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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 Indigenous collaborations, priorities, and voices, the exhibition foregrounds the perspectives of Indigenous artists currently based in the city and those from nations forcibly displaced from […]

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 have carried forward over generations.

This large-scale and moveable public work of art and exhibition platform references Mecca Flats, a historic building on Chicago's South Side that was significant to the city's cultural and social history but was razed during urban renewal efforts. The sculpture is installed in public spaces and accompanied by programming that both celebrates the arts and […]

This installation, co-created by Chicago-based artist Assia Boundaoui and members of Muslim-American communities in Chicago, uses glass and multi-channel video to abstract thousands of records collected during a decade of FBI surveillance of the community, simultaneously making visible the community's own archive of itself.

Immigration and the immigrant experience had a profound effect on artists who began or expanded self-taught practices upon arriving in Chicago. The first to open in Intuit's newly-renovated museum, this exhibition includes lesser-known and reexamines better-known self-taught artists through the lens of immigrant experience. Artists include Carlos Barberena (Nicaragua), María Enríquez de Allen (Mexico), Tae […]