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

Adrienne Brown, Professor in the Departments of English and Race, Diaspora, and Indigeneity at the University of Chicago, presents her current research on reimagining urban emptiness.

Vacant Stares: Adrienne Brown on Rethinking Urban Emptiness

Join Art Encounter's Sarah Packer and Alex Stevenson for an unforgettable experience meeting artist, collector, writer, poet, photographer, museum curator, and book binder Michael Horvich in his Evanston home. His condo houses Michael’s Museum, which holds an amazing folk art collection of curiosities, artifacts, miniatures, and discoveries, as well as paintings, photography, handmade books, jewelry, and the artist's own Cornell-like shadow box assemblages. We will discuss the art of collecting and get inside the mind of this dynamic, curious, and expressive Evanston original. Visit https://www.artencounter.org/collecting-and-creating to register.

The Curious Art of Collecting and Creating with Michael Horvich

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

Wander and Wallow: Must We Dwell – Brian Lathan

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

Linework: Chicago Comics and Community

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

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

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

The Block Collects 2026

Fine Line Creative Arts Center is holding its annual juried Artisan Gift Sale from December 3 to December 8, 2026. We invite you to apply and sell your handmade, one-of-a-kind fine arts and fine crafts. Works will be displayed throughout the Kavanagh Gallery and building. No individual booth spaces are available. The entire show is set up in a gallery shop format. Your work will be inventoried, so you need not be present to conduct sales.

Artisan Gift Sale 2026

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

Prairie State College Art Faculty Exhibition

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

Unfamiliar Patterns

The Evanston Art Center (EAC) is excited to announce our Call for Art for our 24th Annual Winter Arts &amp; Crafts Expo.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;	&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;The <a href="https://www.evanstonartcenter.org/events/winter-arts-craft-expo-applications" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Winter Arts &amp; Crafts Expo</a> includes original, handmade works of jewelry, ceramics, fiber, metal, glass, painting, photography, mixed media, and more. All proceeds from the Expo will benefit the ongoing exhibition, education, and outreach programs at the Art Center.&nbsp;

24th Annual Winter Arts & Crafts Expo

Elmhurst Art Museum kicks off the 2026 Veteran Art Triennial and Summit, RESISTING THE LONG WAR, with the opening of the group exhibition, A REVOLUTION OF VALUES. Organized by the Chicago-based<a href="https://www.veteran-art-movement.net/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank"> Emerging Veteran Art Movement</a>, A REVOLUTION OF VALUES builds on the legacy of <a href="https://www.vvaw.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Vietnam Veterans Against the War</a> through the work of cutting-edge contemporary veteran artists who are turning from militarism toward solidarity. Bringing together nearly a dozen local, national, and international artists, the exhibition celebrates the range of ways veteran artists examine their military experiences and critique militarism.

Resisting the Long War: A Revolution of Values

This intimate exhibition highlights the midcentury modern sculptures of Chicago-born artist <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abbott_Pattison" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Abbott Pattison</a> (1916-1999). Drawn from the museum's permanent collection, the show captures the broad range of Pattison's expression, from classical figuration to bold, textured abstraction, with works dating from the 1950s into the 1970’s.Featuring small-scale bronzes, carved stone, and welded brass works, the exhibition highlights his signature organic geometries and cubist influences. The selected works anchored by his expressive tactile surfaces, evoke human lyricism. This focused display provides a rare, powerful look at a skilled sculptor who seamlessly bridged the gap between traditional form and avant-garde midcentury expression.

Abbott Pattison: The Figure Forward

<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

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

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.

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