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

Join artists and cultural workers Jasmin Cardenas, Érika Ordosgoitti, and Nazafarin Lotfi for a conversation moderated by Susan Gzesh as they explore the intersection of community arts, sanctuary, and civic action.

Conversation on the Intersection of Community Arts, Sanctuary, and Civic Action

Join Chicago papercut artist and Guild of American Papercutters Board President Yang Pulongbarit Cuevo for a live demonstration of contemporary knife-cut papercutting inspired by nature. Working with a prepared design based on flowers, leaves, vines, and other botanical forms, Cuevo will demonstrate how delicate lines, openings, and connected structures are developed with a precision knife. The demonstration will explore the rhythms and patterns found in nature, as well as the choices involved in translating organic forms into cut paper. Visitors will be invited to observe how individual motifs can be refined, repeated, and combined, and how layers of cut paper can create depth, shadow, and visual movement. Presented as a companion demonstration to The Cut Picture: Contemporary Papercutting Demonstration, this event offers a different look at the medium through botanical imagery and layered composition. This program is part of the Cutting East to West exhibition. Presented in collaboration with members of the Guild of American Papercutters (GAP), Cutting East to West invites visitors to discover the precision, imagination, and cultural stories held within a single sheet of paper.

Botanical Cuts: Contemporary Papercutting Demonstration

The Museum welcomes visitors to explore the historic Murphy Auditorium as part of Open House Chicago. A 1926 City of Chicago landmark, the Murphy Auditorium was erected as a monument to Dr. John B. Murphy (1857-1916), a founding member of the American College of Surgeons and considered one of the greatest clinical educators of his generation. The Museum renovated and re-opened the Murphy Auditorium to the public in 2024. Open House Chicago is free, and reservations are not required. This event does not include admission to the Museum’s exhibition or gallery spaces. For more information, visit https://openhousechicago.org/. On Saturday from 1:00-2:00pm, the auditorium features a free performance of Hanna DiLorenzo: Behind Closed Doors .

Open House Chicago

Open House Chicago: Etching Demonstrations will take place on October 17th and 18th from 11 AM to 5 PM at WING Studio, located at 4883 N. Lincoln, Chicago, IL 60625. The event will feature etching demonstrations on both days.

Open House Chicago: Etching Demonstrations

Enriching Life Retrospective (Heeyoung Kim and Brushwood Botanical Artists)

Enriching Life Retrospective

This program, entitled "Beyond Borders,"&nbsp;traverses&nbsp;six&nbsp;distinct&nbsp;sound&nbsp;worlds&nbsp;with&nbsp;the&nbsp;cello&nbsp;as&nbsp;a&nbsp;guide. Invoking&nbsp;ancient instruments while breathing life into music of our time,&nbsp;the&nbsp;program probes sonic possibilities, both familiar&nbsp;and fantastical. Featured artists include cellist Alexander Hersh, who&nbsp;has emerged as one of his generation’s most compelling artists for his expressive performances and imaginative programming. A Carnegie Hall recitalist and acclaimed soloist, he is Co-Artistic Director of NEXUS Chamber Music in Chicago. Hailed by The Washington Post for his “poised and imaginative playing,” Filipino-American pianist Victor Santiago Asuncion has performed across North and South America, Europe and Asia. A Steinway &amp; Sons Artist, he is also the founder of FilAm Music Foundation, championing Filipino classical musicians.

Third Wednesday: Beyond Borders

October 22, 2026Start time: 10:00 AM CDT Freeman’s presents designer fashion, handbags, accessories and jewelry from the estate of Beverly N. Grossman, a collector and patron of the arts. Highlights include Chanel handbags and jackets, Fendi Baguettes, Hermès Birkin bags and Louis Vuitton designs featuring Yayoi Kusama’s work. The live online auction begins October 22 at 10 a.m. Central. <a href="https://freemansauction.com/auction/6443-pop-fashion-property-from-the-estate-of-beverly-n-grossman" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">DETAILS</a> Sale number: 6443

Pop Fashion: Property from the Estate of Beverly N. Grossman

Co-curator Eduardo Bello leads an in-gallery conversation about the exhibition.

Curator's Talk:  Modernity in the Making

Celebrate art and community at Hyde Park Art Center—enjoy a conversation between Jackman Goldwasser resident Pooja Pittie and artist Soumya Netrabile, followed by a community dinner, free and open to all. Pittie is the inaugural resident of the Beyond Bodies of Work: A 3Arts + Hyde Park Art Center Residency.

Beyond Bodies of Work: A 3Arts + Hyde Park Art Center Residency

Enjoy spectacular Modern &amp; Contemporary highlights from Heritage Auctions Spring Signature® Auction up close, including diverse and engaging paintings, prints, and sculptures from Picasso and Miro to Sol LeWitt and Banksy. Kindy RSVP <a href="https://forms.monday.com/forms/1b070176726e255bb772051ae8b2294c?r=use1" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Here</a> <a href="https://fineart.ha.com/c/search/results.zx?dept=1544&amp;mode=live&amp;auction_name=8277&amp;type=https://www.ha.com/8277" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">HA.com/8277</a> Inquiries | <a href="mailto:HeidiC@HA.com?subject=CGN%20listing" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">HeidiC@HA.com</a> Image: Sol LeWitt (1928-2007) Squiggly Brushstrokes, 1997 Gouache on paper 60 x 60 inches

Modern & Contemporary Art Auction Preview Reception

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

Volume Gallery announces&nbsp;Flowers and Leaves, Christy Matson’s fifth solo exhibition with the gallery, opening September 17th, from 5-8PM. This new work draws on a recently discovered box of nineteenth-century family textiles, including lace, tatted fragments, and woven cloth passed through generations, to consider inherited histories of labor, resistance, and ornament. “Flowers and Leaves&nbsp;begins with a Jacquard-woven tea cloth found in a box of family heirlooms, accompanied by a handwritten note from my grandmother tracing its passage through generations. The cloth dates to the 1830s or 40s and belonged to Sarah Doty Arnold, my fifth great-grandmother, a Quaker woman living in Macedon, New York, within a community shaped by abolitionist networks and early feminist organizing, where radical thought moved through households in letters, meetings, and domestic exchange.” - Christy Matson Many of Matson’s ancestors were Quakers active in abolitionist, pacifist and early feminist movements. Macedon, New York, was a vital hub of the Underground Railroad, and these inherited objects would have circulated within households during moments of profound social and political change. Alongside that history, the handmade lace and cloth also carry a parallel meaning: the long tradition of women’s textile work as a site of knowledge, cultural production, and embodied practice, often left out of written record, but preserved in the objects that remain as evidence of their presence. This tension is a throughline in Matson’s practice, a sustained attention to the time, intelligence, and material thinking embedded in domestic textiles, forms of labor that have long gone unrecognized. This box of tatted doilies, scraps of lace with delicate floral motifs, and cloth bearing geometric patterns was passed down through generations. Unlike bulkier heirlooms that would have been left behind during displacement, these pieces endured. Cloth could be folded into trunks, sewn into coat linings and passed between hands across migration, upheaval, and inheritance. Drawing from details found in the remnants, Matson creates geometric but irregular oil pastel drawings that serve as a ground for collage. From the textile fragments, she isolates motifs of flowers and leaves, photographing and extracting these details before integrating them into the drawn compositions. These layered works function as studies for the woven images that follow. Using a Jacquard loom, she translates the collages into meticulously constructed woven paintings, drafting each image thread by thread through a series of weave structures. The resulting works are both intimate and monumental. Colorful blocks of pattern evoke both quilt-making and Modernist painting. Vertical stripes intersect lace-like interventions that depict scraps and studies, including overshot florals, suns, and sunflowers, drawn from larger, now-lost textiles. The exhibition’s title comes from the writings of Ada Lovelace (1815–1852), mathematician and the world’s first computer programmer. In the same decade that the Jacquard-woven tea cloth that inspired this body of work was made, Ada Lovelace described the loom as a system that “weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.” She used weaving to describe a new kind of machine logic, one that operates on symbols according to rules rather than only calculating quantities. This idea sits within a longer history of textile practices as systems for encoding and transmitting pattern, structure, and notation, most often through women’s labor. The binary logic of weaving (warp and weft, thread above and below) runs through all of Matson’s work, a reminder that these ancient systems of making were always a form of code and a form of communication. Textiles encode structures that outlive their origin; patterns carried across time.Flowers and Leaves&nbsp;will be on view through October 24, 2026. Christy Matson&nbsp;lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Recent solo exhibitions include Philip Martin Gallery, Rebecca Camacho Presents, The Milwaukee Art Museum, Cranbrook Art Museum, which featured a special commission for the US Art in Embassies Program, and the Long Beach Museum of Art. Her work has been in dozens of group exhibitions, including the Bakersfield Museum of Art, the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston, the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Museum, the Craft and Folk Art Museum, Los Angeles, the Asheville Art Museum, and the Knoxville Museum of Art. Matson’s work is in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Cranbrook Art Museum, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. ​

Flowers and Leaves

Volume Gallery is pleased to present Arrangements, the gallery’s first solo exhibition with Los Angeles-based artist Arina Erdélyi, opening September 17th, from 5-8PM in gallery two. In a series of ceramic lighting and wall works, Erdélyi explores tensions of scale and perspective through the pairing of miniature and full-scale forms. Table lamps frame miniature domestic scenes illuminated beneath silk shades, while full-scale plates hang above, extending these scenes into the surrounding space.

Arrangements

Art Encounter is celebrating the 10 year anniversary of our mural program with special programs throughout the year! This October, join Executive Director and mural program co-founder Lea Pinsky for a guided behind-the-scenes walking tour of the large-scale artworks that have transformed Downtown Evanston over the past decade. See some brand new projects, hear stories about the artists and the origins of the artworks, and learn what's coming next for our mural program. Visit artencounter.org/downtown-evanston-mural-tour-2026 to register.

Downtown Evanston Mural Tour

The Art Center's massive annual showcase of recycled and rediscovered artwork.We are proud to announce that the&nbsp;2026 Recycled Art Sale&nbsp;will be bigger, and filled with more treasures, than ever before.&nbsp; Over the last year, donors have dropped off a record number of donations. The art at&nbsp;Recycled&nbsp;is carefully curated and priced to be affordable. Make sure you get your ticket for opening night below, or join us during the week of the sale for free.&nbsp; First Look Entry:Friday, Oct 16 | 5 pm Opening Night Event:Friday, Oct 16 | 6 pm Opening WeekendSaturday, Oct 17 | 10 am – 4 pmSunday, Oct 18 | 12 pm – 4 pm Free Entry:Monday, Oct 19 – Saturday, Oct 24<a href="https://rkcgwygbb.cc.rs6.net/tn.jsp?f=001shdM4pYLrrQHSx7IJCzsIYZedukQGSp5GKA088AOyu5MHbVyfqYWX5O2pBY0TZXhTMGplt9A5bovGShmr_MhLVKKiTGVvbWQEn9O3jgH5reMsJt4HuigkhsUM_jvoeYfRCUJ_oEEDHrY4OVUG8QEshjmmsnfPL7N0zFUj336NNcBtkfEN6NQgeSOrUreiMQ6PkMRMGvNljo6lt3GYv9GftlIZpiKBo6TTpLSzH1Fs7srj3kjhe8SLMwxIT7I0_e-3njmeL0i6IB44ngqbvKFUg4-nrSJ5NAVCOCqENYkGPcHFHhJle143w==&amp;c=SQKm9DDLdpMQLf-CGyUwqJpILvUjkmq4gB6Co3Gfv3QwsRN6YmalGw==&amp;ch=belmXMhoSl8-jaeyjf0Ex2ByYEuxGjfP2Y85OeEJ5FhF2kFtpno0aw==" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Get your tickets here</a>

Recycled 2026

﻿Brendan Fernandes&nbsp;is an internationally recognized,&nbsp;multidisciplinary artist&nbsp;who&nbsp;examines issues of cultural displacement, migration, labor, and queer subjectivity through installation, video, sculpture, and dance. He is invested in confronting the complexities of transitional and transnational identities, with a particular interest in incorporating elements of cultural performance into contemporary art, arising from his unique cultural background as a Queer, Kenyan Indian Canadian.&nbsp;Fernandes’&nbsp;projects address issues of race, queer culture, migration, protest, and other forms of collective movement. Always looking to create new spaces and new forms of agency,&nbsp;his&nbsp;projects take on hybrid forms: part Ballet, part queer dance party, part political protest...&nbsp;always rooted in collaboration and fostering solidarity.&nbsp; Fernandes (b.1979, Nairobi, Kenya) attended York University for his Bachelors (hons.) and is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program (2010).&nbsp;He is currently an Assistant Professor at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL.&nbsp;Selected solo presentations include&nbsp;the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, Denver, CO (2024);&nbsp;Susan Inglett Gallery, New York, NY (2023);&nbsp;The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, PA (2023);&nbsp;Lurie Garden at&nbsp;Millennium&nbsp;Park, Chicago, IL (2022); The Richmond Art Gallery, Richmond, BC (2022); The Art Gallery in Ontario, Toronto, ON (2021); Chrysler Art Museum, Norfolk, VA (2020);&nbsp;moniquemeloche&nbsp;(2019); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL (2019); The Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC (2019); The Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; and DePaul University Art Museum, Chicago, IL (2018).&nbsp;His projects have been featured in the 2019 Whitney Biennial, New York, NY; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY, New York; the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; The Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa,&nbsp;ON;&nbsp;Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, ON;&nbsp;Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA;&nbsp;and The Kalamazoo Institute of Arts, Kalamazoo, MI, among many others.&nbsp;Recent projects include performances and solo presentations at the&nbsp;Pulitzer Arts Foundation, St. Louis, MO; Prospect.6, New Orleans, LA;&nbsp;Remai Modern, Saskatoon, CA;&nbsp;Munch Museum, Oslo, Norway; a collaboration with Danish National Radio, Copenhagen, Denmark, a group show at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa,&nbsp;and a two person show at Mass MoCA, North Adams, MA. In 2024, Fernandes debuted&nbsp;Build of the House&nbsp;for ART on THE MART, which traveled to Times Square Arts’ Midnight Moments.&nbsp;&nbsp; Public collections include&nbsp;the&nbsp;National Museum of&nbsp;African&nbsp;Art, Smithsonian, DC;&nbsp;Museum of Contemporary&nbsp;Art, Chicago, IL;&nbsp;Remai&nbsp;Modern, Saskatoon, CA;&nbsp;The&nbsp;Museu&nbsp;de&nbsp;Arte de São&nbsp;Paulo, BR;&nbsp;Nelson-Atkins Museum, Kansas City, MO;&nbsp;DePaul University Art Museum, Chicago, IL;&nbsp;Block Museum of&nbsp;Art&nbsp;at Northwestern University, IL;&nbsp;The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, CA;&nbsp;Musée&nbsp;des&nbsp;Beaux-Arts de Montréal, QC;&nbsp;Crysler&nbsp;Museum of&nbsp;Art, Norfolk, VA;&nbsp;The Joyner/Giuffrida&nbsp;Collection of&nbsp;Abstract&nbsp;Art, San Francisco, CA;&nbsp;Museum of Contemporary&nbsp;Art, University of Massachusetts,&nbsp;Amherst, MA;&nbsp;and the Wedge Collection, Toronto, ON.&nbsp;Fernandes is a recipient of a Robert Rauschenberg Fellowship. In 2010, he was shortlisted for the Sobey Art&nbsp;Award, and&nbsp;is the recipient of a prestigious Canada Council New Chapters grant (2017), the&nbsp;Artadia&nbsp;Award (2019), a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation grant (2019), and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2020).&nbsp; Fernandes currently lives&nbsp;and works&nbsp;in Chicago, IL.&nbsp;Installation View, Photo by Bob.

Brendan Fernandes: The Noise Will Sound

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

Gallery VICTOR is honored to present&nbsp;Honoring Resilience, a special exhibition commemorating the 25th anniversary of September 11, 2001, centered on Bruno Surdo’s monumental painting&nbsp;Tragedy, Memory and Honor.Tragedy, Memory and Honor&nbsp;is one of Surdo’s most powerful and historically significant works. The five panel artwork measures 9 x 35 feet. Created in response to the events and aftermath of 9/11, the painting stands as a profound meditation on loss, courage, mourning, and the endurance of the human spirit. Through its sweeping scale and emotional force, the work invites viewers into a space of remembrance and reflection while honoring the lives forever changed by that day.Bruno Surdo is a celebrated Chicago artist known for his large-scale narrative figurative paintings and his sustained commitment to the human condition as a subject of contemporary art. Represented by&nbsp;Gallery VICTOR, Surdo has exhibited widely over several decades, and&nbsp;Tragedy, Memory and Honor&nbsp;has previously been shown in Chicago, including at the&nbsp;Daley Center&nbsp;in 2002 and 2003, as well as in galleries across the country. In recognition of the painting, Surdo received a letter of appreciation from former Mayor&nbsp;Richard M. Daley.This exhibition will extend beyond the painting itself. In addition to&nbsp;Tragedy, Memory and Honor, the presentation will include artifacts from Ground Zero collected by the artist while assisting in cleanup efforts two weeks after 9/11, along with a video documenting the creation of the painting, preparatory drawings and sketches, photography, testimonials, and historical materials. Together, these elements will provide visitors with a deeper understanding of the work’s creation, its historical context, and its lasting emotional impact.Presenting this exhibition in Chicago carries special meaning. As Surdo’s hometown, the city provides a powerful context for revisiting a work that has moved audiences nationwide. Gallery VICTOR’s historic setting offers an ideal venue for an exhibition of this scale and significance, giving viewers the opportunity to engage with a work that is not only a monumental achievement in contemporary figurative painting, but also a testament to collective memory, resilience, and compassion.More than two decades after 9/11,&nbsp;Tragedy, Memory and Honor&nbsp;remains a deeply relevant and moving work, reminding us of art’s capacity to preserve history, bear witness to suffering, and honor the strength of those who endure.The exhibition will premiere during the&nbsp;10th Annual River North Design District Fall Gallery Walk&nbsp;on&nbsp;Friday, September 11, 2026, from 5 to 8 PM. This special evening will offer the public its first opportunity to experience Surdo’s monumental work at Gallery VICTOR on the 25th anniversary of 9/11.

Honoring Resilience

THE DIASPORAL RHYTHMS COLLECTORS ART AUCTION 3PM-6PMSunday, October 25 Logan Center for the Arts915 E. 60TH STREET A NATURAL THOUGHT IS SUPPORTED IN PART BY A GENEROUS SPONSORSHIP FROM THE CHICAGO COMMUNITY TRUST RSVP: <a href="https://diasporalrhythms.org" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">DIASPORALRHYTHMS. ORG</a>

A Natural Thought – The Diasporal Rhythms Collectors Art Auction

October 28, 2026Start time: 10:00 AM CDT Freeman’s presents Essential Jewelry, a live online auction taking place October 28 at 10 a.m. Central. Visit the auction page for catalogue and bidding information. <a href="https://freemansauction.com/auction/6552-essential-jewelry" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">DETAILS</a> Sale number: 6552

Essential Jewelry

Friday evening, September 11, 5 to 8 PM. Misha Goro - Images of the City. River North Fall Gallery Walk, 5-8pm. On view through October 28, 2026.

Misha Goro - Images of the City

October 29, 2026Start time: 10:00 AM CDT Freeman’s presents Watches, a live auction in Chicago on October 29 at 10 a.m. Central. Visit the auction page for catalogue and bidding information. <a href="https://freemansauction.com/auction/6574-watches" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">DETAILS</a> Sale number: 6574

Watches

Join Aviva Lehmann, Deputy Chair of Fine Art at Heritage Auctions, for a guided tour of highlights from the remarkable American Art Signature Auction to take place on November 13. From Ernie Barnes to Norman Rockwell, enjoy these impressive, large-scale American classics and masterworks and the stories behind them before the gavel strikes. Kindly RSVP Here [insert link: https://forms.monday.com/forms/6bb069dd7c31f5d0566301f636a238ec?r=use1] HA.com/8258a

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