As part of The United Colors of Robert Earl Paige, the Hyde Park Art Center presents this companion exhibition in an adjacent gallery that features the works of local artists Paige identifies as being in his peer-to-peer creative network. The parapluie, or umbrella in French, is how Paige describes the circles of artists that mutually […]
Longstanding artist, educator, and designer Robert Earl Paige believes beauty should be accessible all around us for everyone to experience. This exhibition presents a survey of textiles, drawings, tiles, prints, and other works that spans over half a century of Paige’s prolific creative practice and aims to encourage us to make art every day. The […]
Architecture creates an indelible mark on the landscape; buildings speak to the culture of the people. We are tied together by the stories of our lives and the places we've experienced, marking indelible moments in time. The GREYSTONE Collective is an established Home + Studio for Black Queer + Trans Makers. Indelible ORIGINS celebrates the odyssey […]
This multi-site photographic exhibition presents recent works by ten artists who engage with the dynamic social landscapes of Chicago or Paris, staging a cross-cultural reflection on contemporary life in two global cities. The artists presented are Chicago-based artists Marzena Abrahamik, Jonathan Michael Castillo, zakkiyyah najeebah dumas o’neal, Tonika Johnson and Sasha Phyars-Burgess, and Greater Paris-based […]
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, […]
Presented by South Asia Institute and guest curated by Shelly Bahl, this multifaceted project documents the history of South Asian art and artists in Chicago and shares this history through an archival exhibition and an installation of contemporary art. The narrative begins with colonial-era perspectives, including those reflected in documentation and photographs from the Indian Pavilion […]
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.
Of Her Becoming highlights the printmaking, work, and impact of influential artist and activist Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012) within an important site in Catlett’s career: Chicago’s South Side. The exhibition includes several of Catlett’s lithograph and woodcut prints as well as work of contemporary Black women printmakers on the South Side. Of Her Becoming sheds new […]
Presented by the Center for Native Futures, the only all-Native artist-led arts non-profit organization in Chicago, Gagizhibaajiwan considers depth, duality, and paradox in Anishinaabe art as expressed through images of Misshepezhieu, the Underwater Panther, and Animikii, the Thunderbird. The exhibition features the work of four Anishinaabe artists: interdisciplinary artist Marcella Ernest (Gunflint Lake Ojibwe/Bad River […]
Comfort Station presents La Casa de Todos / Everyone’s Home, an exhibition by Chicago-based artist Edra Soto. Soto’s practice draws from her Puerto Rican roots to instigate conversations about history, diasporic identity, and constructed social orders. La Casa de Todos builds on her ongoing project “Graft,” which integrates architectural intervention and social practice. With this public […]
Persistence examines the migration of Puerto Rican student-artists to Chicago beginning in the 1920s to study fine arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The exhibition present a chronology of over 30 artists admitted to this prestigious institution and a selection of artwork representative of each decade. Showcasing the work of a […]
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 […]
Join The GREYSTONE Collective to learn the art of handmade papermaking with Chicago-based artist, maker, and educator Aidan Anne Frierson. This creative course, happening over five days from 11am to 5pm, encourages participants to actualize ideas and experiences by physically creating paper through color choice, placement, and variation of fiber. Handmade Paper utilizes techniques such […]
Artist Robert Earl Paige strongly believes in community participation to generate art and culture that speaks to the Black experience. Early in his career, Paige and Dr. Carol Adams, founded […]
Tune in to Lumpen Radio for a Spanish-language conversation with Cesáreo Moreno, curator at the National Museum of Mexican Art, and artists Carmen Chami and Rodrigo Lara. They discuss the […]
Building on artist Dawit L. Petros's ongoing exploration of links between colonization, migration, and modernism related to Italy, East Africa (especially in Eritrea and Ethiopia), Libya, and North America, this solo exhibition examines the ways that colonialism and cultural memory are inscribed in the visual culture and built environment of Chicago. The exhibition also explores and interrogates the […]
Join South Asia Institute for an extraordinary fusion of art and narrative in a special storytelling event. Eight dynamic South Asian American artists showing in the acclaimed group show, Are […]
Public Media Institute's How to Make a Scene series continues with legendary Chicago performers and platform-makers travis, P. Michael, Da Wei Wang, and Rosé Hernandez. The panel is curated and […]
Performer Cindy Nero blends oral storytelling and drag performance into a beautiful and healing experience that centers community and aims to uplift Trans and Queer stories. Presented in partnership with […]
In this performance presented in conjunction with Edra Soto's installation La Casa de Todos, artist SAGE DYE installs a drying line inside the sculpture and hangs a series of garments […]
Join The GREYSTONE Collective for an artist talk with Aidan Anne Frierson, presented as part of the Indelible ORIGINS | Place + People series. Frierson is a South Side Chicago […]
Over the last century, Chicago has led the nation in progressive arts education for K-12 students, as teachers and their students linked art education to movements for social justice, access, and self-determination. Gallery 400’s Learning Together centers the progressive art pedagogy of a diverse group of Chicago artist educators from the mid-1960s through the 2010s, […]
Join architectural historian Onur Öztürk and exhibiting artist Dawit L. Petros for a walk from the Balbo Monument past Columbus and Balbo Drives to the Museum of Contemporary Photography. Along […]
Join the Museum of Contemporary Photography at the opening reception for Dawit L. Petros's exhibition Prospetto a Mare, on view from August 30–December 20, 2024.
Join Gallery 400 for the opening reception of Learning Together: Art Education and Community, their fall exhibition centering the progressive art pedagogy of a diverse group of Chicago artist educators […]
Experience a live, improvisational movement performance by Freedom From and Freedom To, an exploration and celebration of artistic circumstance. Movement and sound improvisers from all around Chicago gather in front […]
Join exhibiting artists Indira Johnson, Gunjan Kumar, and Kunal Sen as they lead a special tour of the exhibition What is Seen and Unseen: Mapping South Asian American Art in […]
Sintonicen Lumpen Radio 105.5 FM para escuchar una transmisión en vivo presentada por Silvia Inés Gonzalez, administradora de Personas de Color Espacio Artístico (POCAS por sus siglas en inglés). Este […]
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 […]
About the series: When artists make work about death, they are affirming their relationships to the living world. Doing this well requires that one's studio practice be focused on asking […]
Dive into the colorful world of shaving cream marbling! You’ll swirl vibrant hues to create stunning, one-of-a-kind designs on paper, perfect for cards, art prints, and beyond. This free all ages art making workshop is led by Hyde Park Art Center’s Community Engagement Fellow, Yeeseon Chae, and presented in conjunction with the Art Center’s exhibition, […]
Tune in to Lumpen Radio for a conversation about the Chicago History Museum's exhibition, Designing for Change: Chicago Protest Art of the 1960s-70s, with exhibiting artist Monica Trinidad, curator Olivia […]
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 […]
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 […]
As a part of programming for the exhibition Radical Craft: Arts Education at Hull-House 1889-1935, the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum is partnering with The WasteShed to present their event series, “Radical Mending.” This includes “Mending Basics,” a series of workshops designed to build and develop basic sewing skills and promote the importance of sustainable fashion. The […]
Join Rebuild Foundation for a reception celebrating the opening of When Clouds Roll Away: Reflection and Restoration from the Johnson Archive, an exhibition by Theaster Gates featuring a suite of […]
Join DePaul Art Museum for an in-person reception celebrating the opening of the Museum’s Fall 24/Winter 25 exhibitions Edgar Miller: Anti-Modern, 1917-1967 and The Spaces We Call Home. Light refreshments […]
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 […]
As calls for racial justice, climate action, and gender equity grow louder and more urgent, designers, activists, and makers ask: How can we challenge social inequities and systemic oppression in order to create a better tomorrow? The two-day, public Design as Activism Symposium convenes Chicago design leaders and community organizers to explore community-led design approaches […]
As we listen to and see images and videos of events from around the world, as well as from our own backyards, we can feel a wide range of emotions in a very brief amount of time which can linger within us for extended periods. At times we can feel helpless. As human beings, it […]
Join The GREYSTONE Collective for the closing reception of Indelible ORIGINS | Place + People: Why WE Are Here, a solo exhibition featuring the work of Chicago-based artist, maker, and educator Aidan Anne Frierson. In a new body of work that combines elements of cotton, metal, clay, and writing in a form of cryptic self-portraiture, […]
Since the time of Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, Chicago's Black culture has been defined by its creative ethos of resourcefulness. Thinking ecologically before there was an environmental movement, generations of Black artists have worked their alchemy to transform simple materials and castoff objects into beautiful art, breathe life into the city's forgotten corners, and reinvent […]
Join South Side Community Art Center to celebrate the opening of ReSOURCE: Art and Resourcefulness in Black Chicago. Curated by Bethany Hill and LaMar Gayles, this exhibition brings together 40 artists and 70 artworks (including 4 projects commissioned for the exhibition) in partnership with local community gardens and urban farms to tell the story of […]
Experience what it means to design for change at the Arts Village inside the free Englewood Music Festival! The EAC Arts Village is Englewood Arts Collective's family-friendly immersive production of creative activities that honor, preserve, reflect, and create history in the Englewood community. Inspired by the Chicago History Museum’s current exhibition, Designing for Change: Chicago […]
Over the course of his career, Edgar Miller realized numerous private and public commissions across the United States, with the largest concentration in the Chicagoland area. Many of these projects, […]
Poets from various Chicago neighborhoods harness the power of Plena, a traditional Puerto Rican musical form, as an historical tool of protest. Plena is known as the “sung newspaper” because of the way it recounts history and the everyday life of the common people. “Of Plena and Poetry” combines poets reciting lyrics about the struggles […]
“Let’s Talk About Art” is Hyde Park Art Center's innovative hybrid learning program for older adults (65+). Participants explore visual and performing arts, collaborate with Chicago art organizations, and create their own art inspired by exhibits and performances. As part of this special Art Design Chicago iteration of the program, this session explores the Chicago […]
Join artists Rhonda Wheatley and Elsa Muñoz for this self-reflective and interactive healing workshop that helps you release limitations and clear blockages from your life. Elsa, whose recent series of paintings entitled “Controlled Burns” explores themes of fire and renewal, discusses the power of fire to transmute pain and promote growth. She then leads the […]
About the series: When artists make work about death, they are affirming their relationships to the living world. Doing this well requires that one's studio practice be focused on asking […]
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 elevate appreciation for individual expression and identity. These issues persist today, prompting a renewed examination of their contemporary relevance. Primarily focused on fiber, ceramics, jewelry, […]
Join the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art for the opening of their exhibition, Agency: Craft in Chicago from the 1970s–80s and Beyond. Remarks will take place at 1:00 pm, with a special moment honoring exhibiting artist Ani Afshar, who passed way in August.
Join exhibiting artists Tulika Ladsariya, Zafar Malik, and Shaurya Kumar as they lead a special tour of the exhibition What is Seen and Unseen: Mapping South Asian American Art in Chicago. Come hear them talk about their work, their artistic explorations, and their own stories of working as artists in Chicago.
Illinois Humanities and the South Side Home Movie Project present Chicago Style, a multidimensional exploration of Black fashion on Chicago’s South Side from the 1930s through the 80s, culminating in a fashion show and the debut of a film curated and scored by Ayana Contreras. By intertwining history, community, and creativity, Chicago Style fosters intergenerational dialogue, community cohesion, and cultural identity […]
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 exhibition includes maps, landscape designs, installations, wall drawings, sculptures, and multimedia works by more than 25 artists. The exhibition features artwork by Alexandra Antoine, Rebecca […]
Join award-winning artist and Austinite, Marvin Tate, in collaboration with artist-organizer and cultural producer, Laura Shaeffer, for Crossing Austin: A Party in Two Parts. A Party in Two Parts brings two communities, the Austin neighborhood in Chicago and its neighboring community Oak Park, together through art, music, and nature. The second part of this two-part […]
Join 6018North to celebrate the opening of Myth of the Organic City.
About the series: When artists make work about death, they are affirming their relationships to the living world. Doing this well requires that one's studio practice be focused on asking […]
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. Give the Drummer Some! is rooted in Paige’s decades-long practice as an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and educator who bridges cultural boundaries. A lifelong resident of the […]
Sintonicen Lumpen Radio para escuchar una conversación en español entre el artista Efren Candelaria, Jorge Felix, curador de la exposición Persistence: The Lions ’Roar in the Puerto Rican Arts (Persistencia: […]
As the stakes in this year’s presidential election reach unprecedented heights, the future of our democracy hinges on more than just policy debates and electoral outcomes. The power of art […]
Join Chicago-based artist JeeYeun Lee to hear about the ongoing Shore Land project, a series of audio walks that contemplate the lakefront as a liminal space between land and water—simultaneously […]
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 causes and consequences of immigration/migration, including displacement, colonization, trauma, and assimilation. The cost of belonging is choosing what to leave behind. Its reward: creating new […]
Public Media Institute’s How to Make a Scene series continues with a conversation about Axe Street, a 1980s-era artist-run space. Join Mary Patten, Greg Ruffing, Rebecca Wolfram, and others from […]
Join 6018North for an outdoor musical experience on the beach! Enjoy performances from an array of Chicago musicians from across genres as water, sustainability, and music combine for a memorable […]
In conjunction with its exhibition, Indigenous Chicago, the Newberry hosts a performance by the Black Hawk Performance Company, introduced by Dr. Dorene P. Wiese. The performance is followed by a presentation of Dancing for Our Tribe: Potawatomi Tradition in the New Millennium by Sharon Hoogstraten. The publication documents Potawatomi Regalia in the twenty-first century.
Alberto Aguilar, Chicago Humanities' first Artist-in-Residence, curates a series of free programs that give audiences a chance to encounter art in new and exciting ways and inspire viewers to make […]
Weaving Stories is a series of community-building weaving workshops meant to connect our shared stories of heritage and culture to material practice. Taking place at Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture, and Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art in the coming months, the series invites […]
Join Mobile Makers Chicago for a pop-up activation at Sundays on the Boulevard in Lawndale! From a retrofitted mail truck, Mobile Makers' pop-up events feature design-focused skill-building workshops that encourage youth to become advocates and change-makers in their own communities.
Join artists and educators Jorge Lucero (University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana), Olivia Gude (School of the Art Institute of Chicago), Silvia Gonzalez (Franklin Fine Arts), Alice Costas (Northside College Prep), Janani […]
Doors open 30 minutes in advance. Limited space – first come, best seated! A Girly Show is a collaboration between local artists, Jared Brown and AJ McClenon. Featured contributors include: Noa Micaela Fields, Remy Guzman, Andres L. Hernandez, Imani Jackson, Regina Martinez, Lynneah McCarrell, Lola Ayisha Ogbara, and Carissa Pinckney. This project began as a residency at Roman […]
Stop by DePaul Art Museum (DPAM) anytime between 10:00 am - 1:00 pm for Family Day! The Museum is partnering with the Chicago Mosaic School (CMS) for a hands-on workshop led by CMS faculty. Participants create small mosaics inspired by Edgar Miller’s stained glass and design works featured in DPAM's exhibition Edgar Miller: Anti-Modern, 1917-1967. […]
Doors open 30 minutes in advance. Limited space – first come, best seated! A Girly Show is a collaboration between local artists, Jared Brown and AJ McClenon. Featured contributors include: Noa Micaela Fields, Remy Guzman, Andres L. Hernandez, Imani Jackson, Regina Martinez, Lynneah McCarrell, Lola Ayisha Ogbara, and Carissa Pinckney. This project began as a residency at Roman […]
Join the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art for a tour of Agency: Craft in Chicago from the 1970s-80s and Beyond with curator Adrienne Kochman.
Returning for its third edition on Sunday, October 6, 2024, the Chicago Sukkah Design Festival pairs community organizations in Chicago’s North Lawndale neighborhood with diverse architectural designers to design and construct sukkahs, small outdoor pavilions built for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. Working collaboratively, teams explore design literacy, social justice, and neighborhood futuring. The Festival […]
You are invited to the Opening Celebration of the third annual Chicago Sukkah Design Festival! Experience the festival's five unique sukkahs for the first time and learn more about the Jewish harvest holiday of Sukkot. Over the course of the afternoon, visitors enjoy food, art-making activities, communal rituals, participatory performances, and more. Family friendly! 1:00–3:00 […]
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An initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art in partnership with artists and organizations across the city, Art Design Chicago is a series of events and exhibitions that highlight the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities.
