Chicago activists in the 1960s and ’70s used design to create powerful slogans, symbols, and imagery to amplify their visions for social change. Designing for Change: Chicago Protest Art of the 1960s–70s features more than 100 posters, fliers, signs, buttons, newspapers, magazines, and books from the era, expressing often radical ideas about race, war, gender equality, […]

This exhibition makes visible the photograph collection of Japanese photographer Akito Tsuda, who documented Chicago's Mexican American Pilsen neighborhood in the early 1990s while attending art school at Columbia College. It also explores the relationships between the photographer and his subjects over time.

Andrea Carlson (b. 1979, Ojibwe/European descent; based in northern Minnesota and Chicago, IL) considers how landscapes are shaped by history, relationships, and power. Her artworks imagine places that are “everywhere and nowhere,” visualizing these shifting yet ever-present dynamics. Grounded in Anishinaabe understandings of space and time, the works in this exhibition reflect on how land […]

Radical Craft, an exhibition, catalog, and workshop series, celebrates the work of immigrant artists and reformers at the country's most important social settlement. The exhibition showcases Hull-House’s rarely exhibited textile collection, drawn from a wide array of immigrant traditions. Also included are handbound books from Ellen Gates Starr’s bookbindery, newly restored paintings by Alice Kellogg […]

Part of a multifaceted initiative developed in a partnership among the Newberry, representatives from several tribal nations, and Native community members in Chicago, this exhibition explores Indigenous history in Chicago across five centuries to highlight the way that the development of the city has been shaped by Indigenous lives and land. Indigenous Chicago centers the […]

Edgar Miller (1899–1993) arrived in Chicago in 1917, and over the next fifty years established a successful career as multi-hyphenate creative practitioner. He worked as an architect, artist, craftsperson, curator, designer, and illustrator during a particularly rich period that saw the emergence and establishment of modernism across the visual culture of the city. The tremendous […]

Over the last nine years, artist Theaster Gates has been the steward of the Johnson Publishing Company’s ephemera, periodicals, furniture, inventory, and architectural fragments originally housed at the Johnson Publishing Company building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. The devices for the interrogation of these objects and their permission to be public have created one of […]

During the 1970s, craft emerged as a powerful tool for artists advocating change within the art world and society. These creators aimed to dismantle rigid categorizations, enlighten societal perceptions, and […]

Myth of the Organic City presents an historical and contemporary overview of Chicago’s design and land use, from its Indigenous roots through 20th century infrastructure projects to present-day developments. The […]

For the Smart Museum’s 50th anniversary, South Side artist Robert Earl Paige creates a multi-part pattern-based installation and sprawling public art project that invites communities into a collective experience of space. […]

Exploring identity and place through the diverse work, perspectives, and legacy of three immigration periods of Lithuanian artists in Chicago, this exhibition and its associated programs and publications consider the […]

Dunning explores the history of Cook County's insane asylum through the works of 10 visual artists and 10 poets. The asylum and psychiatric traditions of the past would have incarcerated […]

This exhibition explores typography, the shape and design of letters, within Chicago's diverse neighborhoods to investigate design legacies and their contemporary echoes. The exhibition highlights alternative modernisms by considering how […]

This exhibition and accompanying public program reflect on the lived experiences of immigrant printers, designers, and bookmakers in Chicago and explore how printing by and for immigrant communities has shaped […]