How Textiles Weave Together the Cycle of Life

CHICAGO — What to wear this morning? Are the bedsheets clean? Paper or cloth for wiping up the mess in the kitchen? We mostly take such textiles for granted these days, coming, as they do, cheaply and from far away, bereft of meaning, unrevealing of the labor and...

10 Exhibitions to See in Chicago This Fall

As fall approaches Chicago and the temperatures tick upward one last time before the inevitable cold slump, the city enters into a rallying cry. Chicago Exhibition Weekend returns today, with 50 participants hosting concurrent programming across the city through this...

A Chicago Artist-Run Gallery’s Last Hurrah Before Forced Closure

CHICAGO — On a recent Saturday night, I sat in a tiny storefront with a dozen or so others. Three dancers moved with glacial slowness not 10 feet in front of us, illuminated by the streetlights outside. Eerie sounds buzzed throughout the space. “Nether,” by Zachary...

An Impressionist’s Ode to Male Sensuality

CHICAGO — The Impressionist artists working in France in the 1800s clearly liked women. While landscapes and still lifes studded their oeuvres, they turned repeatedly to the subjects of dancers, opera singers, boaters, bathers, strollers, book readers, barmaids, and...

Wafaa Bilal Asks What it Means to be Arab in America

CHICAGO — Though Wafaa Bilal was born in Iraq and is based in New York, his survey at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Indulge Me, can be called a homecoming of sorts. In 2007, the accomplished yet underrated artist captured the art world’s attention with...

A Moving Encounter With the Art of Bernard Williams

CHICAGO — Nearly every summer in Chicago and its surrounding suburbs, some genuinely dumb public art is trotted out for the entertainment of visitors and residents alike. Sometimes it’s life-size fiberglass cows, other times giant butterflies. The most dreadful ones...

Chicago Nonprofit Celebrates a Decade of Serving Unhoused Artists

CHICAGO — Do people need art? I know I always have, as something to enjoy, discuss, learn from, be puzzled by, and sometimes create. Obviously, I need food, shelter, and clothing first, but beyond that, art has given me a myriad of ways through which to engage with...

The First Homosexuals Is a Defiant Celebration of LGBTQ+ Life

CHICAGO — The history of art, stated curator Jonathan D. Katz, “is both the world’s largest archive of the history of sexuality and its least tapped.” This may be a good place to begin to unpack the immense, important, ambitious, challenging, and intellectual...