself: how it is read, made visible, and experienced through painting.Zheng’s practice brings together traditional Chinese materialities and conceptual art methodologies to explore transformation, multiplicity, and the logic of variation. It is rooted in a dialogue between Eastern and Western modes of thought and influenced by thinkers such as John Cage and Yuk Hui. In this project, the&nbsp;I Ching&nbsp;is not only a reference, it is a method, a structure, and a philosophical companion. This is a one-work exhibition: Zheng considers the full sequence as a total and single work in itself, with every painting still an individualized piece.&nbsp;For&nbsp;Change, I Ching (64 Paintings), Zheng has also subtly reshaped the exhibition architecture. The transformation is understated rather than dramatic, but carefully calibrated to heighten the play of light throughout the space, and, at times, to redirect it in dialogue with the paintings. By covering certain windows, adjusting the proportions of select walls, and building a new rhythm around the room’s perimeter, Zheng creates conditions that privilege what she calls “the light of the here and now.” As daylight shifts over the course of the day, the silk paintings shift with it, their surfaces absorbing and reflecting minute changes in color and brightness. In turn, these variations reveal the altered space itself, making the architecture and the paintings co-responsive, changing together in real time.&nbsp;Curated by Myriam Ben Salah and Karsten Lund. About the ArtistLEAH KE YI ZHENG (b.1988, China) lives and works in Chicago. Recent solo and two-person exhibitions include&nbsp;Machine(s)&nbsp;at Layr, Vienna (2025);&nbsp;I-Ching/Machineat Mendes Wood DM, New York (2025);&nbsp;Leah Ke Yi Zheng&nbsp;at Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2024);&nbsp;John Cage, Leah Ke Yi Zheng: The Grasshopper Lies Heavy&nbsp;at Castle Gallery, Los Angeles (2024);&nbsp;Leah Ke Yi Zheng&nbsp;at David Lewis Gallery, New York (2023); and&nbsp;Currency @ Swiss National Bank, Zurich&nbsp;at Soccer Club Club, Chicago (2021). Recent group exhibitions include New Museum, New York (2025); Zeno X Gallery, Antwerp (2023); and Caffé Centrale, Monte Castello di Vibio (2022) among others. She was awarded a 2019 – 2021 Fellowship from The Arts Club of Chicago. CreditsLead support for this exhibition is provided by Murat Ahmed &amp; Katherine Mackenzie and School Museum Fund, The Hees Family. Principal support is provided by Gay-Young Cho and Christopher Chiu.Major annual support for the Renaissance Society is provided by the Mellon Foundation. Renaissance Society programs are supported by Teiger Foundation, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and a grant from the Illinois Arts Council. Annual support is provided by The Provost’s Discretionary Fund at the University of Chicago.All Renaissance Society publications are made possible by The Mansueto Foundation Publications Program. EventsOpening Reception&nbsp;Sat, Jan 10, 2-4pm&nbsp;&nbsp;With artist talk at 4pm PerformanceEli KeszlerSun, Feb 15, 2pm Eli Keszler is a Grammy-nominated artist, composer, and percussionist based in New York. Whether performing an improvised solo set at the drum kit or writing an electro-acoustic score for a film, he brings an agile experimentation to his work. For this site-specific appearance, Keslzer performs live in the gallery space in the afternoon light. Within this unique architectural and acoustic setting, he offers his own take on some of the dynamics at play in Leah Ke Yi Zheng’s exhibition, including change and variation, iterative multiplicity, and logics of impermanence. DiscussionSpecial Guests of the ArtistWith Danny Bredar, Gaylen Gerber, and Oscar ZhengSun, Mar 22, 2pm For this informal discussion in the gallery space, Leah Ke Yi Zheng is joined by three people from her close circle: artists Danny Bredar and Gaylen Gerber, and her son Oscar Zheng. Each of them brings an intimate familiarity with her practice and a deeply personal perspective on her work. In an impromptu, unscripted exchange, they surface aspects of Zheng’s exhibition that might not emerge in a formal artist talk. Their conversation mirrors the spirit of the&nbsp;I Ching&nbsp;itself, which, according to Zheng, absorbs all aspects of life. Visit&nbsp;<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="http://renaissancesociety.org/" target="_blank">renaissancesociety.org</a>&nbsp;for more information.

Leah Ke Yi Zheng: Change

IHSAE Awards Ceremony &amp; Art Throwdown Sunday, April 12th from 12pm-4pm The best student artists from 100 Illinois high schools will come together to celebrate the power of art in their lives and showcase their work at the 10th Annual Illinois High School Art Exhibition (IHSAE). The Senior Scholarship Exhibition will exhibit some 500 senior artworks and recognize scholarship offers totaling over $100 million dollars annually. <a href="https://www.bridgeportart.com/ihsae-2026/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Details</a>

IHSAE Awards Ceremony & Art Throwdown

You are invited to an immersive exhibit and 2026 film screening on view in Hyde Park, Chicago, from April 2 - April 12, 2026! On Rock-Soft Matters: Curating Slowness and Reconnection through the Visual Arts&nbsp;is presented by Italian visual artist and curator&nbsp;Chiara Bastoni, Seldon’s current Artist in Residence. The exhibition brings together Bastoni’s photography and her 2026 film&nbsp;A Sun In The Palm,&nbsp;alongside a selection of more than one hundred original visual works by celebrated Egyptian artists Hazem El Mestikawy, Huda Lutfi, Marwan Fayed, and Nour El Sherif. Bastoni’s work offers a profound reflection on the relationship between art, connection, and Islamic ways of seeing. It opens up a contemplative space that feels especially resonant at this moment. Highlights:<ul><li>Reception night on Saturday, April 4, at 6 PM, featuring live music by Egyptian instrumentalist Mohamed Radwan.</li><li>90-minute immersive visits, available through the&nbsp;<a href="https://www.seldoninstitute.org/bastoni" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">RSVP</a>&nbsp;link, offering an intimate experience with Chiara herself—guiding visitors through the exhibition and film.</li><li>An online conversation&nbsp;with Egyptian artists Marwan Fayed and Nour El Sherif on Saturday, April 11, as part of the exhibition schedule.</li></ul> <a href="https://www.seldoninstitute.org/bastoni" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">RSVP Here</a> Venue:&nbsp;5659 S Woodlawn Ave., Chicago, IL <img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1774475521/vrfrttfnxmqcrsrrpw71.jpg">

On Rock-Soft Matters: Curating Slowness and Reconnection through the Visual Arts

PRESENTED BY ART CONNECTED EXHIBIT – 3rd &amp; 4th Floor Galleries The Illinois High School Art Exhibition program is one of the country’s largest and most influential student art exhibition programs. Each year, over 100 city, suburban, public and private Illinois high schools from across the state converge on the Bridgeport Art Center in Chicago to participate in various exhibition programs. This year’s exhibition features over 1,000 works of art from young artists in over 10,000 square feet of gallery space. IHSAE MAIN EVENTAwards Ceremony &amp; Art ThrowdownSunday, April 13th from 12pm-4pm The best student artists from 100 Illinois high schools will come together to celebrate the power of art in their lives and showcase their work at the 10th Annual Illinois High School Art Exhibition (IHSAE). The Senior Scholarship Exhibition will exhibit some 500 senior artworks and recognize scholarship offers totaling over $100 million dollars annually. <a href="https://www.artconnected.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(44, 44, 44);" target="_blank">ART CONNECTED</a>

Illinois High School Art Exhibition

<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&nbsp;Yoonshin Park: Prompt and Prompted, an exhibition highlighting the artist’s, as well as her students’, experimental ways of creating artist books that push the boundaries of what books can be. On view from&nbsp;January 24-May 10, 2026,&nbsp;the exhibition offers hands-on experiences for the audience to make their own artist books on multiple dates throughout the duration. Both the exhibition and the public programs are free and open to the public. An artist book is an artwork that reimagines or transforms the form, function, or concept of a book into an expressive medium. For more than two decades, Park has used artist books as an experimental form and conceptual space to expand what books can be. For Park, the medium offers freedom that invites alternative ways of living other aspects of life, and invites the audience to live their lives as expansively as Park defines artist books. This exhibition presents new works that further her exploration of artist books as spatial, symbolic, and participatory sites capable of engaging notions of memory, marginality, translation, and transformation. More than a creator, Park is an arts educator of the medium. Since 2019, she has been teaching courses on artist books virtually through the Art Center’s Oakman Clinton School + Studios, and has found her practice of teaching to be as generative for her as it is for her students. The title of the exhibition refers to the reciprocal exchange that takes place in Park’s classroom. The exhibition includes artworks by 12 of Park’s students, including Kimberly Bailey, Miriam Bisby, Priya Deb, Devie Dragone, Bryne Hadnott, Rebecca Kelly, John Michael Korpal, Carol Lett, Camille Levi, Sumiah Salloum, Virginia Van Vynckt, and Max Washington. Park shares how this presentation differs from past work: “This exhibition marks a shift in my practice from intimate, book-inspired gestures to spatial and communal forms, allowing me to explore how books can extend beyond the page. I hope visitors experience the work as an invitation to engage with their own stories and with spaces—both in books and in the gallery—in new ways, noticing how meaning and connection can emerge through shared interaction.” Free public programs include the following:Wednesday, January 28, 1pm Artist-led workshopWednesday, February 11, 1pm Artist-led workshopThursday, February 19, 6pm Artist talk with Yoonshin Park and curator Mariela AcuñaWednesday, February 25, 1pm Artist-led exhibition walk-throughWednesday, March 4, 1pm Artist-led workshopWednesday, March 18, 1pm Artist-led exhibition walk-throughSaturday, April 4, 1-4pm Center Day workshop led by one of Park’s students, John Michael KorpalWednesday, April 8, 1pm Artist-led workshopWednesday, April 22, 1pm Artist-led workshopWednesday, May 6, 1pm Artist-led exhibition walk-through This exhibition was curated by Mariela Acuña, art center Director of Exhibitions and Residency, and produced by Tran Tran and Liang-yu Huang, with fabrication support provided by Huang.&nbsp; <img src="https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1771018610/l1mhn1jbmv7qkttusjfz.png"> ABOUT THE ARTISTBorn in Seoul, Korea, Park now resides in Chicago. She has participated in residencies including the HATCH Residency at the Chicago Artists Coalition and Hyde Park Art Center’s Center Program. She teaches at both the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Hyde Park Art Center, and in 2024, served as curator and facilitator for the Hyde Park Art Center’s Bridge Program. Park has exhibited at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Northeastern Illinois University Fine Arts Center Gallery, Beverly Arts Center, Evanston Art Center, Riverside Art Center, Pablo Center and the AIR SPACE at Saint Kate Hotel in Wisconsin, and Simyo Gallery in Seoul, Korea, among others. She is represented by Zolla/Lieberman Gallery in Chicago. ABOUT THE HYDE PARK ART CENTERHyde Park Art Center, at 5020 South Cornell Avenue on Chicago’s vibrant South Side, is a hub for contemporary arts in Chicago, serving as a gathering, production, and exhibition space for artists and the broader community to cultivate ideas, impact social change, and connect with new networks. Since its inception in 1939, Hyde Park Art Center has grown from a small collective of artists to establishing a strong legacy of risk-taking and experimentation, emerging as a unique Chicago arts institution with social impact. Today, the Art Center offers a diverse suite of programs for artists and art lovers of all backgrounds, ages, and stages in their careers including: contemporary art exhibitions in six galleries; an open-access community-based school with 2,000 annual enrollments; weekly arts education to 1,000 elementary school students in public schools; weekly and summer teen programs for 100 teen artists; professional-advancement programs for artists; a local and international artist residency; and public programs that connect residents with Chicago art and artists. The Art Center’s Oakman Clinton School + Studio is the nation’s first fully contribute-what-you-can visual art school for all ages. The Art Center functions as an amplifier for creative voices of today and tomorrow, providing the space to cultivate new work and connections. For more information, visit<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.hydeparkart.org/" target="_blank">&nbsp;www.hydeparkart.org</a>.

Yoonshin Park: Prompt and Prompted

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)

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

May 15-July 3 Presented by: Ron Jerak &amp; Michael Preski What happens when you bring an Abstract painter and a Surrealist together in one exhibition? The audience gets to take a journey through the artists’ story laid out on canvas, doused in color and covered in a vision. Ron Jerak creates the images he envisions by using strong color and contrast, incorporating straight lines and sharp angles. Symmetry is often present in his works, though asymmetrical compositions are employed as well. Michael Preski creates intricate and often highly detailed imagery with multiple mediums, layering different segments until they form the final piece. Like Ron’s works, they can cover a full range of concepts with their subjects, but all of them tell a story. Both of their stories are contained within each individual piece as well as the whole of their works. These stories are often drawn from everyday events, emotions and general life experiences as how the viewers experience the world. And though every piece is open to the audience’s interpretation, the artists guide their perceptions using the visuals themselves as a map. So feel free to join these two artists as they share their stories depicted in vibrant colors and unwavering imagery. <a href="https://www.bridgeportart.com/canvas-color-vision/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Details</a>

Canvas, Color, & Vision

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.Support 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

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

<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

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

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)

Part I, September 23, 2025 - February 22, 2026Part II, March 24, 2026 - July 26, 2026Why and how do people form political communities? How does political society organize our economic lives - and vice versa? And how as individuals do we navigate society?Smart to the Core: Wise to Power&nbsp;examines these questions by integrating visual art with foundational texts of modern social and political thought spanning nearly four centuries. Through a wide range of creative practices and philosophical perspectives, the exhibition addresses themes that are widely familiar yet deeply connected to specific political, economic, and cultural histories.<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://uchicago.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=aba2086a45b4ee8391b89447b&amp;id=a6520b5f11&amp;e=00938adab1" target="_blank">Learn more about this exhibition</a>

Smart to the Core: Wise to Power (Part II)

Since 2020, Carter has developed an extensive body of work exploring the site, history, and significance of the Singer Pavilion–the last remaining building of the former Michael Reese Hospital complex in Bronzeville–a design collaboration led by architect Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus School. This exhibition presents for the first time together the ten artworks including sculptures, digital images, sound works, installations, and a series of zines developed in collaboration with artists and community members with connections to the hospital. Together, the works prompt reflection on the importance of this site as a case study of past and future efforts to develop this culturally rich yet under-resourced neighborhood while also examining evolving ideas about urban development, architectural preservation, and the legacy of Modernist aesthetic and social philosophy.

Jeff Carter: The Singer Pavilion Project

The annual exhibition highlights paintings, drawings, photography, ceramics, prints, animation, and multimedia work by young artists participating in Hyde Park Art Center’s Teen programs. Each year, the Teen programs provide a structured independence that encourages young artists to develop their creative voices, learn new skills, and build relationships in the context of a community-based art center, where artists of all ages and backgrounds do the same. The exhibition is a testament to the evolution and dedication of these young artists. They have taken on the challenge of expressing perplexed thoughts, feelings, and emotions into individual works of art.

Teen Show

Ground Floor, an ongoing biennial exhibition since 2010, brings together work by Chicago’s most promising emerging talent. The exhibition offers a single destination to encounter the work of twenty artists who have recently graduated (in 2025 and 2026) from one of Chicago’s five outstanding MFA programs: Columbia College, Northwestern University, The University of Chicago, The University of Illinois at Chicago, and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.&nbsp;Ground Floor&nbsp;presents art made in the past couple of years in hopes of investigating and articulating conceptual and stylistic trends coming out of Chicago art schools right now.&nbsp;

Ground Floor

Hyde Park Art Center is excited to partner with the Veteran Art Movement, Chicago Cultural Center, Elmhurst Art Museum, and Walls Turned Sideways for the 2026 Veteran Art Triennial and Summit. The Hyde Park Art Center chapter&nbsp;Shifting Horizons&nbsp;considers land, migration, and decolonization through ideas informed by thinkers like Frantz Fanon and Harsha Walia. The exhibition invites reflections on how borders shape experience, how people navigate systems of control and resistance, and the uncertain landscapes that emerge amid ongoing struggles. The 2026 Veteran Art Triennial and Summit,&nbsp;Resisting the Long Wars, organized by curators Aaron Hughes, Mohamed Mehdi, Meranda Roberts, and Amber Zora, highlights artists’ creative defiance of war and militarism.

Veteran Art Triennial - RESISTING THE LONG WARS: Shifting Horizons 

The triennial program, created by Hyde Park Art Center in the mid-1990s, facilitates a fun and accessible commissioning process that builds lasting relationships between artists and patrons, creates a new base of support for artists, and invests in the vitality of Chicago’s cultural community.&nbsp;Not Just Another Pretty Face&nbsp;cultivates collectors, who are essential to the ecosystem that artists need to thrive, by embracing and encouraging the concept of patronage in contemporary art. Artists need not only collectors but also a community of people who know, support, and value what they do. To date, the Art Center has raised nearly&nbsp;$2,000,000&nbsp;through this program—half of which goes directly to artists, with the other half supporting Art Center programs. Through&nbsp;Not Just Another Pretty Face,&nbsp;375+&nbsp;original works&nbsp;of art have been commissioned by&nbsp;275&nbsp;new and established collectors&nbsp;interested in investing in Chicago’s artists. This exhibition will showcase the nearly&nbsp;100 new artworks&nbsp;made in this year’s iteration of this popular program.

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