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

Chicago Artists Coalition is pleased to&nbsp;announce our partnership with Newcity, in which CAC will host a centerpiece exhibition of this year’s Newcity Breakout Artists.&nbsp;The exhibition will have an opening reception on Wednesday, April 8, 2026 from 5-9pm. This event is free and open to the public, hosted at our space on Hubbard Street. The exhibition will be on view until and have a closing reception on April 23, 2026. Established in 2004, Newcity’s annual Breakout Artists issue has become a leading indicator of future success in contemporary art. Of the 150+ Breakout Artists before this year, over 40 now have gallery representation, ranging from Hauser &amp; Wirth to numerous Chicago galleries; most of the others, including those who’ve chosen less commercial paths, show regularly at museums and institutions around the world. Exhibiting artists: Hai-Wen Lin, Mauricio López F. (Current CAC Resident), Isabelle Frances McGuire, Mariana Noreña G, Monika Plioplyte, Nick Raffel, TaitaixTina, Noelia Towers, Carina Yepez, and Sangwoo Yoo (Current CAC Resident).

Newcity Breakout Artists Exhibition

Forget Me Not&nbsp;features 10 emerging and mid-career Chicago-based artists who showcase the city's burgeoning creative talent and diversity: Mikey Coleman, Stevie Connor, Rex Delafkaran, Bailey Ellens, Bianca Pastel, Alayna Pernell, Juan Molina Hernández, Kitty Rauth, Selma Suleiman, and Marlon Tobias, all of whom broadly reflect on themes of place, home, belonging, and community. Curated by School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) Arts Administration and Policy graduate students Serena Fox, Isabelle (Izzy) Jaeggin, Tia Lowe, and Helena Rodriguez, in collaboration with Epiphany Center for the Arts, the exhibition presents a diverse range of artistic practices, including installation, photography, ceramics, and sculpture, with fiber, collage, and painting.&nbsp; Throughout these works, “home” appears not as a fixed location, but as an evolving terrain defined by the act of remembering. Some of the featured artists render these ideas tangibly through their usage of objects, materiality, and the natural world. Others probe the emotional and psychological landscapes of nostalgia and childhood. Characterized by movement and diaspora, these artists draw on archival material, ancestral traditions, and cultural motifs, grounding their work in practices of preservation.&nbsp; Forget Me Not&nbsp;highlights both the tension and interdependence between individualism and communal belonging. Together, these artists offer an assemblage of perspectives on how we ground ourselves in the world: through ritual, storytelling, connectivity, joy, and resistance. We invite viewers to consider the power of the collective and how, despite our differences, we all find ourselves here, together.

Forget Me Not

Ringleader&nbsp;is a collaborative furniture design project by artists Noël Morical and Mat Mancini, forged at the intersection of sculpture, utility, and irreverent joy. Rooted in their independent studio practices, the duo merges Noël’s intricate macramé technique with Mat’s materially layered, collage-based approach to create hybrid objects that are as functional as they are fantastically whimsy.The collaboration merges through a heart-to-heart between handcrafted and industrial construction. Noël's use of richly colored paracord—knotted, braided, and tensioned—introduces a tactile softness and sculptural rhythm to the work. Her practice draws from the language of textiles and body adornment, reimagining traditional macramé within a contemporary design context. Chairs, tables, and lighting elements become vessels of texture and intimacy—each loop and knot a deliberate gesture toward intentional care and geometric complexity.In parallel, Mat brings an eclectic material and cultural vocabulary drawn from cast forms, welded steel display systems, resin-infused prints, and 1990s pop-cultural motifs. Splicing structure with spirit, his practice grazes the edges of contemporary furniture’s conventions, guided by an irreverent yet lyrical sensibility. His surfaces feel both archival and futuristic—evoking suburban skate parks,color block fashion, Greco-Roman columns, and the visual clutter of mischievous, meaningful adolescence.Together, their work percolates between design, sculpture, and play—producing objects that are performative, customizable, and unapologetically personal. Whether it’s a chair that functions like a stage prop or a lamp that behaves like a wearable artifact,&nbsp;Ringleader&nbsp;treats furniture as a site of experimentation: a place where memory, humor, tactility, and utility converge.Noël Morical (American, b. 1989) lives and works in Chicago IL. She received her BFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. Morical is a multidisciplinary artist interested in organizing color, coded experience, and craft techniques.&nbsp;Mat Mancini (b. 1987, Philadelphia) lives and works in Chicago, IL. MFA The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, 2014. BFA Rutgers University, 2010. Recent shows include Peana Projects in MX, Little Berlin in PHL, HG INN, Julius Caesar, Paris London Hong Kong, and LVL3 in CHI.

Noël Morical and Mat Mancini: Ringleader

Whether shooting from the vast wilds of Alaska, or the familiar Chicago alleys of her hometown, Alexa Viscius manages to create film portraits that feel like peering into a keyhole. Candid shots reveal coveted glimpses of beloved musicians: like New York Phenom Cameron Winter making adjustments to his musical arrangements backstage before his monumental solo performance at Hyde Park’s Rockefeller Church, or the sensational young Chicago band Horsegirl, running down a hill with a certain excitement and teenage-abandon of a group on the cusp of their breakout record, or a contemplative moment shared between longtime friends and prolific Chicago indie rockers Max Kakacek and Julien Elrich of Whitney, sitting in Kackek’s grandparent’s bedroom in Portman, Wisconsin. Many of her portraits, taken at her longtime studio in the historic Flatiron building in Wicker Park Chicago, retain that same sense of tenderness: A portrait of renowned New York musician, and frequent collaborator, Adrienne Linker of Big Thief, displays a sense of intimacy and trust. It’s a trust that has been earned through 20+ years of mastering her craft, allowing her subjects to open up, revealing themselves like flowers. From legendary Chicago DIY venues of yore, to international stages and all those quiet moments in between, she’s been there thru it all, with her finger on the shutter, capturing the music and the people that make it. Alexa Viscius is a Chicago based photographer with a focus on music portraiture, working primarily on film. She received her BFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2011. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, Paper magazine, W magazine, and other publications. She is a recipient of the Abbey Road Music Photography Award for the Editorial category in 2024.In addition to her photography practice, Viscius is an award winning graphic designer and plays bass in the Chicago indie rock band Bnny. She lives in Chicago with her husband Adam and their son Arthur.

Alexa Viscius: Portraits of People Who Make Music

“Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue” is an exhibition of select works from Chicago artist Ben Foch that span the past 20 + years of his making. Some works are from the early 2000’s, never before exhibited seminal beginnings. Some works are from the 2014-2018 era, created after the 1st and 2nd incarnations of his artist-run project space New Capital, and of course, something new from 2026 will be selected.Cinderella, Dracula, Raiders Logo, Scotch Tape Plaid, Newport cigarettes, Tupac Shakur; these are some of the source content(s) that generate an origin narrative for the painting practice of Ben Foch. It could appear to be a contemporary interpretation of a Pop Culture narrative in art, and in the sense that Foch is engaged in discovering and/or defining an avant-garde in the 21st century, it is. Yet, his work, now in its mid-career mature phase, finds its roots in the 1960’s and 70’s Conceptual practices of On Kawara, Roman Opalka and Olivier Mosset. The only difference being the veneer.This exhibition is a meditation on and a celebration of life dedicated to making. It’s important to tell our stories; to ourselves, so we can know who we are, to each other, so we can know one another, and to share them with the world at large, so we can manifest our being through shared acknowledgements of time and space. Stories can be told in many ways. This exhibition is an accounting that reflects one artist through a curated look of their past in the present.We are the stories we tell ourselves.<a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://mleblancchicago.com/ben-foch" target="_blank">Ben Foch</a>&nbsp;(b. 1977) is an artist based in Chicago. He grew up in Park Forest IL., attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (BFA 1995-2000), co-founded the artist-run exhibition space New Capital (2010-2017) and is represented by M. Leblanc.&nbsp;Recent solo exhibitions of Foch’s work include Proof Of Werq (2024) and Hood Ornament (2021) at M. LeBlanc in Chicago, IL, Haiku (2019) at Selenas Mountain in Brooklyn, NY, Full Grown (2018) at Efrain Lopez Gallery in Chicago, IL, and Of Human Bondage (2018) at Roots and Culture in Chicago, IL. Foch’s work has been recently included in group exhibitions such as The Highest Level of Listening (2025) curated by Olivia Swider at Gure, Chicago, IL., Miniotics (2025) curated by Trinity Bavaria and Gunner Dongieux at Weatherproof, Chicago, IL., Tricky Passage (2022) curated by Ben Gill at Rhona Hoffman in Chicago, IL, Ugly Feelings (2016) curated by Karolina Gnatowski at Side Car Gallery in Hammond, IN.

Ben Foch: Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Parallel Acts: A Practice of Staying brings together two practices that understand gesture as a durational condition rather than a singular event. In both bodies of work, movement is sustained over time, and repetition becomes a means of transformation rather than reproduction.In Shin’s ongoing series, Pas de Deux, Soo Shin constructs a buoyant vessel that floats in the Pacific Ocean while tethered to her body. Paper and pigmented wooden balls move freely within the structure, allowing ocean currents to register motion across the surface. Gesture emerges through sustained presence and shared agency between body, material, and environment, recorded as residue over time rather than intention.Tim Stone’s works are formed through repeated return to a single drawing. By tracing and retracing his own marks over extended periods, he allows accumulation to alter the surface. Through accumulation, the surface slowly transforms: compression builds, sheen develops, and the drawing shifts toward another material state. Staying with the same gesture becomes a means of altering both surface and substance.Placed together, these practices unfold as parallel acts of staying—where movement persists, time accumulates, and matter becomes the record of duration.<a style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.sooshin.org/" target="_blank">Soo Shin </a>(b. Seoul, Korea) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Chicago. She received the Northern Trust Acquisition Award (Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts) at Expo Chicago and has been awarded fellowships from the Loghaven Artist Residency (Knoxville, TN), the Djerassi Resident Artists Program (Woodside, CA), the Vilcek Foundation Fellowship at MacDowell, and the Illinois Arts Council Artists Grant. Her work has been exhibited at Block Museum (Evanston, IL), Ohio University (Athens, OH), PATRON Gallery (Chicago, IL), The Rivalry Projects (Buffalo, NY), The Luminary (St. Louis, MO), Goldfinch Gallery (Chicago, IL), Chicago Manual Style (Chicago, IL), LVL3 (Chicago, IL), and the Chicago Artists Coalition (Chicago, IL), among others. She has also completed residencies at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center (Sheboygan, WI) and Ox-Bow (Saugatuck, MI). Shin holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as both an MFA and a BFA from Ewha Womans University in Seoul, Korea.<a style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.circlecontemporary.org/artists/88-tim-stone/works/" target="_blank">Tim Stone</a> was born in Park Ridge in 1973, where he grew up living with his family. Over the years, Stone has created an expansive and cohesive body of work across media, including graphite, watercolor, and acrylic. For the past few years he has focused primarily on grayscale drawings of loose grids in graphite, with titles that hint at personal inspirations. Focused and methodical in his practice, he maintains a diligent studio routine and steadfast artistic vision informed by concepts of abstraction. Stone’s process is driven by labor-intensive, repetitive mark-making that burnishes the graphite and slowly wears away the surface of the paper over time. He’s also an active member of the curatorial committee, assisting guest curators with exhibitions at Circle Contemporary featuring studio artists alongside artists from the broader contemporary art community.

Parallel Acts: A Practice of Staying | Soo Shin and Tim Stone

Through the investigation of personal histories, familial ancestry, and the weight of place, the six ACRE alumni artists in&nbsp;tether me to the ground or let me float&nbsp;consider how we gather fragmented ideas of place and identity to piece together notions of belonging and grounding.&nbsp;Grounding becomes a means of navigating obscured histories and solidifying ourselves, our ancestors, and our communities to a place.&nbsp;tether me to the ground or let me float&nbsp;examines how we ground ourselves within our own histories and how we become informed and infused by the places we occupy.&nbsp;The exhibition questions the complexity of home, the relationship between the environment and the body, and the fragility of temporalities. Molded and shaped by the landscapes that surround them, the artists in the exhibition explore the multifaceted, imperfect, and often difficult undertaking of building an ecology of belonging that radically imagines our relationships to the ongoing history of a place.&nbsp;Unearthing and breaking down these relationships, the artists reflect on space in relation to memory, migration, community, and spirituality. They consider the tangible traces of our presence and the ephemeral quality of the personal and ancestral histories that both tether and release us from the places we pass through and remain in. Place and home become at once stark and ephemeral in these narratives, inviting the viewer to imagine how we locate and ground ourselves within these complexities. Featured Artists:&nbsp;Prerna, Colin Martinez, yétúndé ọlágbajú, Lars Shimabukuro, Ian Solomon, Shirin Towfiq&nbsp;Curated by&nbsp;Gemma KimACRE (Artists’ Cooperative Residency and Exhibitions)&nbsp;is an artist-run non-profit devoted to providing resources to emerging artists and nurturing a diverse community of cultural producers. ACRE’s programs support this generative community with materials, equipment, expertise, conscientiously produced food, and opportunities to exhibit and share work.&nbsp;ACRE’s annual summer residency in rural Wisconsin brings together emerging artists to live and work in a communal setting. A corresponding year-long program of exhibitions and events based in Chicago creates ongoing opportunities for idea exchange, feedback and growth. Programs such as ACRE Projects, ACRE Kitchen, and ACRE TV, provide additional venues for collaboration and experimentation.ACRE aims to be a leader at advancing new means of support for emerging artists at critical junctures in their careers. ACRE eschews focus on traditional institutional success, instead prioritizing the unique, individually-defined paths of artists.

tether me to the ground or let me float

Corbett vs. Dempsey is pleased to present B. Ingrid Olson, All Lock No Key. This is the artist's first exhibition at the gallery. The ground is constantly shifting. A term may stir, awaken, move into another term's nest. Photography dives into sculpture which morphs into assemblage and is then sublated into installation. Givens are unglued. And reglued. Beds are unmade. And tidied. In B. Ingrid Olson's work, which integrates a staggering variety of ideas and materials, a body – some body – is configured as a runway, a site of arrivals and departures. Working with cast, carved, sculpted, found, painted, screen-printed, and photographed materials, Olson addresses an intimate yet broadly relatable set of open secrets and secretive openings. As concrete as these pliable substances are, so is Olson’s use of ambiguity, which she deploys as another working material. What is that thing I see? Is it an appendage? A wrapper? An egg? A mold? A slipper? A mushroom? Something covertly erotic or explicitly abject? In her most recent work, she has constructed objects that imply possible violence – ranging from surgery to disinterment, or even evisceration – objects that also destabilize one’s sense of position in space. Like Charles Olson's projective verse, which the poet (no known relation) declared "proprioceptive," B. Ingrid Olson describes her work as "promoting a self-consciousness of body and mind, of subjectivity and of having a specific vantage point while ‘looking.’ The viewer then becomes a visitor: embodied looking, an aware encounter.In All Lock No Key, Olson has constructed a large architectural installation based on The Vault, the gallery's video room, turning that usually secluded space inside-out. In the surrogate structure, Realia for punishment or distinction (is this a human problem? If so I'd like to keep it), 2026, the artist has everted the shelving and placed a sculptural composition into its illuminated interior. Lighting is critical to the exhibition, which subsumes the majority of the south gallery space, bathing it in a caramel glow. Only one corner of the room is brightly lit to present a dense cluster of wall-based works, as if they were creatures drawn to the bright light leak created by a slim vertical gap where the two walls might otherwise meet. Olson’s work has been the focus of solo exhibitions internationally, most recently at Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis; Kunstverein Braunschweig, Germany; Keijiban, Kanazawa, Japan; fluent, Santander, Spain; Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge, Massachusetts; and Secession, Vienna. She participated in the 2024 Whitney Biennial and New Photography 2018 at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

B. Ingrid Olson: All Lock No Key

Curated by William LiebermanThe Given Distance is an exploration of the default condition or inherent barrier that artists face in fully communicating their internal experience to others. This exhibition points to the role of the artist, whose work attempts to bridge that distance.This members’ exhibition brings together work by all artists of ARC Gallery, highlighting the range of voices, perspectives, and approaches that make up the gallery’s community. Working across diverse media and styles, ARC’s members present artworks that reflect their individual attempts to translate personal perception into visual form, collectively exploring the space between inner experience and shared understanding.<ul><li>Exhibiting Member Artists: Kina Bagovska, Raissa Bailey, Nancy Bechtol*, Abigail Engstrand, Nancy Fritz, Stacey Lee Gee, Iris Goldstein, Jessica Gondeck, Cait Hardie, Diane Jurado, Elyse Martin, Ruti Modlin, Jasmine Percell, Cheri Reif Naselli, Randi Shepard, Lee Stanton, Jane Stevens, Michele Stutts, Michelle Williams, and Amy Zucker.</li><li>Exhibition dates: April 2 - May 1, 2026</li><li>Gallery hours: Thurs – Fri 2-6pm, Sat – Sun 12-4 pm</li></ul>*Passed Away

The Given Distance

PATRON is pleased to announce Nyeema Morgan’s&nbsp;take my wife…PLEASE!, the artist’s second exhibition with the gallery following 2022’s&nbsp;The Set-up. Across a body of work including sculptures, drawings, and print media, Morgan apprehends narrative structures as scaffolding for systems of power.&nbsp;take my wife…PLEASE!&nbsp;unfolds through inquisitive framing devices, mechanisms, and studies. With reflections and deflections, subtle set-ups, and alterations of the gallery space, Morgan’s works catalyze the inherent vulnerability and tension in our relationship with images, words, objects and architecture.<a href="https://patrongallery.us10.list-manage.com/track/click?u=fe9966abed200e47655a01bab&amp;id=756a607d87&amp;e=9b06d8f0f3" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">NYEEMA MORGAN</a>&nbsp;(b. Philadelphia, PA) lives and works in Chicago, IL. Morgan earned an&nbsp;MFA from the California College of the Arts in San Francisco, CA, and a BFA from the Cooper Union School of&nbsp;Art in New York, NY and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting &amp; Sculpture, Madison, ME.Select solo and two-person presentations include:&nbsp;Mike Cloud &amp; Nyeema Morgan: Story Structure, Pt. 2,&nbsp;Neubar Collegium for Culture &amp; Society at University of Chicago, Chicago, IL (forthcoming);&nbsp;take my wife…PLEASE!,&nbsp;PATRON, Chicago, IL (forthcoming);&nbsp;The Set-Up&nbsp;(2022),&nbsp;PATRON, Chicago, IL;&nbsp;Soft Power. Hard Margins.&nbsp;(2022),&nbsp;Grant Wahlquist Gallery, Portland, ME;&nbsp;between friends&nbsp;(with Mary Simpson) (2022),&nbsp;David Peterson Gallery,&nbsp;Minneapolis, MN;&nbsp;Nyeema Morgan&nbsp;:&nbsp;Like it Is&nbsp;(2021),&nbsp;The Philadelphia Art Alliance at the University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA;&nbsp;THE STEM. THE FLOWER. THE ROOT. THE SEED.&nbsp;(2020),&nbsp;Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO;&nbsp;Asian Smaisians and Other Abstract Racial Slurs&nbsp;(with Mike&nbsp;Cloud) (2019),&nbsp;Marlborough Gallery Viewing Room, New York, NY and&nbsp;horror horror&nbsp;(2018),&nbsp;Grant Wahlquist Gallery, Portland, ME.&nbsp;Select group exhibitions include:&nbsp;Errata&nbsp;(2024),&nbsp;PATRON, Chicago, IL;&nbsp;Objects and Power&nbsp;(2024),&nbsp;Institute of Contemporary Art,&nbsp;Maine College of Art and Design, Portland, ME;&nbsp;Us We Them | Race Ethnicity Identity&nbsp;(2022),&nbsp;Worcester Museum of&nbsp;Art, Worcester, MA;&nbsp;Second Sight: The Paradox of Vision in Contemporary Art&nbsp;(2019),&nbsp;Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME;&nbsp;Signal from Noise&nbsp;(2015),&nbsp;Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY;&nbsp;&nbsp;The Intuitionists&nbsp;(2014),&nbsp;The Drawing Center, New York, NY; and&nbsp;Project Gutenberg&nbsp;(2012),&nbsp;Galerie Jean Roch Dard, Paris, France.Morgan is the recipient of the&nbsp;Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant to Visual Artists&nbsp;(2026), Harpo Foundation Visual Artist Grant&nbsp;(2023),the&nbsp;Chicago Artadia Award&nbsp;(2023), a&nbsp;Joan Mitchell Painters &amp; Sculptors Grant&nbsp;(2022, 2016) and an&nbsp;Art Matters Grant&nbsp;(2013). Her work is included in the public collections of&nbsp;The Walker Art Center,&nbsp;Minneapolis, MN,&nbsp;Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME;&nbsp;The Menil Collection, Houston, TX (in collaboration with William Cordova and Otabenga Jones &amp; Associates); and&nbsp;Worcester Museum of Art,&nbsp;Worcester, MA.

Nyeema Morgan: take my wife…PLEASE!

Corbett vs. Dempsey is pleased to present a selection of historical collage works by Robert Nickle. This is the gallery's second exhibition of Nickle's work.Widely exhibited in his lifetime, Robert Nickle (1919–1980) was one of Chicago's premier abstract artists, his approach remaining uncommonly consistent over the course of more than three decades. With a strong aesthetic connection to certain modernist precursors, especially Kurt Schwitters, and with direct ties to Chicago's New Bauhaus, Nickle constructed his collages painstakingly, over long periods of time, collecting flotsam and jetsam from the street – scraps of paper, discarded labels, weathered bits of carton or packing material – which he assembled into intimate patchworks. Working on a large table, on which dozens of collages were arranged prone, like dissection specimens, Nickle found the perfect pieces for each puzzle. Once finalized, these compact compositions were encased in a signature framing system, notoriously booby-trapped to make future reframing nearly impossible. Each work's verso features a special element – a small circular glazed portal beneath which sits a photograph of the artist on the day the work was consummated, with his signature and the year of completion. Since his death, Nickle's extraordinary contribution to the art of Chicago has rarely been the subject of monographic investigation. In this exhibition, CvsD presents collages from the 1960s and '70s, with two examples presented to display their highly unusual, charmingly personal reverse sides.﻿Image: Robert Nickle,&nbsp;Untitled,&nbsp;1966,&nbsp;collage,&nbsp;13 5/8 x 15 3/4 inches,&nbsp;22 3/4 x 24 5/8 x 1 1/4 inches, framed,&nbsp;signed and dated verso.

Robert Nickle: Collages 1966-1979

Keiichi Tanaami's&nbsp;Red Shade&nbsp;presents a whirlwind of animated childhood memories of World War II interspersed with images of Western pop. Produced when the artist was 85 years old, the film begins with Tanaami's paintings, which the artist&nbsp;animated into a dream world featuring 80 different scenes, each independently complete and freely arrangeable.Image: Still from&nbsp;Keiichi Tanaami,&nbsp;Red Shade,&nbsp;2012,&nbsp;digital video, 7 min.&nbsp;

Keiichi Tanaami: Red Shade

Opening Reception: Saturday, March 7th, 2026 from 2 to 5 PM&nbsp; The Women Painting Women Exhibition expands upon our collective identities as figurative artists. In this exhibition of figure paintings, we challenge the male gaze by exploring alternative topics such as our individual selfhood, archetypical figures and Surreal depictions of the human form. Our focus on our own authentic, complex bodies provides a vehicle for change and elevates our position as artists.&nbsp; Saturday, April 4th at 2 PM: Gallery Talk with Joanna Pinsky, Artistic Director and Cofounder of Art Encounter. Artists: Melissa Arostegui, Pochis Bank, Gaby Bozeman, Kate Citrin, Jennifer Cronin, Karen Fike, Nicole Gordon, Ellen Holtzblatt, Sarah Kaiser, Victoria Loeb, Joanna Pinsky, Lea Pinsky, Mary Porterfield, Patti Ray, Nancy Rosen, and Eleanor Spiess-Ferris.

Women Painting Women

Conditions of Encounter includes three artists exploring the notions of environment and atmosphere. Hillary Irene Johnson, Daniel Miller, and Tuan Jones question how we affect, document, and inhabit spaces. Bringing together interdisciplinary practices, the exhibition reveals what typically goes unseen, inviting an awareness of presence within the space. Through camera-less photography, interactive sculptures, and paintings, the works explore perception and its relation to the subtle exchanges of encounter.Hillary Irene Johnson presents two interconnected bodies of work: camera-less salt prints from her ongoing 108 Days: Attentive Field and photographic works on silk from A Year in Light. Johnson’s practice uses natural light, duration, and handmade materials to create images that emerge slowly through repeated exposure and careful attention. Her work invites viewers into a quieter mode of perception, where light is experienced not as instant spectacle but as atmosphere, memory, and accumulation.Daniel Miller presents Mutual Light, a series of interactive sculptural flowers that react to visitors through infrared temperature sensing, distance detection, and air-quality monitoring. As viewers move closer, breathe, and emit heat, the flowers shift in color and luminosity, making visible the often-invisible energies exchanged between body and environment. Constructed from repurposed plastic milk jugs and custom electronic systems, the works combine ecological reuse with poetic technological responsiveness.Tuan Jones presents When Shadows Plié: The Choreography in Stillness, a series of paintings depicting humanoid figures performing ballet in Formula 1 helmets. The helmets allow the dancers to conceal themselves but also amplify their presence to better navigate the world of ballet, an institution that has historically excluded black and brown bodies. While Racecar driving and Ballet seemingly juxtapose– recklessness vs. grace, they relate in their culture of rigorous expectations of work and their precise and calculated movements. Dancers prance through a forest floor, bestrewn in contradiction, Jones creates a contemplative world where the viewer questions how they occupy and are perceived in space. Mutual Light, Daniel Miller

Conditions of Encounter

*Registration is required. Visit&nbsp;www.EvanstonArtCenter.org&nbsp;for more information.The Evanston Art Center (EAC) is excited to welcome the public to our upcoming exhibition,&nbsp;Joan Ruppert | Making the Cut. The exhibition will be on display from&nbsp;March 28 - April 26, 2026, with an opening reception on Sunday, March 29 from 1–4pm that will be free and open to the public. Joan Tortorici Ruppert is a television producer and media content creator based in Glenview, IL. Her exhibition&nbsp;Making the Cut&nbsp;showcases live-action collages that combine characters from her late father’s vintage negatives together with contemporary environments. Each new collage is organic, unpredictable, and unrepeatable, disrupting time and space to write new chapters in her family’s story.Joan Ruppert | Making the Cut&nbsp;will be exhibited in the Second Floor Gallery of the Art Center. The opening reception is free and open to the public. This exhibition is partially funded by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the EAC’s general membership.Evanston Art Center, a nonprofit 501 (c)(3) organization, is dedicated to fostering the appreciation and expression of the arts among diverse audiences. The Art Center offers extensive and innovative instruction in broad areas of artistic endeavor through classes, exhibitions, interactive arts activities, and community outreach initiatives.

Joan Ruppert | Making the Cut

The Evanston Art Center (EAC) is excited to welcome the public to our upcoming exhibition,&nbsp;Sandra Hansen | Our Exquisite Pollution Series: Under the Sea. The exhibition will be on display from&nbsp;March 28 - April 26, 2026, with an opening reception on Sunday, March 29, from 1-4pm that will be free and open to the public.In&nbsp;Our Exquisite Pollution Series: Under the Sea, environmental artist Sandra Hansen&nbsp;creates water scenes with pure, sustainable handmade paper and repurposed plastics found decaying on the beaches. As the environmental crisis grows larger, so does Hansen’s art. Hansen’s work has evolved into installation with lighting, sound, and movement, where viewers are engulfed in an underwater-like space with sea creatures.Our Exquisite Pollution Series: Under the Sea&nbsp;will be exhibited in the Atrium Gallery on the Second Floor of the Art Center. The opening reception is free and open to the public. This exhibition is partially funded by the Illinois Arts Council, a state agency, and the EAC’s general membership.

Sandra Hansen | Our Exquisite Pollution Series: Under the Sea

Since 1964, The Madison Museum of Contemporary Art has collected and preserved modern and contemporary art in order to exhibit it and provide transformative experiences. These objects, MMoCA holds in trust for everyone to learn from and be inspired by all for free.&nbsp;In 2025, MMoCA added over 80 artworks to the permanent collection, including works on paper, large-scale paintings, and sculptures from both local and international artists.&nbsp;Recent Acquisitions&nbsp;displays some of these art objects, showcasing the breadth of contemporary art practice and connecting Madison to the global dialogue through visual art.&nbsp;

Recent Acquisitions

During her 2025 Artist Residency at the International Museum of Surgical Science, Chicago-based artist, design director and educator Kimberly Viviano interrogates how everyday food choices affect our bodies in uncomfortable ways. Drawing on personal experience and research, her installation investigates the tension between foods labeled “healthy” and how differently individual bodies can respond to them.<a href="https://zpzl839y.r.us-west-2.awstrack.me/L0/https:%2F%2Fsqclick.com%2Foutreach%2Ft%2F6iFkeySaxzhQ%2Fhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fimss.org%25252Fkimberly-viviano-food-for-thought%25252F%25253Futm_source%25253Dsqmktg_email%3Fs=qfBtUgTbeJ0G29A6LQinnFs8rYXjPA-Bkj1017zPtzI/1/0101019cc44e31ce-376117fd-ade0-416d-9862-f278044627da-000000/HIb81s-xlz354jnYXtq2QUApStg=469" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">MORE INFORMATION</a>

Food for Thought: Kimberly Viviano

This Winter, the&nbsp;Elmhurst Art Museum&nbsp;presents&nbsp;Living with Modernism: Kelli Connell.&nbsp;Presenting two series by the Chicago-based artist, Connell’s nationally traveling exhibition&nbsp;Pictures for Charis&nbsp;responds to the iconic photographs of Highland Park-born artist&nbsp;Edward Weston&nbsp;through a queer, feminist lens. Her second major body of work—Double Life—explores the evolution of intimate relationships shaped by the changing nature of identity over time, and features new commissions responding to the architecture of the&nbsp;Mies van der Rohe-designed McCormick House. The exhibition marks the largest presentation of Connell’s work in Chicago, placing queerness, power structures, and shifting ecologies in the twenty-first century in conversation with two giants of modernism. The exhibition is curated by&nbsp;Allison Peters Quinn, Executive Director and Chief Curator, and will be on view at the Elmhurst Art Museum, 150 South Cottage Hill Avenue in Elmhurst, from&nbsp;January 24 to April 27, 2026. Peters Quinn says, “The Elmhurst Art Museum is honored to present the arresting photographs of nationally acclaimed photographer Kelli Connell in the Chicagoland area, where she has rooted her art practice and mentored dozens of artists for over a decade. Following its extensive US tour, we have expanded the&nbsp;Pictures for Charis&nbsp;exhibition to include an additional series,&nbsp;Double Life&nbsp;by Connell. Connell’s commitment to exploring the everyday moments in relationships with ourselves and loved ones encourages us to cherish both the beautiful and the difficult times in our lives. Chicago is a crucial center for contemporary photography, and we are proud to highlight this through&nbsp;Living with Modernism.” An exhibition in two parts, Connell explores the psyche of human relationships and our connection to nature and architecture. The main galleries will feature 45 photographs from her series&nbsp;Pictures for Charis, a tender and emotional sequence of work placing Connell in dialogue with one of the most innovative American photographers of the 20th Century, Edward Weston (1886-1958). For this body of work, Connell revisited the sites of Weston’s black-and-white landscapes and portraits of his partner of 11 years, writer Charis Wilson, in&nbsp;California and the West&nbsp;(1934-45), to photograph her own former longtime partner, artist Betsy Odom. Connell’s work is presented alongside 48 original prints by Weston on loan from the Center for Creative Photography (Tuscon) and text excerpts from Charis. Shining new light on Weston’s subject, Charis, the installation bridges eighty years of ecological and social shifts with a feminist perspective.The McCormick House gallery features the latest chapter in Connell’s ongoing series&nbsp;Double Life, which the artist began in 2002. For this series, Connell explores long-term relationships with others and the self. The digital images document the fictional relationship of two women, both played by collaborator Kiba Jacobson. Connell describes&nbsp;Double Life&nbsp;as “an honest representation of the fluidity of the self in regard to decisions about intimate relationships, sexuality, gender, family, belief systems, and lifestyle options.” For&nbsp;Living with Modernism, the Elmhurst Art Museum commissioned Connell to respond to the architecture of McCormick House designed by Mies van der Rohe. Connell chose to photograph the site - and incorporate poetry from its former owner Isabella Gardner (niece of the Boston arts patron by the same name) - to generate new works adding to the perpetual&nbsp;Double Life&nbsp;narrative. Connell says,&nbsp;“I am beyond thrilled to show&nbsp;Pictures for Charis&nbsp;and&nbsp;Double Life&nbsp;together at the Elmhurst Art Museum. Both projects portray my commitment to uncovering forgotten histories. Making new work in the McCormick House, a space where the work will also be shown, was a unique opportunity for me to think about architecture and its impact on people and the relationships we have with each other in these spaces.” Pictures for Charis&nbsp;is co-organized by the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, at the University of Arizona on behalf of the Arizona Board of Regents; the Cleveland Museum of Art; and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. Pictures for Charis&nbsp;is curated for each museum by Rebecca Senf, Ph.D., Chief Curator at the Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, at the University of Arizona on behalf of the Arizona Board of Regents; Barbara Tannenbaum, Ph.D, Curator of Photography and Chair of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs at the Cleveland Museum of Art; and Gregory J. Harris, the Donald and Marilyn Keough Family Curator of Photography at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta and Allison Peters Quinn, Executive Director &amp; Chief Curator of the Elmhurst Art Museum.This project is made possible by Teiger Foundation. Photographs by Edward Weston are courtesy of the Edward Weston Archive at the Center for Creative Photography. Additional support for&nbsp;Living with Modernism&nbsp;and related programs are provided by the Illinois Arts Council and individual donors. ABOUT THE ARTISTKelli Connell&nbsp;(b. 1974) is a photographer based in Chicago. Through her images, she addresses issues of sexuality, identity, and self-perception. Her work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, J Paul Getty Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Dallas Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Photography, among others. Publications include&nbsp;Kelli Connell: Pictures for Charis&nbsp;(Aperture and Center for Creative Photography, March 2024),&nbsp;PhotoWork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice(Aperture),&nbsp;Photo Art: The New World of Photography&nbsp;(Aperture), and the monograph&nbsp;Kelli Connell: Double Life&nbsp;(DECODE Books). Connell has received fellowships and residencies from The Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, PLAYA, Peaked Hill Trust, LATITUDE, Light Work, and The Center for Creative Photography. ABOUT THE ELMHURST ART MUSEUMThe Elmhurst Art Museum is located at 150 South Cottage Hill Avenue in Elmhurst (IL), 25 minutes from downtown Chicago by car or public transportation (Metra). On the museum’s campus is the McCormick House, a single-family home designed in 1952 by Mies van der Rohe, one of the great architects of the 20th Century. The McCormick House is one of only three residences designed and built by Mies in the United States – and one of only two open to the public. The Museum is open Wednesday and Thursday from 12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m., Friday through Sunday, 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Regular admission prices are $18 for adults (ages 18+), $15 for seniors, $10 for students, and $5 for children. For more information, please call 630.834.0202 or visit <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.elmhurstartmuseum.org/" target="_blank">elmhurstartmuseum.org</a>.Images Kelli Connell,&nbsp;Surf, Point Lobos, 2015, courtesy the artist.

Living with Modernism: Kelli Connell

The Lena Meijer Tropical Conservatory is transformed into a vibrant sanctuary filled with thousands of tropical butterflies, creating the largest temporary tropical butterfly exhibition in the United States and one of Meijer Gardens’ most anticipated annual experiences.

Fred & Dorothy Fichter Butterflies Are Blooming

In April, we'll be exhibiting new work from&nbsp;represented artist David Keel.&nbsp;Described as dreamlike, haunting, colorful, nostalgic, and whimsical, David's paintings evoke a variety of reactions and interpretations.&nbsp;

David Keel: The View From Here

After 20 years away, Odysseus (Ralph Fiennes) washes up on the shores of Ithaca, haggard and unrecognizable. The King has finally returned home but much has changed in his kingdom since he left to fight in the Trojan war. His beloved wife Penelope (Juliette Binoche) is now a prisoner in her own home, hounded by her many ambitious suitors to choose a new husband, a new king. Their son Telemachus, who has grown up fatherless, is facing death at the hands of the suitors who see him as an obstacle in their relentless pursuit of Penelope and the kingdom. Odysseus has changed too. Scarred by his experience of war, he is no longer the mighty warrior his people remember. But he is forced to face his past in order to rediscover the strength needed to save his family and win back the love he has lost. An Odyssey of the spirit, without journeys, without monsters, without gods. Only an exhausted man returning home after years away, a steadfast wife struggling to keep faith in his unexpected return, and a son’s journey into adulthood, torn between his love for his mother and the weight of his father’s legend. A family separated by time and war, reunited by love, guilt, and violence. Year: 2024 Duration: 116′ Language: English Country: Italy/Greece/UK/France Genre: adventure, historical drama T he screening is part of the series Moto Continuo Film Showcase, inspired by the theme leading the 2026 programming of the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago. The selected titles explore the concept of movement through recent works by Italian film directors: epic journeys, emotional tensions, and cultural currents intertwine to convey the complexity of the historical and social processes that have contributed to shaping the Italian cultural identity. Free with registration

Moto Continuo Film Showcase / “Itaca. Il Ritorno” by Uberto Pasolini

Join Heritage Auctions for an exceptional reception of American Art, featuring a gallery talk with Director of American Art, Aviva Lehmann, starting promptly at 6 p.m.RSVPs &amp; Inquiries:&nbsp;<a href="mailto:AngelaG@HA.com" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">AngelaG@HA.com</a>

American Art 

<h2>Kate Goodvin: Trust Fall</h2> <h4>Exhibition Dates:&nbsp;April 6–May 1, 2026</h4> <h4>Reception:&nbsp;Friday, May 1, 5–8 pm</h4> Tandem Press is excited to host&nbsp;Trust Fall, a Master of Fine Arts Qualifier Exhibition by Kate Goodvin, University of Wisconsin-Madison MFA Candidate and 2025-2026 Tandem Press Studio Project Assistant. By merging printmaking, painting, and collage, Kate Goodvin creates monumental self-portraits that chronicle the evolving story of becoming. Her work is shaped through the perspective of a Gen Z woman growing up amid the digital transformation of contemporary life and coming of age during a period marked by increasing uncertainty. Goodvin’s practice examines how distinct eras of our lives are shaped and defined by pop culture movements, media saturation, music, and the broader political, environmental, and sociological climates that surround us. Deeply personal and rooted in self-discovery, she looks inward to uncover reflections of a broader shared condition, capturing the intimate process of navigating identity in a rapidly shifting world. This exhibition is supported by the Anonymous Fund. More information and installation images coming soon.

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