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

Annual Small Print Show opening on Dec 5 - 6, from 11 AM to 7 PM at WING Studio, 4883 N. Lincoln (60625).

Annual Small Print Show

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

“It was a matter of getting out on a damn limb and sawing it off behind you.” This memorable phrase is how Lee Miller—by turns a fashion model, magazine photographer, studio operator, Surrealist innovator, international adventurer, and battlefield correspondent—summed up her approach to life and creativity.&nbsp;Lee Miller: Fearless&nbsp;is the first comprehensive survey of her photographs in more than 25 years and gathers together the major episodes of her singular career. Miller was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1907. Intrepid from the first, she moved to Paris at barely 20 years old, simultaneously seeking work in front of and behind the camera. She pioneered Surrealist techniques and broached daring sexual subjects with a readiness that magnetized experimental artists and fashion editors alike. Miller excelled at portraiture as well and pictured a range of cultural figures in the 1930s, most of them personal friends, from Charlie Chaplin to Pablo Picasso.&nbsp; By age 30 Miller had run commercial studios on both sides of the Atlantic; taken a star turn in art cinema and become an haute couture icon; and moving on from Paris to Cairo, influenced Egyptian modern art while reinvigorating her own work through travels in Egypt’s deserts.&nbsp; Yet she undertook a challenge of an entirely different order during World War II, especially as a correspondent for&nbsp;Vogue&nbsp;accredited with the United States Army in 1944–45. The inhumanities Lee Miller witnessed in Europe, especially at the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps, brought out her courage and deeply contradictory emotions; the experience, which she chronicled in extensive written and photographic dispatches from the German front, also left her traumatized for a number of years. Following the war, Miller remade herself once more, gaining renown in England as a chef and gardener, while quietly continuing to lead an artistic life through her final years. Lee Miller died in 1977 on the East Sussex farm she owned with her husband, artist Roland Penrose.Lee Miller: Fearless&nbsp;is organized by the Art Institute of Chicago in collaboration with Tate Britain and Musée d’Art Moderne de Paris.&nbsp; The exhibition is curated by Matthew S.&nbsp;Witkovsky, Richard and Ellen Sandor Chair and Curator, Photography and Media,&nbsp;and vice president for strategic art initiatives,&nbsp;the&nbsp;Art Institute of Chicago,&nbsp;and Hilary Floe, senior curator, Modern and Contemporary British Art, Tate Britain,&nbsp;with Saskia Flower, assistant curator, Modern and Contemporary British Art, Tate Britain, and Michal Goldschmidt, former assistant curator, Modern British Art, Tate Britain. SPONSORSLead support is provided by the Harris Family Foundation in memory of Bette and Neison Harris.&nbsp;Major support is provided by Barbara Bluhm-Kaul and Don Kaul, Suzette and Ally Bulley, Tara Hirshberg, and The Opatrny Family Foundation.&nbsp;Additional support is contributed by Anne L. Kaplan.&nbsp; Image: Self-Portrait with Headband&nbsp;(detail), about 1932Lee MillerLee Miller Archives. © 2026 Lee Miller Archives, England. All rights reserved.&nbsp;<a href="http://www.leemiller.co.uk/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(181, 9, 56);" target="_blank">www.leemiller.co.uk</a>

Lee Miller: Fearless

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

Embrace the cold and let it influence your thinking. This month we think deeply like Rashid Johnson.

Family Day | Hibernate, Meditate

The show brings together a wide range of original artworks and artist-made objects, including prints, jewelry, small sculptures, ceramics, decorative pieces, and other gallery-appropriate works. Most pieces are priced at $500 and under, with many available at lower price points, including works around $20 and up. Whether you are looking for the right gift for a loved one or a small piece to bring joy into your own home, this event offers it all! Admission: Free

Small Wonders: Year-End Gift Show

The Raclin Murphy Museum of Art is honored to announce the landmark exhibition of internationally acclaimed Italian artist Mimmo Paladino (b. 1948). A leading figure of the Italian avant-garde, Paladino’s paintings, sculptures, installations, films, prints, and illustrations are held in renowned public and private collections worldwide, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Tate Modern, and the Vatican Museums. He is also highly regarded for his site-specific commissions, which include the mosaic, stained-glass, and wall drawings of the&nbsp;Mary, Queen of Families Chapel&nbsp;at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art. An overview of Paladino’s career will introduce audiences to the artist’s repertoire and highlight his position within the currents of art history through his paintings and sculptures. Following that contextualization, the exhibition will illuminate the master’s passion with literature and the art of the book through illustrations including his imagery for the&nbsp;Roman Messale&nbsp;for Pope Francis and a special edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy.&nbsp; The final section will examine the commission and creation of the&nbsp;Mary, Queen of Families Chapel, including the premier presentation of Paladino’s unique handmade vestments that he has donated to the Museum and University. Although Paladino is not exclusively a religious artist, this exhibition highlights his commitment to the great humanistic and spiritual traditions that have shaped his work while also acknowledging the contribution his contemporary voice has added to the history of art. “We are deeply honored to have worked with Mimmno Paladino for many years on many site-specific commissions and now this extraordinary exhibition. Most of this work—a celebration of humanity through art—has never been shown in the United States”,&nbsp;shares Joseph Antennucci Becherer, Director and Curator of Contemporary Art, Raclin Murphy Museum of Art. Born and trained in southern Italy, Paladino first gained critical acclaim in the 1980s as a member of the Transavanguardia movement, whose artists sought a renewal of figurative art and a willingness to experiment with materials in the wake of successive waves of abstraction in America and Europe. Living briefly in New York, Paladino’s life and work have always maintained a close connection to Italy’s broad artistic heritage, its people, and traditions. Although commissions from the Vatican and the University of Notre Dame have focused attention on his liturgical work, Paladino’s oeuvre is vast; he explores history, literature, and dream imagery through his iconography, creative vision, and innovative use of materials.

Mimmo Paladino: Present into Past

Presented as part of Material Bodies: Identities in Clay, the second annual Midwest Ceramic Exhibition. The exhibition moves between figuration and abstraction, using the body as a point of departure for contemporary ceramic practice. The figure drawing session takes place during the final week of the exhibition, which remains on view through December 19. Please bring your own drawing board or other firm, flat support for drawing.

Figure Drawing at Oliva Gallery: Material Bodies

Number One at Tandem Press&nbsp;celebrates the vision of Tandem Press founder William Weege and the groundbreaking work of the press’s first collaborating artist, Sam Gilliam. Their partnership established a spirit of experimentation and technical innovation that continues to define Tandem Press today. Featuring works that reflect Gilliam’s bold approach to abstraction alongside Weege’s commitment to collaborative printmaking, the exhibition honors the creative foundation upon which the press was built. Together, these works trace the beginning of a legacy that has shaped generations of artists and printers.Sam Gilliam&nbsp;(1933-2022) was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. Since the early sixties, Sam Gilliam has been a pillar of the Washington D.C., the modern, and the contemporary art communities. He has tested the boundaries of color, form, texture, and the canvas itself over the course of his long, productive career. Gilliam was a major contributor to the Washington Color School, a group of Washington D.C. artists that developed a form of abstract color field painting during the late 1950s through mid-1970s.His inventive approach to creating art has also had a great impact on the field of Abstract Expressionism. One of the most important African-American artists of the twentieth century, Sam Gilliam was the subject of a 1983 retrospective exhibition at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington D.C.,&nbsp;Modern Painter at the Corcoran: Sam Gilliam. His works are included in prestigious collections such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Beymans Museum in Rotterdam,&nbsp;the Phillips Collection, the Corcoran Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum, the National Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison, and the Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris among many others.William Weege&nbsp;(b. 1935, Milwaukee, Wisconsin; d. 2020, Arena, Wisconsin) was a pillar in the printmaking and papermaking fields in the United States. He exuberantly explored unconventional printmaking processes, adding paint, collage, handmade paper, and sewn elements to various printed surfaces to create vibrant abstract expressions. He was also an early practitioner in the revival of handmade paper, which started in the 1960s.Although he is best known for his later abstract works, much of his early art commented on social and political issues. Weege studied engineering and city planning and worked at a commercial printing firm before returning to school to study printmaking. He received his MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1970, Weege represented the United States at the Venice Biennale before joining the UW-Madison Art Department faculty in 1971. He founded Tandem Press in 1987. In addition to being a distinguished professor, Weege had a very successful career as an artist. He exhibited widely, and his work is included in many museum collections throughout the United States including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Detroit Institute of Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Sam Gilliam & William Weege

For more than six decades, Mernet Larsen has been painting. Her representational, yet idiosyncratic, compositions exist largely outside mainstream trends, drawing from 15th-century Italian painting, wide-ranging arts of Asia, media, art theories, and her own memories and photos. Larsen’s subjects range from cafes and cafeterias to bedrooms and meeting rooms, and they capture a sense of the mundane as they nod to pictorial antecedents. By merging various perspectival systems, Larsen generates figures that appear as geometric solids in disorienting contexts. The scenes lack horizons and they refuse to center a viewer.&nbsp;As the artist has written,&nbsp;“I want nonspecific viewpoints, a sense of vertigo, so that you are holding each situation in your mind almost as if you are wearing it.”&nbsp;As a result, her figures can be disproportionately large or small, flattened, or even upside down, allowing them to exist believably in space.Larsen’s personages undertake the activities of life. They have meals, pursue hobbies, gather in malls, homes, or outdoors–but they simultaneously imply a passivity or lack of affect that is unsettling, while still familiar. The bored expressions—or at least poker faces—on many of the figures suggest an underlying critique of society, yet the paintings can also make one laugh out loud. This affect contributes to a stillness that elevates each figural gesture to something more monumental than the mundane activity it represents.Larsen frequently uses abstract images as springboards for her compositions. Treating found motifs as Rorschachs (the famous psychological “inkblot test”), she draws out spatial structures and unconscious attitudes toward subject matter that would not have occurred to her otherwise. The zig- zag angles of the seamstress and client in&nbsp;Getting Measured, 1999, for example, derive from an architectural element in a 13th-century Japanese scroll that she inverted and reimagined. Larsen clarifies that her appropriation of such forms does not pretend to be an interpretation or alliance with the original. Instead, this is a kind of “reverse abstraction” in that Larsen gives recognizable meaning to a detail she has incorporated as pure shape. In more recent works like&nbsp;Cézanne’s House, 2023, she does make explicit reference to an earlier artist, but subverts his frameworks at the same time. Such works honor her fascination with Cézanne, for example, but remain deeply original. Across these various strategies, Larsen has invented constructs that reconsider the way daily life is perceived and depicted. Her desire is at once to defamiliarize and honor the ordinary.Larsen has been the subject of more than 30 solo gallery and museum exhibitions. The current focused retrospective highlights many of her greatest works, emphasizing Larsen’s subjects from everyday life. It includes about 20 paintings made from 1986 to the present belonging to private and public collections, as well as a number of recent works that have yet to be exhibited. The exhibition is scheduled to run from September through December 2026. It will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with text by award-winning novelist Lauren Groff.The exhibition is curated by Janine Mileaf, Executive Director &amp; Chief Curator of The Arts Club of Chicago. About the ArtistMernet Larsen (b. 1940, Houghton, Michigan) has exhibited extensively since the late 1970s and has been the subject of over thirty solo exhibitions, including&nbsp;Mernet Larsen: The Ordinary, Reoriented,&nbsp;Akron Art Museum, 2019, and&nbsp;Mernet Larsen: Getting Measured,&nbsp;1957-2017,&nbsp;Tampa Museum of Art, 2017. Her work is in numerous collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art, Cornell Fine Arts Museum, Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel; and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, the X Museum, Beijing, China, among others. Larsen received her BFA from the University of Florida, and her MFA from Indiana University. She lives and works between Tampa, Florida and Jackson Heights, New York.

Mernet Larsen: Situational Awareness

Madron Gallery presents&nbsp;The Fine Art of [Madron Gallery], an exhibition celebrating Madron’s 25th anniversary and the legacy of the 19th and 20th century artists we represent.&nbsp;On view October 15 through December 18th, 2026, the exhibition&nbsp;explores twenty-five artworks by twenty-five artists that Madron has analyzed, discussed, and exhibited.&nbsp;Madron endeavors to create connection across decades, mediums, and genres - exploring the humanity captured by generations of artists through scholarly research and debate.Art serves as both a reflection of culture and a catalyst actively shaping future thought. Artists communicate universal truths and authentic moments, creating work that transcends time, inspires audiences, and builds community. Individual objects can be powerful tools—gateways into unknown or forgotten narratives. Researching the provenance and cultural context of historical works involves exploring archives, libraries, exhibition catalogues, personal letters, newspaper articles, and oral histories. Madron Gallery works diligently to uncover these stories. Through our monthly newsletter,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.madrongallery.com/the-fine-art-of-" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(21, 45, 68);" target="_blank">The Fine Art of [&nbsp;]</a>, we highlight 19th and 20th-century artists whose work remains as relevant today as the day it was created.The Fine Art of [Madron Gallery]&nbsp;will begin with an opening reception held on October 15th in conjunction with the 5th annual&nbsp;<a href="https://www.madrongallery.com/events" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(21, 45, 68);" target="_blank">Lincoln Park Art Night</a>&nbsp;(participating venues include&nbsp;<a href="https://www.oldtowntriangle.com/leslie-wolfe-gallery/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(21, 45, 68);" target="_blank">Leslie Wolfe Gallery/Old Town Arts Association</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.chicagoartsource.com/our-story" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(21, 45, 68);" target="_blank">gallery 1871</a>,&nbsp;<a href="https://artcitychi.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(21, 45, 68);" target="_blank">Art City</a>&nbsp;and,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.artonsedgwick.org/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(21, 45, 68);" target="_blank">Art on Sedgwick)</a>. The reception is free and open to the public and will be held from 5:30 – 8:30 pm.Madron is home to Madron Gallery, Madron Press, and the Skolnik family’s private art collection. The Skolnik family, the founders of Madron, is committed to supporting contemporary and Jewish artists, as well as acting as stewards of nineteenth and twentieth-century American art. Through scholarship-informed programming and exhibitions, Madron has carved out a unique place in Chicago’s artistic landscape, sparking dialogue about the ongoing significance of nineteenth and twentieth-century art in today’s world. Exhibiting Artists:&nbsp;Aaron Bohrod&nbsp;(1907 – 1992),&nbsp;Karl A. Buehr&nbsp;(1866 – 1952),&nbsp;Theodore Earl Butler&nbsp;(1861 – 1936),&nbsp;Philip Evergood&nbsp;(1901 – 1973),&nbsp;Harriet Whitney Frishmuth&nbsp;(1880-1980),&nbsp;Todros Geller&nbsp;(1889–1949),&nbsp;William Glackens&nbsp;(1870 – 1938),&nbsp;Childe Hassam&nbsp;(1859 – 1935),&nbsp;Joseph Hirsch&nbsp;(1910 – 1981),&nbsp;Frederick D. Jones, Jr.&nbsp;(1913 – 1996),&nbsp;Jack Levine&nbsp;(1915–2010),&nbsp;Harriet Randall Lumis&nbsp;(1870–1953),&nbsp;Reginald Marsh&nbsp;(1898 – 1954),&nbsp;Jerome Myers&nbsp;(1867 – 1940),&nbsp;Lawton Parker&nbsp;(1868 – 1954),&nbsp;Jane Peterson&nbsp;(1876 –1965),&nbsp;Robert Philipp&nbsp;(1895 – 1981),&nbsp;Henry Ward Ranger&nbsp;( 1858 – 1916),&nbsp;Robert Reid&nbsp;(1862- 1929),&nbsp;Harry Sternberg&nbsp;(1904 – 2001),&nbsp;Anthony Thieme&nbsp;(1888 – 1954),&nbsp;John Henry Twachtman&nbsp;(1853 – 1902),&nbsp;Bessie Potter Vonnoh&nbsp;(1872 – 1955),&nbsp;Robert Vonnoh&nbsp;(1858 – 1933), and&nbsp;James McNeill Whistler&nbsp;(1834 – 1903)&nbsp;

The Fine Art of [Madron Gallery]

Terry Karpowicz “Recent Works” is an upcoming event scheduled to take place from November 5th to December 18th. The event will showcase recent works by the artist Terry Karpowicz.

Terry Karpowicz Recent Works

<a href="https://kimstoragegallery.us22.list-manage.com/track/click?u=63eb3ae92ac5ae9371f4d5ed0&amp;id=af142533d1&amp;e=0feabe6389" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Doug Fath</a>’s paintings are open narratives that examine myth, culture, pain, and hope. Working in a Magic Realist style, his canvases invite viewers into dreamscapes where the familiar and the fantastical converge — where blindfolded pigs recline in lush abundance, armed bears stand vigil amid wildflowers, and bluebirds rise singing into darkened skies. Through vibrant color and the charged presence of animals, Fath constructs a symbolic language that is at once personal and universal, poetic and politically alert.&nbsp;At the heart of his practice is a commitment to painting as a healing mechanism — a space where isolation, grief, injustice, and resilience can be held together without easy resolution. Fath’s imagery draws on encyclopedias, folk art, scientific illustration, literature, and poetry, weaving them into allegories that speak to the current political and social moment. The narrative is always open-ended, never didactic — he invites the viewer to complete the meaning, to bring their own experience into dialogue with his.&nbsp;His primary influences are the women of the Mexican Surrealist movement — Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, and Remedios Varo — whose unflinching examination of pain, isolation, and the inner life runs throughout his work. Fath received his MFA in Photography from the University of Illinois at Chicago and has exhibited across the United States at venues including the James Watrous Gallery, Arts + Literature Laboratory, Tory Folliard Gallery, the Dubuque Museum of Art, and the Museum of Wisconsin Art.

Doug Fath

The Small Works Members Show is an upcoming exhibition scheduled to take place from November 21 to December 19.

Small Works Members Show

Inner Worlds: Visions from the Hirshhorn Collection&nbsp;features the work of three trailblazing women artists who rose to international acclaim for their distinct approaches to perception and embodiment:&nbsp;Yayoi Kusama&nbsp;(b. 1929),&nbsp;Niki de Saint Phalle&nbsp;(1930–2002), and&nbsp;Mary Bauermeister&nbsp;(1934–2023). Born in Japan, France, and Germany, respectively, within five years from 1929 to 1934, all three artists rejected cultural archetypes traditionally imposed on women and made their way to New York by the early 1960s.&nbsp;These artists came of age in a period defined by economic instability and the rise of fascism. They lived through the devastation of the Second World War in their respective countries, leading them to engage with the fragments of buildings, culture and spirit left behind. Amid the destruction they constructed something new. By developing highly personal visual languages characterized by expansive proliferations of pattern and repetition, these artists contributed to the flourishing movements of the postwar avant-garde, including Neo-Dada, Abstract Expressionism, Fluxus and Pop art. Seen together, their artwork attests to the strength of a generation of female artists who achieved acclaim against great odds, forever altering the trajectory of twentieth-century art.Inner Worlds: Visions from the Hirshhorn Collection&nbsp;is curated by Betsy Johnson, assistant curator at the Hirshhorn and presented by Halsted A&amp;A Foundation at Wrightwood&nbsp;659.&nbsp;The focused exhibition presents two of Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Rooms—her first and one of her more recent—and the large sculpture&nbsp;Pumpkin&nbsp;(2016); three of Bauermeister’s intricate optical and stone-laden assemblages; and a large-scale mixed-media collage and works on paper by Saint Phalle. Together, these artworks illustrate how ways of artmaking can overlap and converge by exploring the possibilities of pattern and tapping into the latent expressiveness of repetition.“The Hirshhorn is eager to deepen our relationship with Wrightwood 659 by loaning artworks from the national collection that have captivated audiences on the National Mall.&nbsp;These works expand global throughlines as they underline the importance of woman artists at the vanguard and the foresight of our foundational donor,” says&nbsp;Melissa Chiu, Director, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture GardenThis focused presentation features works drawn from the permanent collection of the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the national museum of modern and contemporary art, in Washington, DC. Founded by an act of Congress and opened to the public in 1974, the Hirshhorn presents groundbreaking exhibitions and programs featuring the most important global art and artists of our time.

Inner Worlds: Visions from the Hirshhorn Collection

“When I talk about ‘everyday war,’ I want to talk about life during the war, but also the war that we&nbsp;encounter in our lives every single day. War is not just about the physical gunfire, but also about, for example, the unequal distribution of capitalism, natural disasters, climate change, the pandemic … and everything that we encounter every day. So, in some way we are already in a state of war every single day.”–&nbsp;Yuan Goang-MingWidely recognized as a pioneer in Taiwan’s new media art scene, Yuan Goang-Ming is celebrated for his starkly poetic video and installation works reflecting the fragmented and surreal nature of contemporary life.&nbsp;Everyday War&nbsp;is based on the critically acclaimed exhibition the artist presented at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024.&nbsp;At Wrightwood 659, the large, immersive installation will send an eerie soundscape throughout the galleries. Audio drawn from the artist’s previous works, including&nbsp;Prophecy&nbsp;(2014), will merge and collide. Glasses and dinnerware on a kinetic table will shake in response to an unseen threat while a home will be subjected to the unpredictably intrusive nature of war.Yuan Goang-Ming: Everyday War&nbsp;is organized by Halsted A&amp;A Foundation at Wrightwood 659, Chicago. It is adapted from the exhibition presented at the Taiwan Pavilion of the 60th Venice Biennale, curated by Abby Chen, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco.Bridging personal experience and universal themes, Yuan’s films evoke precarious everyday conditions, from the stillness of empty streets during Taiwan’s annual air raid drills to the chaotic aftermath of an explosion detonated in a living room. He transforms intimate domestic spaces into powerful metaphors for widespread instability, capturing the tenor of globally turbulent times we are all witnessing. In addition to the six works presented in Venice, a small drawing titled&nbsp;What Lies Beyond Us?&nbsp;has been added to this iteration of the exhibition. The sketch takes inspiration from a&nbsp;monochromatic historical photograph, dated 1951 and featuring U.S military officials witnessing a nuclear test explosion from Adirondack chairs.“Yuan’s work speaks to the precise moment we’re living in,” says Curator&nbsp;Abby Chen. “His depiction of personal spaces as sites of both comfort and conflict resonates with audiences worldwide, particularly as we navigate increasingly unsettled times. At the same time, this exhibition is deeply personal, the manifestation of his experiences as a second-generation war refugee and a reinterpretation of the legacy of trauma as both a son and a father.”

Everyday War: Yuan Goang-Ming 

Oliva Gallery presents Material Bodies: Identities in Clay, the 2nd Annual Midwest Ceramic Exhibition. This group exhibition explores the human form as both presence and container, using clay to examine identity, memory, and transformation. Through surface, gesture, and form, the works consider how material carries personal and collective stories, holding traces of strength, vulnerability, and resilience. The exhibition is juried by Nancy Pirri and Lauralynn White. Exhibiting Artists Lynn Basa, Aaron Becker, Robin Carlson, Hillary Catrow, Gabriel Chalfin-Piney-Gonzalez, Jamie Freedman, Mirentxu Ganzarain, Jennifer Holt, Matthew King, Darby Lewis, Dawn Liddicoatt, Suzanne Long, Linda Marcus, Patrick Miceli, Andryea Natkin, Jonathan Pacheco, Henry Tyson, Susan Volk, and Christopher Williams.

Material Bodies: Identities in Clay

What if Emmett Till lived? What if&nbsp;he had returned home still a child, alive and free?&nbsp;If Emmett Till Lived…&nbsp;is an exhibition and a civic invitation. The very statement invites a range of questions, a reckoning with the past, and a probing investigation of the current state of American life.&nbsp;This exhibition, and the invitation it offers to viewers, creates a collective arena to consider how freedom has been secured on American ground. In 1955, Emmett Till, then fourteen years old, had traveled from Chicago to the Mississippi Delta region to visit his family during the summer, bought candy at Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market, and was accused of whistling at a shopkeeper, a white woman working in the store. The accusation violated the racial caste system of Jim Crow rule that kept the economic, civic, and social subordination of black Americans the law of the land. Days later, the woman’s husband, Roy Bryant, his brother-in-law John William (J.W.) Milam, and one other man kidnapped Till from the home of his uncle Moses Wright near Money, Mississippi, and took him to a barn where they brutally tortured, mutilated, and killed him with the force of a mob lynching. Till’s body was thrown in the Tallahatchie River weighed down by a 75- pound cotton gin fan wrapped around his neck with barbed wire. The next month, Bryant and Milam were acquitted by a jury in Sumner, Mississippi. In&nbsp;January&nbsp;1956,&nbsp;they confessed to the murder in&nbsp;Look&nbsp;magazine with pride. Till’s lynching was a warning: in Mississippi, Jim Crow rule would remain. In 2017, the Till case was reopened by the Justice Department when new information emerged that the woman who had accused him of whistling at her had recanted. While her statement did not lead to any persecution after the FBI investigation—the statute of limitations had run out and perjury in a state court is not a federal crime—it did result in the Justice Department’s statement that “the government does not take the position that the state court testimony the woman gave in 1955 was truthful or accurate.”&nbsp; There were many Tills, yet his murder was the one made visible to all. “Let the world see what I’ve seen,” his mother, Mamie Till-Mobley said. Till-Mobley asked for an open casket funeral for her son in Chicago and 100,000 attended—the largest civil rights event and the most impactful for mass mobilization to date in the United States.&nbsp; Racism had been clear; Till’s death gave many new resolve coming as it did a year after the 1954&nbsp;Brown v. Board of Education&nbsp;Supreme Court case that legally outlawed segregation. Till’s murder became the event that shook the consciousness of the nation enough to enforce it.&nbsp; “We were the Till generation,” Congressman John Lewis said, echoing the sentiments of many. When Rosa Parks explained why she refused to give up her seat in the front of the bus to a white customer, launching the Montgomery Bus Boycott, she said, “I thought of Emmett Till and I couldn’t go back.” Picture it. What would it have required for Till to live?&nbsp;If Emmett Till Lived…&nbsp;honors Till and the history born of his sacrifice. The show—drawn entirely on work in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago—imagines what could have come in his life: photographs of different restaurants pay homage to the last meal Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, packed for him before he left Chicago, others show his favorite pastimes, meditate on the love he might have experienced, on days spent enjoying life in Chicago, on the playground, at the beach, attending prom, living free. There are images of railway lines that mark his one-way trip from Illinois to Mississippi and the travels that might have one day taken him around the world. There are photographs of the&nbsp;full range of&nbsp;life events Till missed: from the Chicago Bulls as a cultural phenomenon to the love we imagine he might have known as he grew into a man, to the election of Barack Obama and the extended Civil Rights protest and movement today.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The show deliberately draws upon the work of a vast array of photographers who emblematize the full range of American life including: Hanif Adbur-Rahim, Tom Arndt, Laylah Amatullah Barrayn, Uta Barth, Endia Beal, Dawoud Bey, Christian Boltanski, Keith Carter, Teju Cole, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Peter Cochrane, Barbara Crane, Paul D’Amato, Bruce Davidson, Paul Dahlquist, Erica Deeman, Jack Delano, Jess T. Dugan, Jim Dine, Elliott Erwitt, Terry Evans, Walker Evans, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Rachel Feirman, Scott Fortino, Robert Frank, Lee Friedlander, Leonard Freed, Kris Graves, Guillaume Simoneau, Todd Hido, Earlier Hudnall, Jr., Janna Ireland, Dorothea Lange, An-My Lê, Danny Lyon, Sally Mann, Stephen Marc, Diana Matar, Robert Mapplethorpe, Martin Hyers + William Mebane, Julie Moos, Kurt Markus, Natasha Moustache, Zora J Murff, Laurel Nakadate, Arteh Odjidja, Gordon Parks, Alexis Peskine, David Plowden, Marc PoKempner, Sheila Pree Bright, Walker Rosenblum, Anastasia Samoylova, Jon Saudek, W. Stephen Saunders, Paul Mpagi Sepuya, Arthur Shay, Sara Shamsavari, Aaron Siskind, Victor Skrehneski, Joel Sternfeld, Alfred Stieglitz, Bob Thall, Ruth Thorne-Thomsen, Charles Traub, Jerry Uelsmann, Todd Webb, Carrie Mae Weems, and Garry Winogrand.&nbsp; If Emmett Till Lived…&nbsp;is an exhibition that mounts a civic invitation through an online component of the show that allows&nbsp;viewers in Chicago and beyond to craft their own displays in response to three prompts:&nbsp;<ul><li>How would you have hoped Till&nbsp;could&nbsp;have lived after 1955?</li><li>What do you wish Till, and the many Tills, might have never had to experience?&nbsp;</li><li>What would that life have required of us all? How have we challenged the force of Jim Crow rule and its legacy today?</li></ul>These&nbsp;invitations are crafted to consider the sacrifice of his life, and what it wrought, and what work remains.-Sarah Lewis ﻿About the curatorSarah Lewis is the founder of Vision &amp; Justice and the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities and Associate Professor of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. She has authored and edited over 60 publications including&nbsp;<a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674238343" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Unseen Truth: When Race Changed Sight in America</a>,&nbsp;which won the American Book Award; the bestseller,&nbsp;<a href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Rise/Sarah-Lewis/9781451629248" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">The Rise: Creativity, the Gift of Failure, and the Search for Mastery</a>; and the award-winning volumes,&nbsp;<a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/carrie-mae-weems" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Carrie Mae Weems</a>&nbsp;and “Vision &amp; Justice.” As founder of Vision &amp; Justice, Lewis has organized landmark convenings and founded a Vision &amp; Justice Book Series, launched in partnership with Aperture. Her writing has been published in the&nbsp;New Yorker,&nbsp;The New York Times,&nbsp;Artforum, and the&nbsp;New York Review of Books, and her work has been the subject of profiles from&nbsp;Vogue&nbsp;to&nbsp;The Boston Globe&nbsp;to&nbsp;The New York Times. Lewis’s influence resonates widely: a chapter on her life is included in Laura Lynne Jackson’s&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;bestseller,&nbsp;Guided: The Secret Path to an Illuminated Life&nbsp;(2025) and her work has been highlighted in Brené Brown’s&nbsp;Strong Ground: The Lessons of Daring Leadership, the Tenacity of Paradox, and the Wisdom of the Human Spirit&nbsp;(2025).

If Emmett Till Lived: Freedom on American Ground

Jaume Plensa: Beyond Silence, opening at GRAY Chicago on September 17, marks the artist’s tenth solo exhibition with the gallery. Bringing together monumental carved-wood reliefs, dramatically vertical sculptures in cast iron and granite, and intimate bronze works,&nbsp;Beyond Silence&nbsp;examines two long-standing central tenets of his practice—scale and material. Unified thematically in their representation of the figure, the artist explores the possibility and&nbsp;continuity&nbsp;of our shared human experience.At the center of the exhibition are two monumental relief sculptures in carved wood,&nbsp;Beyond Silence (Julia)&nbsp;and&nbsp;Beyond Silence (Maria), each measuring twenty-eight feet in length. The works engage directly with the architecture of the space, spanning the gallery much like the wooden trusses that define the interior. Their monumental scale transforms the human figure into an architectural presence, collapsing the distinction between sculpture and the built environment.&nbsp;Installed alongside the reliefs are three sculptures from a new series,&nbsp;Clouds, each measuring seven feet in height. Combining cast iron with granite, the works bring together materials of contrasting texture and appearance. The industrial character of the cast iron is set against the smooth surface of granite, producing an unexpected sense of suspension and weightlessness.The center of the exhibition holds bronze sculptures from the&nbsp;Twilight&nbsp;series, each approximately twenty inches high. The smaller scale of the bronzes shifts the encounter from the architectural to the personal, inviting a more intimate viewer experience.&nbsp;The exhibition opens at GRAY Chicago with a public reception from 6-8 PM on September 17, 2026, and remains on view through December 19, 2026.&nbsp;Installation view of&nbsp;Jaume Plensa: Beyond Silence, GRAY Chicago, 2026.

Jaume Plensa: Beyond Silence

Andrew Norman WilsonPlump Caruncles Rippling Dewlaps Dangling Snoods and Sumptuous Plumage with Piercing Eyes Sunken Ears and Shrouded Breaks II DOCUMENT ChicagoNovember 13 – December 19, 2026 Opening reception Friday, November 13, 5–8pm DOCUMENT is delighted to present&nbsp;Plump Caruncles Rippling Dewlaps Dangling Snoods and Sumptuous Plumage with Piercing Eyes Sunken Ears and Shrouded Beaks II,&nbsp;Andrew Norman Wilson's fifth solo exhibition with the gallery.&nbsp; Mating season, 2023. A technician and Wilson set out to document a series of performances in which both the performers and the audience consisted of turkeys. Such performances take place around the world every spring, with males strutting about for audiences of female turkeys in expressions of sexuality, and for other male turkeys in expressions of territory. In these states of excitement the males’ blood vessels swell, which scatters light differently and causes their dangling snoods, rippling dewlaps, and plump caruncles to shift from red to pink, white, and blue. Image: Andrew Norman Wilson,&nbsp;Plump Caruncles a Rippling Dewlap a Dangling Snood and Sumptuous Plumage II, 2026. Archival pigment print; 7 3/4 x 7 3/4 in. (18 x 18 in. framed).

Andrew Norman Wilson: Plump Caruncles Rippling Dewlaps Dangling Snoods and Sumptuous Plumage with Piercing Eyes Sunken Ears and Shrouded Breaks II

The closing reception for Material Bodies: Identities in Clay marks the final evening of the second annual Midwest Ceramic Exhibition. Juried and curated by Nancy Pirri and Lauralynn White, the exhibition brings together 19 artists from across the Midwest whose ceramic practices consider the human form through contemporary clay. The work ranges from direct figuration to abstraction, examining the body as both subject and physical presence. Featured artists include Lynn Basa, Aaron Becker, Robin Carlson, Hillary Catrow, Gabriel Chalfin-Piney-González, Jamie Freedman, Mirentxu Ganzarain, Jennifer Holt, Matthew King, Darby Lewis, Dawn Liddicoatt, Suzanne Long, Linda Marcus, Patrick Miceli, Andryea Natkin, Jonathan Pacheco, Henry Tyson, Susan Volk, and Christopher Williams.

Closing Reception: Material Bodies - Identities in Clay

Gallery One, ChicagoPlease join for an opening reception for&nbsp;<a href="http://westernexhibitions.com/artist/miller-shellabarger/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255);" target="_blank">Miller &amp; Shellabarger</a>’s sixth show at Western Exhibitions on Friday, November 6, 2026, 5 to 8pm. More information to come.Image: Tug, 2025, construction paper, string, 6h x 13 1/2w in

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