Art Institute of Chicago News

The Art Institute of Chicago announced today the election of Denise Gardner as the organization's new chairperson of the Board of Trustees.

For its fourth online installment of the 2021 Spring Puppet Forum Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host “Puppetry, Game Design, and Digital Performance” with Eddie Kim of EK Theater and UConn Digital Media and Design faculty Samantha Olschan and Kenneth Thompson, on Thursday, April 22 at 7 p.m. ET.

Galerie Gmurzynska and its third-generation gallery owner, Isabelle Bscher, will present its first New York exhibition dedicated to Austrian artist Arnulf Rainer, a key figure of Art Informel and one of the most influential living artists of our day. The works will be on view from April 15th to June 12th at the flagship NYC location at 39 East 78th Street.

Playwrights Horizons is continuing their new Public Art Series with an installation of two works by Dread Scott on the theater’s 42nd Street facade (April 12-May 9). One work engages passersby in considering what a world unburdened from America’s imperialism and often-destructive exceptionalism—a world without America itself—might look like.

Chicago-based new media artist Adrian Stein, a Guatemalan native who migrated  to the U.S. to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, will debut his first art installation  titled “Quantum Mirror” at respected contemporary fine art gallery ArtSpace8 located on  Michigan Avenue.

Bailey will work closely with Ian Damont Martin and Sandra Thompson, both of the Inclusion and Belonging arm of People and Culture. Reporting directly to James Rondeau, Bailey will serve as a member of the senior leadership team. She will officially assume her position at the museum on March 1.

 Reyes | Finn will present, The Language of Flowers, an exhibition of floral-themed works curated by Phillip March Jones. On view February 19 – April 16, 2021, the exhibition features new artwork by Hayley Barker, Kevin Ford, Lonnie Holley, Claudia Keep, Emily Ludwig Shaffer, and Aaron Michael Skolnick.

Project:ARTspace and ODETTA presents a weekly Gallery Focus featuring works in our current exhibition, A Kind of Language, as well as some of Debra's backstory. A significant work that was proposed, but never realized was Rapunzel at Dearborn Station in the early '80s when Pearlman was based in Chicago.

Anchorage Concert Association created the Community Artist Project to partner with local artists to create short-term projects that provide connections between communities throughout Anchorage while social events, venues, and performances remain limited due to the COVID-19 crisis.

The Staten Island Museum has been approved for a $20,000 Grants for Arts Projects award from the National Endowment for the Arts to support the exhibition, Magicicada by Jennifer Angus opening in July 2021.

Galerie Gmurzynska and its third-generation gallery owner, Isabelle Bscher, will present a new exhibition at its flagship NYC location. “Drawing Inspiration: A Century of Works on Paper,” will put a famed works spanning 100 years on display from such luminaries as Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Marcel Duchamp, Zaha Hadid, Ed Ruscha, Robert Delaunay and Jean Arp.

Weaver, designer, collector, gardener, author, world traveler, entrepreneur, teacher, and cultural scholar, Jack Lenor Larsen was mentor to textile connoisseurs, designers, artisans and artists throughout his eventful and gratifying 93 years. He died peacefully on the evening of December 22, 2020 of natural causes in East Hampton, New York.

The International Contemporary Ensemble and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago will present a free virtual concert featuring the world premiere of Nicole M. Mitchell's Inescapable Spiral Remote (2020) on Tuesday, December 15, 2020 at 6pm CST/7pm EST.

Mandala South Asian Performing Arts has announced plans to expand its education programming to the western suburbs-at the Umang and Paragi Patel Center, which is planned for an opening in early 2021 at the National Indo-American Museum, 805 Main Street in Lombard.

Arts on the Ave, Vancouver Biennale, and TELUS will present great reveal of Walking Figures, a group of headless, cast-iron figures by Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz at the TELUS building on Alberta Avenue (118th avenue and 89th street) on Wednesday, November 4 at 10:30am.

With the cancellation of The Joffrey Ballet's annual engagement of Christopher Wheeldon's critically acclaimed version of The Nutcracker in 2020, the Joffrey is pleased to announce a myriad of festive, interactive virtual offerings throughout the holiday season, including the debut of a newly animated digital display as part of Chicago's Art on theMART — the largest permanent digital art projection in the world.

As the U.S. faces a historic moment of social justice reawakening, the Elmhurst Art Museum announces a new exhibition that reflects on historical and contemporary responses to fair housing in the Chicagoland area, In Focus: The Chicago Freedom Movement and The Fight for Fair Housing, on view at the Museum March 4 through June 20, 2021.

The Art Institute of Chicago has announced Bisa Butler: Portraits, on view from November 16-April 19, 2021. Showcasing 22 quilts in four galleries, the exhibition engages with themes of family, community, migration, the promise of youth, and artistic and intellectual legacies.

The pioneering International Contemporary Ensemble announces bassoonist Rebekah Heller's transition from Co-Artistic Director to Board Member, and welcomes a new cohort of Board Members with close ties to the Ensemble: Marcos Balter, David Byrd-Marrow, and Du Yun. Eddy Kwon joins the Ensemble's staff as Director of Individual Giving.

For its second online installment of the 2020 Fall Puppet Forum Series, the Ballard Institute and Museum of Puppetry at the University of Connecticut will host a?oeThe Renaissance of African American Object Performancea?? with noted puppeteers, artists, scholars Edna Bland, Paulette Richards, Schroeder Cherry, and Anwar Floyd-Pruitt on Oct. 22 at 7 p.m. ET.