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, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

This exhibition, co-curated by Dr. Lisa Yun Lee and Dr. Lucy Mensa, uses art, archives, and public dialogue to explore and connect the histories of displacement of Indigenous people and […]

Woven Being: Art for Zhegagoynak/Chicagoland asks the question: What would it mean if Indigenous people with ties to this land were the point of entry to Chicago’s art history? Guided by […]

This exhibition examines contemporary approaches to traditional Woodlands style art, highlighting the underrepresented and diverse Native cultures of the Great Lakes region and the materials, art forms, and processes they […]