Fall Exhibition Schedule and Public Programming Highlights For Art Design Chicago

CHICAGO—UPDATED September 2018—Initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art, Art Design Chicago is a citywide exploration of Chicago’s role as a catalyst and incubator for innovations in art and design. Running throughout 2018, the initiative features more than 30 exhibitions, hundreds of public and academic programs, and the creation of several scholarly publications as well as a four-part television series. Together, these activities shine a light on Chicago as a creative hub that has spurred and influenced developments in fine and decorative arts, graphic and commercial design, product development, and film, past and present.

Developed in partnership with more than 75 cultural organizations, Art Design Chicago offers new research into under-explored narratives and brings to the fore the work and innovations of many little-known individuals and groups that have deeply impacted the evolution of and discourse on art and design. While the majority of the initiative’s activity will take place in and around Chicago, some of the exhibitions are set to tour nationally and internationally, and others are currently open or upcoming at organizations across the U.S.

Included below are summaries of Art Design Chicago exhibitions opening in September and October as well as those currently on view. A select group of public and academic programs have also been highlighted below. Additional details are also available on the Art Design Chicago website, www.ArtDesignChicago.org.

Living Architecture is a timely exhibition showcasing the work of more than 50 immigrant artists based in Chicago.

Yasuhiro Ishimoto: Someday, Chicago examines the legacy of the San Francisco-born Japanese photographer Yasuhiro Ishimoto (1921–2012), focusing in particular on the ways in which his study and work in Chicago shaped his practice and extended the influence of the city’s arts and design community beyond the U.S.

Todros Geller: Strange Worlds focuses on the multifaceted oeuvre of Todros Geller, an influential Chicago artist who was central to the history of modern American Jewish art.

Participatory Arts: Crafting Social Change explores Hull-House settlement’s role as an early and influential site for the visual and performing arts in Chicago.

3-D Doings: The Imagist Object in Chicago Art, 1964–1980 examines the little-known sculptural work and dimensional painting made by the Chicago Imagists during the early years of their practice.

 These two exhibitions are a collaboration between the Smart Museum of Art and the DuSable Museum of African American History, featuring two distinct but interrelated exhibitions that together offer a nuanced look at the cultural history of Chicago’s South Side during this momentous era of change and conflict.

The Time Is Now! Art Worlds of Chicago’s South Side, 1960–1980 at the Smart Museum focuses in particular on artists of the Black Arts Movement. The exhibition also features artists outside the movement, but who also worked and exhibited in the neighborhoods of the South Side.

Up is Down is the first exhibition to focus on the extensive influence of the Chicago-based design firm Goldsholl Design Associates on the evolution of film and design, from the 1950s to the 1970s. The Goldsholl group worked at the cross-section of art, design, advertising, and visual culture.

The Art Institute of Chicago will present the first major comprehensive retrospective focused exclusively on the work of the groundbreaking Chicago-based group Hairy Who. He came to represent  a group of young artists, who boldly manipulated popular culture to transmit radical and progressive ideas, and challenge prevailing notions of gender and sexuality, social mores and standards of beauty, war, and nostalgia and obsolescence.

As the grandest international spectacle in a great age of spectacles, the World’s Columbian Exposition held in Chicago in 1893 captured the public’s imagination through a dazzling array of images, from photographs, paintings, and illustrated albums to souvenirs, guidebooks, magazine features, and popular histories.

During the tumultuous 1960s and 70s, the prolific artist Ralph Arnold (1928–2006) made photocollages that appropriated and commented upon mass media portrayals of gender, sexuality, race, and politics. Arnold’s complex visual arrangements of photography, painting, and text were built upon his own multilayered identity as a black, gay veteran, and prominent member of Chicago’s art community.

Just before the turn of the century, the popularity of the bicycle in America was at an apex. Social clubs, velodromes, cross-country races, and bicycles and bicycle innovations were rampant. Home to more than 80 shops, including Schwinn, the nation’s leading producer, Chicago played an instrumental role in developing and disseminating bicycle culture.

African American Designers in Chicago is the first exhibition to explore how African American designers in Chicago worked across different media and practices to define a role for themselves in the design professions, remaking the image of both the black artist and buyer in a major hub of American advertising and consumer culture. Presented by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, the exhibition emphasizes both the lives and achievements of these pivotal designers and features work from a wide range of practices, including cartooning, sign painting, architectural signage, illustration, graphic design, exhibit design, and product design, created during the pivotal periods from the Great Migration to the Civil Rights Movement and beyond. The exhibition also explores the contributions of designers such as Charles Dawson, Emmett McBain, and Eugene Winslow, who used commercial art as a site to advance African American political causes, from the Exposition of the American Negro in 1940 to the founding of Burrell McBain Advertising in 1971.

Modern by Design: Chicago Streamlines America reveals how Chicago brought cutting-edge modern design to the American marketplace on a scale unmatched by any other city. The exhibition focuses on 1930s–50s, a critical period in American history. It presents issues of design and aesthetics within the larger social, economic, and cultural context of the time and explores how the city’s hosting of the 1933–34 World’s Fair, its industries, advertising firms, and mail order companies advanced modern design on local, regional, and national levels. Innovative designs coupled with the might of Chicago’s manufacturing and distribution infrastructure led to mass production of affordable state-of-the-art products featuring a new urban-inspired aesthetic that furnished public and private spaces across the country. The exhibition includes approximately 300 objects, photographs, and documents, many on view for the first time.