Sir Isaac Julien’s moving image installation Lessons of the Hour (2019) interweaves period reenactments across five screens to create a vivid picture of nineteenth-century activist, writer, orator, and philosopher Frederick Douglass. Through critical research, fictional reconstruction, and a marriage of poetic image and sound, Julien asserts Douglass’ enduring lessons of justice, abolition, and freedom that […]

For the Smart’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.

Pictures of Belonging is an unprecedented examination of these three trailblazing figures.  By tracing their artistic development before, during, and after the mass incarceration and displacement of Japanese Americans during World War II, the exhibition offers a nuanced view of how these women continued to explore and experiment with new artistic expression throughout their lives. Created during […]

The Clyfford Still Museum’s guest-curated exhibition, Held Impermanence (Artists Select: Katherine Simóne Reynolds), illuminates multiple competing desires held in constant tension within the Museum. Organized by award-winning filmmaker, artist, and curator Katherine Simóne Reynolds, the exhibition draws deeply on CSM’s collections. The exhibition runs from January 25–September 14, 2025. According to Reynolds, the collection testifies […]

Bold Women explores how women have pushed the boundaries of art and spurred social and cultural change across generations and geographies. The exhibition showcases more than 75 works of art by nearly 50 artists in a variety of mediums including photography, video, painting, sculpture, textiles, and installations. Bold Women remains on view through July 6, 2025. […]