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

At Ease In Nature: Nature Holds Our Stories is an event taking place from October 7 to October 24 at the Carnegie Library in Waukegan. The event is associated with Brushwood Gallery, located at 21850 N. Riverwoods Rd., Riverwoods (60015). For more information, visit www.brushwoodcenter.org.

At Ease In Nature: Nature Holds Our Stories

The Art Center's massive annual showcase of recycled and rediscovered artwork.

Recycled

The Evanston Art Center (EAC) is excited to welcome the public to our upcoming exhibition, <a href="https://www.evanstonartcenter.org/exhibitions/sarah-sipling" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Sarah Sipling | Solo Exhibition</a>. The exhibition will be on display from September 19 - October 25, 2026 with an opening reception on Sunday, September 27, 1-3pm that will be free and open to the public. “I focus on the many possibilities of printmaking, combining traditional and digital techniques. Each printmaking method has a unique visual language and communicative power and I often combine techniques and reimagine the possibilities of each method. My work questions political issues focusing on ideas of protest, power, and perception.” – Sarah Sipling Sarah Sipling is a mixed media artist and printmaker. Sipling received her MFA in Printmaking from Rhode Island School of Design and BFA in Printmaking from Purchase College, State University of New York. She lives and works in New York and Kansas City.

Sarah Sipling | Solo Exhibition

The Evanston Art Center (EAC) is excited to welcome the public to our upcoming exhibition, <a href="https://www.evanstonartcenter.org/exhibitions/amy-hanks-over-sea-under-stone" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Amy Hanks | Over Sea Under Stone</a>. The exhibition will be on display from September 19 - October 25, 2026 with an opening reception on Sunday, September 27, 1-3pm that will be free and open to the public. "My art practice is informed by nonlinear, spirit-filled narratives. I’m inspired by icons, tarot cards, lotería, memoirs, kachina dancers, children’s stories, illuminated manuscripts, and more.I layer, scrape, draw, paint, sew, reveal, and obscure as an analogy to life's transformative journeys over unfamiliar and unexpected landscapes. Through this process, I grapple with earthy and mystic subjects such as time travel, uncertainty, humor, grief and delight.” – Amy Hanks Amy Hanks graduated with a BFA from the University of Texas and an MFA from the University of Michigan, where she was a Rackham Fellow. She has been awarded an Individual Artist Grant from the State of Illinois and is a 2024 Fulbright Fellow Alumni.&nbsp;

Amy Hanks | Over Sea Under Stone

Working in many translucent layers of muted colors helps Jacoby to achieve a quiet quality. The soft-focus quality of her work is used to enhance the delicate haziness and add to the sense of serene, untouched nature. Jacoby says she strives to capture the mood rather than the details by focusing on any atmospheric conditions or elements that deflect or mask the light, blur the details, and leave you wondering what's beyond. An opening planned for October 2 will coincide with the gallery's regularly scheduled First Fridays.

Susan Jacoby

It is human nature to respond to Rhythm.&nbsp;The visual artists in our fall “Got Rhythm” exhibition respond to music in the language of lines, shapes and colors. When music pulses through their veins, they channel their emotional responses through mark-making: gestural lines and strokes vibrate like sound waves. They respond in their own unique way to rhythm and music: to the beat of their own drum. Artforms include paintings, photographs, and mixed-media approaches.Artists: David Alton, Ashley Alvarado, Nancy Behles, Alan Brunettin, Sheila Cahnman, Susan Chelminski, Rich Conti, Anna Marie Crovetti, Catherine Daniels, Melissa D’Souza, Shelley Gilchrist, Steven Guenther, Ivan Gutierrez, Peter Jablokow, Bonnie Katz, Jacqueline Kott-Wolle, Ari Koultourides, Diana Leviton Gondek, Victoria Loeb, Deborah Newmark, Sam Onche, Jim Parks, Patrick Perry, Patti Ray, Renee Robbins, Virginia Roeder, Margarete de Soleil, Josefien Stopplenburg, Frank Styburski, Joseph Taylor, Sally Wille and Colette Wright Adams.&nbsp;Image: Renee Robbins

Got Rhythm? Music-themed Visual Art

The Evanston Art Center (EAC) is excited to welcome the public to our upcoming exhibition, <a href="https://www.evanstonartcenter.org/exhibitions/whispers-dark-curated-azul-alberto-nogueron" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Whispers in the Dark | Curated by Azul Alberto Nogueron</a>. The exhibition will be on display from September 26 - November 1, 2026 with an opening reception on Sunday, September 27, 1-3pm that will be free and open to the public. <a href="https://www.evanstonartcenter.org/exhibitions/whispers-dark-curated-azul-alberto-nogueron" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Whispers in the Dark</a> is the final exhibition curated by Azul Alberto Nogueron as part of their time as the EAC's COMPASS Resident. Secrecy, hidden agendas, and mental health are the key components of the exhibition, with a celebration of the macabre. The COMPASS Curator Residency provides an emerging curator with an opportunity to curate three shows in the Evanston Art Center’s Lobby Gallery space. The EAC’s Lobby Gallery is a space dedicated to exhibiting emerging and underrepresented artists/curators and responds to current social events. This dynamic and inclusive space draws in new curators, artists, and audiences.&nbsp;

Whispers in the Dark

<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

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

Abbott Pattison: The Figure Forward is an event scheduled from September 12 to January 3. Further details about the event are not provided in the text.

Abbott Pattison: The Figure Forward

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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