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

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;

Brendan Fernandes

<h1><a href="http://westernexhibitions.com/exhibition/19287/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Olivia Zubko</a></h1> September 18, 2026 - October 31, 2026. Gallery One, Chicago Please join for an opening reception for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.oliviazubko.com/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255);" target="_blank">Olivia Zubko’s</a>&nbsp;first show at Western Exhibitions, on Friday, September 18, 5 to 8pm. More information to come. Image: Cairn III , 2025, Stained porcelain. 16h x 6 1/2w x 6 1/2d in

Olivia Zubko 

Ground Floor, an ongoing biennial exhibition since 2010, brings together work by Chicago’s most promising emerging talent. The exhibition offers a single destination to encounter the work of twenty artists who have recently graduated (in 2025 and 2026) from one of Chicago’s five outstanding MFA programs: Columbia College, Northwestern University, The University of Chicago, The University of Illinois at Chicago, and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.&nbsp;Ground Floor&nbsp;presents art made in the past couple of years in hopes of investigating and articulating conceptual and stylistic trends coming out of Chicago art schools right now.&nbsp;

Ground Floor

One of only two Chihuly exhibitions in the world in 2026,&nbsp;CHIHULY at Meijer Gardens Presented by Macatawa Bank&nbsp;is a major exhibition of international significance. The experience spans both the outdoor gardens and indoor Sculpture Galleries, creating a dynamic dialogue between glass, landscape, and architecture.&nbsp;Outdoors, guests will encounter monumental glass sculptures, vibrant&nbsp;Reeds, and striking site-responsive installations that appear to grow from the landscape, amplifying color, light, and form throughout the gardens. Indoors, the separately ticketed gallery exhibition&nbsp;Chihuly: Radiant Forms&nbsp;traces more than 40 years of Dale Chihuly’s creative journey. The exhibition features work from many of his most celebrated series, including&nbsp;Baskets,&nbsp;Macchia,&nbsp;Seaforms,&nbsp;Putti,&nbsp;Ikebana,&nbsp;Persians,&nbsp;Venetians,&nbsp;Cylinders, and&nbsp;Rotolo, along with original drawings that offer insight into his creative process and sources of inspiration.&nbsp;Designed for visitors of all ages,&nbsp;CHIHULY at Meijer Gardens&nbsp;invites both long-term admirers and first-time viewers to experience the work of one of the world’s most influential artists in a setting where art, culture, and nature meet. See&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(0, 0, 255);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://u7061146.ct.sendgrid.net/ls/click?upn=u001.gqh-2BaxUzlo7XKIuSly0rC-2Fc4ce2SDpH5WBMhYM8Lg3vMPQs5XAbZCZ0FrT4y8DV5IAx5_a1zzESVdmgLIQ4rlql6kbXT9QXaGGWYBxHAPtO1QqWO5GLp4idxebnEhHBD62Papsj-2FEMdnG4nN1Qo796g0RxGgCD6tZhe9AwtUHIFq1tAylqDj842HkNV4wYVNY4xw2XiPRSDLBolCKLsmz4mAfXyTKdAWEBNXMZS2HPTyW9tzh76eJPxtoS3TeCfWde-2FWTR36oITD8AJ2o16OioU6rZzSVhUtY-2FQMgnv00UizvWdkF-2F6vDGFX8RjYZ6VxGE9RjaFP3GxOchTBy9JEhqw0aRDSSQKKZ9o5ocAwD09kINSqSLHBx-2FwnUgD-2BEf05TldTsoQY4IIsvjRN-2FDK-2FrtXNjUU2iL2upL7H53VA7YA-2BwQHU-3D" target="_blank">website</a>&nbsp;for related exhibition programming. Tickets go on sale in February.

CHIHULY

Our Free Days Are Taking The Night Shift! From March through November, we’re returning to Free First Tuesdays! On the first Tuesday of every month, enjoy extended hours from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm - admission is free for all, no residency restrictions. Want more chances to visit? Take a look at our full lineup of 2026 Free Days below and mark your calendar! From March through November, we’re returning to Free First Tuesdays! On the first Tuesday of every month, enjoy extended hours from 5:00 pm to 8:00 pm - admission is free for all, no residency restrictions.

Free First Tuesdays

Brendan Fernandes: In the Round

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is excited to announce a solo exhibition by Mike Cloud (b. 1974, Chicago; lives in Chicago) for its latest&nbsp;<a href="https://mcachicago.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c24ba7c5a91cefd699dc985e1&amp;id=b49b61817e&amp;e=4ba592fe2a" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(0, 124, 137);" target="_blank">Chicago Works</a>&nbsp;presentation, titled&nbsp;Chicago Works | Mike Cloud: Worldless Obstruction.&nbsp;Opening on May 2, 2026, in the MCA’s Turner Gallery and closing on February 7, 2027, the exhibition presents a series of newly commissioned works that continue Cloud’s experimentation with abstraction, symbolic language and the sculptural dimensions of painting.&nbsp;Cloud challenges historical framings of abstract painting as pure and apolitical, approaching his works instead as products of their political contexts and the capitalist systems through which they circulate. Crudely constructed from wooden stretcher bars, thickly layered in painted signs, and protruding into three-dimensional space, Cloud’s sculptural paintings are objects, rather than pristine surfaces, that possess a deliberately improvisational and, in his words, “unschooled” aesthetic. The artist sources his subjects from online news outlets, often alluding to contemporary stories of suffering and tragedy through his enigmatic visual vocabulary, developed over two decades. Forms resembling snowflakes, rainbows, four-leaf clovers, hearts and hands densely cluster across his canvases, which are stapled to configurations of stretcher bars that hover between abstract structures and recognizable shapes.The new paintings made specifically for this exhibition extend these strategies while foregrounding three recent developments in Cloud’s practice: emojis, an “X”-shaped painting, and the protrusion of his works off the wall and on to the floor of the gallery. Through the use of hinges, the paintings become modular, endowed with the capacity to be folded, installed upright, and exhibited in multiple configurations. Cloud’s work embodies the slipperiness of symbols, the malleability of meaning, and the potential for freedom within ambiguity.&nbsp;Cloud will be in conversation with exhibition curator Nolan Jimbo on May 2, 2026, in the Edlis Neeson Theater.&nbsp;Mike Cloud is the 27th artist to participate in&nbsp;<a href="https://mcachicago.us4.list-manage.com/track/click?u=c24ba7c5a91cefd699dc985e1&amp;id=dd5f8f7c3d&amp;e=4ba592fe2a" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(0, 124, 137);" target="_blank">Chicago Works</a>, a solo exhibition series at the MCA that features artists who are shaping contemporary art in the city and beyond.&nbsp;Chicago Works | Mike Cloud: Worldless Obstruction&nbsp;is organized by Nolan Jimbo, Assistant Curator. ABOUT THE ARTISTMike Cloud was born and raised in Chicago. He earned a BFA from the University of Illinois Chicago (2001) and an MFA from Yale University (2003). He is currently Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Art, Theory, and Practice at Northwestern University.&nbsp;Cloud’s solo exhibitions include&nbsp;Circle Chat, Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago (2025);&nbsp;Called Ahead, Fahrenheit Madrid (2024);&nbsp;The Myth of Education, Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts, University of Chicago (2018);&nbsp;Bad Faith and Universal Technique, Thomas Erben Gallery, New York (2014);&nbsp;Systems, Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, University of Nebraska, Lincoln (2006); and&nbsp;Special Project: Mike Cloud, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, New York (2005). He has also participated in group exhibitions at Artists Space, New York; Xavier Hufkens, Brussels; Good Weather, Chicago; White Columns, New York; and The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York. Cloud received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2024, the Richard Pousette-Dart Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ in 2023, and the Jules Guerin Rome Prize from the American Academy in Rome in 2023.At the MCA, Cloud previously participated in the group exhibition,&nbsp;The Long Dream&nbsp;(2020), and his work,&nbsp;Cycle and Stable&nbsp;(2015), resides in the museum’s collection. His work is also held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York.&nbsp; SUPPORTGenerous support for&nbsp;Chicago Works | Mike Cloud: Worldless Obstruction&nbsp;is provided by the Sandra and Jack Guthman Chicago Works Exhibition Fund. Mike Cloud (b. 1974, Chicago, IL; lives in Chicago),&nbsp;Poison Arrows South Africa, 2026. Acrylic on canvas, hinges, pegs, rope, and watercolor tape; 48 × 47 × 75 in. (121.9 × 119.4 × 190.5 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Thomas Erben Gallery, New York. Photo: Colleen Keihm.

Mike Cloud: Worldless Obstruction

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

<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

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

<a href="http://westernexhibitions.com/artist/miller-shellabarger/" rel="noopener noreferrer" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" target="_blank">Miller &amp; Shellabarger</a> November 6, 2026 - December 19, 2026Gallery One, Chicago Please 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

Miller & Shellabarger

The immersive outdoor light experience&nbsp;ENLIGHTEN at Meijer Gardens Presented by PNC Bank&nbsp;returns with a one-mile illuminated pathway that weaves innovative light displays, music, interactive elements, and the Sculpture Park into a bespoke multisensory outdoor winter experience.

ENLIGHTEN

Friday evening, November 6, 5 to 8 PM.&nbsp; Robin Denevan - “From the River”, New Encaustic Paintings. Late Fall Gallery Walk, 5-8pm. On view through January 5th, 2027. Image: Ocher Skyline 21 x 21, encaustic (wax, oil)

Robin Denevan, From the River

New England…has recently posited itself as a grand signifier in my existence as a jewelry artist. It is learning about New England’s seminal history as the seat of the American Industrial Revolution, the undeniable gravity to the founding of this nation, its growth and ultimate dissolution, and the remnants and detritus that are informing my current work. My formative years were spent in southern California where cultural imprints positioned me in a liminal existence between prejudice and privilege. I am half Black and half White. Living in a middle-class suburb of Los Angeles and visiting my father in socio-economically and racially divided South Central Los Angeles impacted my identity as a young person searching for which culture to occupy and how. Ultimately, I realized the choice itself provided me with a tool of social leverage.&nbsp;—Tanya CraneResponding to her own biracial background, Tanya Crane imbues her enamel, metal, and found object jewelry with reflections on history, resiliency, migration, community, adornment, humanity, identity, family, and heritage.&nbsp;As she considers how traditions shift across space or through time, Crane creates patterns that echo designs of global Indigenous makers. This exhibition features jewelry inspired by historical adornment in RAM’s permanent collection—specifically, incised metal bracelets and neckpieces from West Africa that were used as currency. Objects like this were exchanged within trade or barter networks, not only for local agricultural and luxury products but also in transatlantic slave trade negotiations. This potential compelled Crane to cautiously move forward with her explorations.As she states, “The research for my jewelry encompasses both a response to my immediate landscape and my family stories relative to the impacts of the Great Migration. It is through this lens that I interact with and respond to the museum’s collection, contextualizing that historical work through a contemporary lens and providing a dynamic framework to investigate the past in the present.”Crane’s artwork metaphorically embodies the many layers of human existence—specifically, history, race, class, and culture. Through her practice, she reaches into the past to better understand the present and, potentially, the future. As a contemporary jeweler, Crane centers mark-making, patterns, and material choice to build the content in her individual pieces, and doesn’t shy away from using scale to create bold statements. The sgraffito technique she often employs means she carves through one layer of information to get to another—literally uncovering and exposing what has come before.In 2022, RAM invited Crane—who was teaching at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, and has since moved back to her home state of California—to consider making work in response to a small selection of historical African pieces in the museum’s collection. Crane’s personal investment in using jewelry to make connections and her stated interest in the history of adornment made her a good candidate for this provocative project—she was ready to consider tackling the metaphorical weight of these metal historical objects that once functioned very differently than they do in a museum collection.<h5> </h5>Tanya Crane received her MFA in Metalsmithing + Jewelry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and her BFA in Metal from the State University of New York at New Paltz. Crane is an Assistant Professor of 3D Foundations, Jewelry and Sculpture at Long Beach City College. Named a 2024 United States Artist Fellow in Craft, she was selected in 2023 to be an inaugural recipient of the Center for Craft’s Teaching Artist Cohort. Crane was also a recipient of The Doris Prouty Foundation Artist Grant—offered to BIPOC/AAPI women artists in Massachusetts and North Carolina to further their artistic activity and practice. She was the 2018 Society of North American Goldsmith’s Emerging Artist and selected to present at SOFA Chicago, as well as the 2017 winner of the Society of Arts and Crafts–Boston Artist Award.Crane’s work is in the collections of the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts, Little Rock, AR; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; National Ornamental Metal Museum, Memphis, TN; Philadelphia Art Museum; Springfield Museum of Art, Springfield, OH; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; and Racine Art Museum.

Tanya Crane: Embodied Histories—Exploring the Legacy of African Jewelry

Bergman Family GalleriesKenzi Shiokava&nbsp;is the first museum solo exhibition dedicated to artist Kenzi Shiokava (b. 1938, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, Brazil; d. 2021, Los Angeles), gathering over fifty sculptures made across five decades, from the 1970s to the 2010s. A second-generation Japanese Brazilian, Shiokava departed São Paulo in 1964—narrowly evading the military coup d’état—and relocated to Los Angeles just months prior to the 1965 Watts Riots. After earning a BFA from the Chouinard Art Institute (now California Institute of the Arts) and an MFA from the Otis Art Institute (now Otis College of Art and Design), he spent the next fifty years working with found materials in Los Angeles while serving as a longtime artist-in-residence at the storied Watts Towers Arts Center, where his peers included assemblage artists John Outerbridge, Noah Purifoy and Betye Saar.Through intuitive acts of carving and arranging, Shiokava unearthed what he described as the “inner movement” of discarded objects, revealing their spiritual vitality and reinvigorating them with life. Deeply attuned to his materials, which ranged from telephone poles to plastic toys, Shiokava allowed them to guide his sculptural process, which he compared to archeology—both patient practices of excavation, recovery and revelation. Reflecting the artist’s career-long embrace of wood carving and assemblage, the exhibition is anchored by two core bodies of work: abstract totems meticulously sculpted from wood and enigmatic box installations animated by miniature figurines, dried plants and stones. The exhibition also underscores the transcultural nature of Shiokava’s practice, which melds the aesthetic sensibilities of wood carving in Japan, assemblage in South Los Angeles and multiple belief systems, including Candomblé, Catholicism and Zen Buddhism.Kenzi Shiokava&nbsp;is organized by Nolan Jimbo, Assistant Curator.

Kenzi Shiokava

Cutting and Pasting a World: The Paper Craft of Henry Darger&nbsp;April 22, 2026 to January 31, 2027&nbsp;IAM joins in the celebration of the 250th anniversary celebration of American craft, Handwork 2026, organized by Craft in America, with an exhibition exploring the connection between Henry Darger’s art and traditional American paper crafts. Drawing on research by guest curator and art historian Dr. Mary Trent(College of Charleston), the exhibition illustrates how the turn-of-the-century practices of making paper dolls and paper dollhouse scrapbooks may have influenced Darger’s evolution as an artist and maker. By showcasing both finished artworks and original source materials, the exhibition demonstrates how Darger adapted these humble pastimes into sophisticated methods for constructing large-scale, mixed-media narratives. The exhibition provides context for these crafts within the early 20th-century movement to instill middle-class American "taste" in a burgeoning immigrant population. Likely exposed to these practices within social welfare institutions as a child, Darger ultimately subverted them—transforming decorative domestic crafts into a profound and complex commentary on the vulnerabilities of marginalized children.&nbsp;&nbsp;IAM joins in the celebration of the 250th&nbsp;anniversary celebration of American craft,&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(70, 120, 134);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.handwork2026.org/" target="_blank">Handwork 2026</a>,&nbsp;organized by&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(70, 120, 134);" rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.craftinamerica.org/" target="_blank">Craft in America</a>, with an exhibition exploring the connection between Henry Darger’s art and traditional American paper crafts. Drawing on research by guest curator and art historian&nbsp;Dr.&nbsp;Mary Trent (College of Charleston), the exhibition illustrates how the turn-of-the-century practices of making paper dolls and paper dollhouse scrapbooks may have influenced Darger’s evolution as an artist and maker. By showcasing both finished artworks and original source materials, the exhibition demonstrates how Darger adapted these humble pastimes into sophisticated methods for constructing large-scale, mixed-media narratives. The exhibition provides context for these crafts within the early 20th-century movement to instill middle-class American "taste" in a burgeoning immigrant population. Likely exposed to these practices within social welfare institutions as a child, Darger ultimately subverted them—transforming decorative domestic crafts into a profound and complex commentary on the vulnerabilities of marginalized children.&nbsp;

Cutting and Pasting a World: The Paper Craft of Henry Darger

Hyde Park Art Center is excited to partner with the Veteran Art Movement, Chicago Cultural Center, Elmhurst Art Museum, and Walls Turned Sideways for the 2026 Veteran Art Triennial and Summit. The Hyde Park Art Center chapter&nbsp;Shifting Horizons&nbsp;considers land, migration, and decolonization through ideas informed by thinkers like Frantz Fanon and Harsha Walia. The exhibition invites reflections on how borders shape experience, how people navigate systems of control and resistance, and the uncertain landscapes that emerge amid ongoing struggles. The 2026 Veteran Art Triennial and Summit,&nbsp;Resisting the Long Wars, organized by curators Aaron Hughes, Mohamed Mehdi, Meranda Roberts, and Amber Zora, highlights artists’ creative defiance of war and militarism.

Veteran Art Triennial - RESISTING THE LONG WARS: Shifting Horizons 

The triennial program, created by Hyde Park Art Center in the mid-1990s, facilitates a fun and accessible commissioning process that builds lasting relationships between artists and patrons, creates a new base of support for artists, and invests in the vitality of Chicago’s cultural community.&nbsp;Not Just Another Pretty Face&nbsp;cultivates collectors, who are essential to the ecosystem that artists need to thrive, by embracing and encouraging the concept of patronage in contemporary art. Artists need not only collectors but also a community of people who know, support, and value what they do. To date, the Art Center has raised nearly&nbsp;$2,000,000&nbsp;through this program—half of which goes directly to artists, with the other half supporting Art Center programs. Through&nbsp;Not Just Another Pretty Face,&nbsp;375+&nbsp;original works&nbsp;of art have been commissioned by&nbsp;275&nbsp;new and established collectors&nbsp;interested in investing in Chicago’s artists. This exhibition will showcase the nearly&nbsp;100 new artworks&nbsp;made in this year’s iteration of this popular program.

Not Just Another Pretty Face

Slow DanceSylvia Neil and Daniel Fischel GalleriesSep 12, 2026–Mar 21, 2027 Slow Dance&nbsp;features a group of artists who use performance to recover forms of slowness that resist contemporary demands to constantly perform. The exhibition approaches performance in two registers: as an artistic medium rooted in the live presence of bodies and as an economic imperative characterized by the pervasive demand for productivity, speed and efficiency. At any given moment, we might feel this pressure differently—it may inspire and motivate us, spur optimism or provoke anxiety and depression, induce fatigue or provide fuel to keep going in spite of it all. Through gestures of suspension, inaction and stillness, the artists in the exhibition investigate the politics of the body’s labor and maintenance. Featuring works by Brendan Fernandes, Gordon Hall, Geumhyung Jeong, Carolyn Lazard, Melanie McLain and Cally Spooner, this multidisciplinary exhibition includes painting, sculpture, video and live performance. Focused on how bodies wear away and how they endure, these artists contend with the near constant obligation to perform in labor markets, the protracted economies of waiting and fatigue’s latent potential as a form of resistance. While exploring conditions of failure, breakdown or exhaustion, artists in the show model new modes of reciprocity, intimacy and connection that challenge the weathering effects of our contemporary imperative to perform. The exhibition will include in-gallery performance activations throughout the run of the show. Slow Dance&nbsp;is organized by Jadine Collingwood, Pamela Alper Associate Curator.

Slow Dance

Life is an Art: The Collection of Jan Petry&nbsp;highlights 30 artworks donated to IAM by the late, long-time board member Jan Petry. Curated by IAM Chief Curator&nbsp;Alison Amick, the exhibition showcases paintings, drawings, and sculptures by major figures in American self-taught art, including Emery Blagdon, James Castle, Ulysses Davis, Charles Dellschau, William Hawkins, and Martín Ramírez, as well as Günther Schützenhöfer, a resident artist at Gugging, a progressive art studio in Austria. Those artworks are complemented by objects that reflect Petry’s passion for folk art, design, furniture, and maritime themes, offering a glimpse into the vision of a dedicated collector.

Life is an Art: The Collection of Jan Petry

This exhibition takes a groundbreaking look at the little-known history of printing on fabric from the fifteenth century to the present. These stunning artworks, books, broadsides, and maps were initially prized as unique luxury editions of works normally printed on paper. Fabrics were substituted for paper at great cost, often using imported materials.&nbsp;Printing on Fabric&nbsp;also investigates the intentional choices of the printers and commissioners, some of whom were female, and shows how the origins of these lavish materials reflected the global world of the early modern textile economy. Though the sheen of foreign silks enhanced the beauty of these objects for specific recipients, the techniques used to make them soon served wider audiences and cheaper fabrics equally well. Indeed, while surviving early examples are kept in museum and library collections, they inspired more recent printed wearables such as memorial imagery on t-shirts. From the ethereally unfamiliar to the everyday, exhibition audiences will find these fabric printings dazzling, intriguing, and thought-provoking. The accompanying exhibition catalog will be available in Fall 2026. <a rel="noopener noreferrer" href="https://www.newberry.org/calendar/printing-on-fabric" target="_blank">DETAILS</a>

Printing on Fabric

Dr. Charles Smith served as a U.S. Marine in Vietnam, an experience that left lasting wounds and shaped his artistic vision. In the 1980s, he began transforming his Aurora, Ill., home into the African-American Heritage Museum and Black Veterans Archive—a monumental environment of nearly 600 sculptures and 150 monuments honoring African-American history and civil rights. Using found materials, Smith created life-sized figures and symbolic structures referencing slavery, the Middle Passage, the Underground Railroad, African American cultural and political figures, and everyday life. Through the concept of&nbsp;anti-monumentalism, Smith critiques traditional monuments and holds space for histories often excluded from civic memory.Curated by IAM Assistant Curator Christina Stavros,&nbsp;Monumental: The Work of Dr. Charles Smith&nbsp;features pieces from the Museum’s collection alongside select loans, including several recently conserved works now on view for the first time in years.

Monumental: The Work of Dr. Charles Smith

Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers&nbsp;is a major survey that covers nearly thirty years of Rashid Johnson’s (b, 1977, Chicago, IL; lives in New York) practice. Presented in the Griffin Galleries, the exhibition examines Johnson’s work from his perspective as a student of art history; a consumer and translator of Black popular, literary, and intellectual culture; and a cultural participant in the age of globalization and its aftereffects. With works including photographs, videos, large-scale installations, immersive paintings and multimedia assemblages,&nbsp;A Poem for Deep Thinkers&nbsp;asks fundamental questions about the fragile human psyche in the face of ineffable historic forces. Johnson often says that “the subject of my work is freedom,” and throughout the exhibition visitors will encounter pieces inspired by radical artistic and political movements from the 1960s to the 1990s that modeled how individuals and communities can resist established orders to carve new paths through history.&nbsp; A Poem for Deep Thinkers&nbsp;features over seventy-five artworks that span the full breadth of Johnson’s career, including works from his seminal&nbsp;The New Negro Escapist Social&nbsp;and&nbsp;Athletic Club&nbsp;series, the&nbsp;Cosmic Slops&nbsp;and other black-soap shelf paintings, spray-painted text works and the&nbsp;Anxious Menand&nbsp;Broken Men&nbsp;series. Additionally, Johnson’s film and video projects will be placed intermittently throughout the galleries. Johnson’s latest film,&nbsp;Sanguine (2024)&nbsp;explores familial dynamics through the lens of the artist’s relationships with his father, brother, and son, and features a poem by the poet and activist Amiri Baraka. The subtitle of the exhibition also refers to Baraka and his poem of the same name from 1977. A Poem for Deep Thinkers&nbsp;is Johnson’s third solo exhibition at the MCA, following his first institutional exhibition in 2002 as part of the museum's 12 x 12 series and his mid-career survey,&nbsp;A Message to Our Folks, as part of the Ascendant Artist series in 2012. Accompanying the exhibition is a catalogue that feature essays from exhibition curators Naomi Beckwith and Andrea Karnes, along with contributions by Nana Adusei-Poku, Hendrik Folkerts, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Kevin Quashie, and Odili Donald Odita. Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers&nbsp;was organized by Naomi Beckwith, Deputy Director and Jennifer and David Stockman Chief Curator, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Andrea Karnes, Chief Curator, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth. The MCA presentation is curated by Jack Schneider, Assistant Curator.

Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers

Stairwell GalleriesOccupying the three-story stairwell galleries in the MCA,&nbsp;From the Center: Looking at Lucy Lippard&nbsp;examines the wider impact of the research, writings, activism and exhibitions of renowned art historian, critic and curator Lucy Lippard (b. 1937, New York; lives in Galisteo, NM), who pushed the field of art history toward further inclusivity, through the lens of the MCA’s permanent collection. Over the past six decades, Lippard’s multidisciplinary career has been foundational to the histories of Conceptual, Feminist, Minimalist and Land Art practices of the 1960s and 1970s; the representation of artists of color in the Western canon; the intersection of art and activism; and placemaking for and by artists. Lippard’s work is widely appreciated due to its reach beyond the confines of art history to grapple with real world social issues through the lens of visual art and art criticism.&nbsp;From the Center: Looking at Lucy Lippard&nbsp;is split into three sections: “Form &amp; Feminism,” “The Art Worker as Activist” and “Site, Land, Place,” and will include works from the MCA Collection alongside archival materials, interviews, recordings and texts documenting Lippard’s career and work. “Form &amp; Feminism” will highlight Lippard’s efforts to incorporate women artists and issues in the art historical canon—including the publishing of feminist journal&nbsp;Heresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics, which ran from 1977 to 1993; her activism on behalf of women artists; and her own writing and curated exhibitions, including&nbsp;Twenty-Six Contemporary Women Artists&nbsp;(1971) and&nbsp;From the Center: Feminist Essays on Women’s Art&nbsp;(1976). The section “The Art Worker as Activist” will consider how artists are mobilized as activists alongside and as part of their artistic practices, as inspired by Lippard’s work within various activist groups such as the Art Workers Coalition and Ad Hoc Women’s Artist Committee. Lastly, “Site, Land, Place” relates to the politics of space—real, imagined or contested; the land and environment; and the power of placemaking. Lippard wrote several books concerned with these ideas, such as&nbsp;The Lure of the Local&nbsp;(1997);&nbsp;On the Beaten Track: Tourism, Art, and Place&nbsp;(1999);&nbsp;Undermining: A Wild Ride through Land Use, Politics, and Art in the Changing West&nbsp;(2014); and two of her storied “Numbers” exhibitions,&nbsp;557,087&nbsp;(1969) and&nbsp;955,000&nbsp;(1970), which included several notable Land artists. Cumulatively, these presentations will provide a concise overview of select overriding themes that have driven Lippard’s practice throughout the arc of her prolific and singular career.Highlighted in the exhibition are over forty artists who have been featured in her scholarly or curatorial work, or are aligned with or inspired by her practice. Participating artists include Lynda Benglis, Andrea Bowers, Judy Chicago, Robert Colescott, Group Material, Fred Lonidier, Howardena Pindell, Robert Smithson, Michelle Stuart and Amanda Williams, among others. The exhibition will be supplemented by public programs, including a symposium, charting Lippard’s influence over several generations of artists, art historians and curators.&nbsp;From the Center: Looking at Lucy Lippard&nbsp;is organized by Jamillah James, Manilow Senior Curator, with Korina Hernandez, Curatorial Assistant.

Calendar

Chicago Gallery News