The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago is a contemporary art museum near Water Tower Place in Near North Side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. The museum, which was established in 1967, is one of the world's largest contemporary art venues. The museum's collection is composed of thousands of objects of Post-World War II visual art. The museum is run gallery-style, with individually curated exhibitions throughout the year. Each exhibition may be composed of temporary loans, pieces from their permanent collection, or a combination of the two.
The High Museum of Art is the largest museum for visual art in the Southeastern United States. Located in Atlanta, Georgia, the High is 312,000 square feet and a division of the Woodruff Arts Center.
The New Museum of Contemporary Art is a museum at 235 Bowery, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1977 by Marcia Tucker.
The Museum of Broadcast Communications (MBC) is an American museum, the stated mission of which is "to collect, preserve, and present historic and contemporary radio and television content as well as educate, inform and entertain through our archives, public programs, screenings, exhibits, publications and online access to our resources." It is headquartered in Chicago.
Charles Wilbert White, Jr. was an American artist known for his chronicling of African American related subjects in paintings, drawings, lithographs, and murals. White's lifelong commitment to chronicling the triumphs and struggles of his community in representational form cemented him as one of the most well-known artists in African American art history.
The Block Museum of Art is a free public art museum located on the campus of Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. The Block Museum was established in 1980 when Chicago art collectors Mary and Leigh B. Block donated funds to Northwestern University for the construction of an art exhibition venue. In recognition of their gift, the university named the changing exhibition space the Mary and Leigh Block Gallery. The original conception of the museum was modeled on the German kunsthalle tradition, with no permanent collection, and a series of changing temporary exhibits. However, the Block Museum soon began to acquire a permanent collection as the university transferred many of its art pieces to the museum. In recognition of its growing collection and its expanding programming, the Gallery became the American Alliance of Museums accredited Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art in 1998. The Block embarked on a major reconstruction project in 1999 and reopened in a new facility in September 2000.
Debbie Millman is an American writer, educator, artist, curator, and designer who is best known as the host of the podcast Design Matters. She is the President Emeritus of the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and chair. She co-founded the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City with Steven Heller.
Vesna Jovanovic is a contemporary American visual artist, best known for her works on paper that address themes related to the human body.
Visual arts of Chicago refers to paintings, prints, illustrations, textile art, sculpture, ceramics and other visual artworks produced in Chicago or by people with a connection to Chicago. Since World War II, Chicago visual art has had a strong individualistic streak, little influenced by outside fashions. "One of the unique characteristics of Chicago," said Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts curator Bob Cozzolino, "is there's always been a very pronounced effort to not be derivative, to not follow the status quo." The Chicago art world has been described as having "a stubborn sense ... of tolerant pluralism." However, Chicago's art scene is "critically neglected." Critic Andrew Patner has said, "Chicago's commitment to figurative painting, dating back to the post-War period, has often put it at odds with New York critics and dealers." It is argued that Chicago art is rarely found in Chicago museums; some of the most remarkable Chicago artworks are found in other cities.
Rashid Johnson is an American artist who produces conceptual post-black art. Johnson first received critical attention in 2001 at the age of 24, when his work was included in Freestyle (2001) curated by Thelma Golden at the Studio Museum in Harlem. He studied at Columbia College Chicago and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his work has been exhibited around the world.
Cards Against Humanity is an adult party game in which players complete fill-in-the-blank statements, using words or phrases typically deemed offensive, risqué, or politically incorrect, printed on playing cards. It has been compared to the card game Apples to Apples (1999).
Arnold J. Kemp is an American artist who works in painting, print, sculpture, and poetry. After graduating from Boston Latin School, Kemp received a BA/BFA from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and an MFA from Stanford University.
Martin Felsen is an American architect and Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (FAIA). He directs UrbanLab, a Chicago-based architecture and urban design firm. Felsen's projects range in scale from houses such as the Hennepin, Illinois Residence, mixed-use residential and commercial buildings such as Upton's Naturals Headquarters, public open spaces such as the Smart Museum of Art Courtyard at the University of Chicago, and large scale, urban design projects such as Growing Water in Chicago and a masterplan for the Yangming Lake region of Changde, China. Felsen was awarded the 2009 Latrobe Prize by the American Institute of Architects, College of Fellows.
Colossal is an art and visual culture blog founded by Chicago-based editor Christopher Jobson. The site covers topics ranging from art, design, and photography, to visual aspects of science and general creativity.
The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art is a museum founded by filmmaker George Lucas and his wife, businesswoman Mellody Hobson. Once completed, the museum will hold all forms of visual storytelling, including painting, photography, sculpture, illustration, comic art, performance, and video. It is under construction in Exposition Park in Los Angeles, California. The museum is expected to open in 2025.
Jenny Kendler is an American interdisciplinary environmental artist, activist, naturalist & wild forager who lives and works in Chicago. For the past 15 years her work has attempted to "re-story" the relationship between humanity and the natural world through projects on climate change, the biodiversity crisis, and de-centering the human in order to re-enchant our relationship to the natural world. She often collaborates with scientists and, in her work, bridges the gap between art, activism and ecology. Since 2014, Kendler has been the first Artist-in-Residence with the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Some notable projects include Music For Elephants, Tell it to the Birds', Sculpture---> Garden, One Hour of Birds and Milkweed Dispersal Balloons. In 2018, Kendler was part of a cross-disciplinary team that was awarded a major grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Humanities Without Walls initiative to present her public art and community-engagement project Garden for a Changing Climate. Kendler is a co-founder of the artist website platform OtherPeoplesPixels, has served as a board member for several grass roots art organizations in Chicago, and was named one of Chicago's Top 50 Artists by Newcity in their biennial list in 2018 and 2020. She is also a founding member of Artists Commit, a successful artist-led initiative to raise climate-consciousness in the artworld.
Bisa Butler is an American fiber artist who has created a new genre of quilting that has transformed the medium. Although quilting has long been considered a craft, her interdisciplinary methods—which create quilts that look like paintings—have catapulted quilting into the field of fine art. She is known for her vibrant, quilted portraits celebrating Black life, portraying both everyday people and notable historical figures. Her works now count among the permanent collections at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Art Institute of Chicago, Pérez Art Museum Miami and about a dozen other art museums nationwide. She has also exhibited at the Smithsonian Museum of American History, the Epcot Center, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center, and many other venues. In 2020, she was commissioned to quilt cover images for Time magazine, including the "Person of the Year" issue and its "100 Women of the Year" issue. With a multi-year wait list for private commissions, one of Butler's quilts sold at auction in 2021 for $75,000 USD.
Helen O'Leary is an Irish-born artist based in the United States and Ireland, known for constructions that blur the boundaries between painting and sculpture and object and image. She uses bricolage and handicraft approaches to refashion older works, studio castoffs and diverse materials into abstract pieces that explore materials, language, remnants of the past, and the visual, cultural and emotional influences of origin. She has exhibited internationally, including shows at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA), Metropolitan Arts Centre (MAC) (Belfast), American Academy of Arts and Letters, SFMOMA, the Sanskriti Foundation, Victorian College of the Arts (Melbourne), and Centre Culturel Irlandais (Paris). Her work has been recognized by the American Academy in Rome and John S. Guggenheim, Pollock-Krasner and Joan Mitchell foundations, numerous residencies, and reviews in The Times (UK), The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, The Irish Times, and Arts Magazine, among others.
The International Museum of Dinnerware Design (IMoDD) is a design museum located in Kingston, New York. It was established in 2012 by Margaret Carney. IMoDD is a 501(c)(3) organization that "collects, preserves, and celebrates masterpieces of the tabletop genre created by leading artists and designers worldwide. Through its collections, exhibitions, and educational programming," IMoDD's mission statement says, "it provides a window on the varied cultural and societal attitudes toward food and dining and commemorates the objects that exalt and venerate the dining experience." IMoDD has over 9,000 objects in its permanent collection, consisting of work by contemporary artists as well as the leading designers for industry, with an additional focus on fine art referencing dining.
Matthew Hoffman is an American public artist and designer based in Chicago. He is known for You Are Beautiful, an art project that ranges from stickers to large-scale public sculptures.
