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, […]
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 […]
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.
The importance of immigration and migration in the genre of self-taught art is an underexplored topic. Chicago, a city with a significant and ongoing history of immigration and migration, is fertile ground for investigating the cultural, communal, familial, and educational influences that enrich artistic production. In light of this history, the exhibition aims to be […]
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 […]
