From a Renaissance Society show to Willem de Kooning at the Art Institute to figurines by an Argentinian artist, what not to miss in the months ahead.
“Liliana Porter: The Strange Task”
The god of small things turns out to be a goddess named Liliana Porter. The 85-year-old Argentinian artist graces Chicago with a rare solo show featuring her irresistible vignettes of miniature figurines, plus a series of short videos that find immense pathos in tchotchkes. Through June 13 at Secrist|Beach, 1801 W. Hubbard St., secristbeach.com
“Palomar (Parts 1 and 2)”
Named for both the California observatory and the phenomenologically attentive title character of Italo Calvino’s 1983 novel, this group exhibition gathers together many fine artists who also enjoy directing awareness to the sky, in all its cosmic and scientific mystery. Expect an unsettling mixture of absurdity, conceptual practices, and exacting realism, poetic and otherwise. Through July 12 at the Renaissance Society, 5811 S. Ellis Ave., renaissancesociety.org
“Martin Wong: Chinatown USA”
Chicagoans almost never get to see art by Martin Wong, who died in 1999 from complications of AIDS and may have been the greatest painter ever of red bricks. On view is a breathtaking selection of his odes to that humblest of building blocks; his idiosyncratically pop memorialization of San Francisco’s famed Chinatown; and samples from his sizable collection of graffiti, which for a brief moment in 1989 constituted the Museum of American Graffiti, housed in the top floor of an East Village walk-up. Through July 18 at Wrightwood 659, 659 W. Wrightwood Ave., wrightwood659.org
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“Oren Pinhassi: Into Your Arm’s Length” and “Leticia Pardo: Carcasa (109 E. Ontario St.)”
Two unrelated exhibitions at the same art space have in common the artists’ abilities to translate architectural elements into sensual, bodily, textured sculptures. Oren Pinhassi uses sand, stone and vinyl, as well as humor; Pardo employs rebar and silicone, plus a subtle understanding of politicized labor. Sometimes things that look nothing alike are worth thinking about together. Through Aug. 8 at the Arts Club of Chicago, 201 E. Ontario St., artsclubchicago.org
“Nathaniel Mary Quinn: A Love Letter to my Mother”
Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s first studio was his childhood living room in the Robert Taylor Homes, where his mother encouraged him to sketch directly on the walls. When he needed more canvas, she’d wash the existing drawings away. Today the artist’s distinctively composite and empathic portraits, which feel like collage but are painted through and through, hang in the Pompidou, the Whitney, the Hammer, the Art Institute — and in this temporary exhibition, alongside a recreation of his family’s apartment circa 1984. Through Aug. 23 at the National Public Housing Museum, 919 S. Ada St., nphm.org
“Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford: Near Eternity”
One of Chicago’s wittiest monumental sculptors tries his hand — and his 3D scanner — at creating fitting tributes to high and low icons of modern and contemporary design. Giant glitchy versions of the Barcelona Chair, the Eames leg splint, standing desks, and kids’ IKEA chairs stand in the museum’s Mies van der Rohe house and along the public greenways of surrounding Wilder Park. Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford, a founding member of the Floating Museum Collective, here makes his solo case for a very new kind of public statuary. May 30 to Aug. 23 at the Elmhurst Art Museum, 150 Cottage Hill Ave., Elmhurst, elmhurstartmuseum.org
“Dancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaetón”
Emma Goldman never actually said she didn’t want to be part of a revolution that included no dancing, but she meant it, as do all the participants in this sprawling, ambitious, multimedia survey of the visual, political and spiritual histories of its two eponymous genres. Spreading out globally from the hotspots of Kingston and San Juan, including artists as diverse as Edra Soto, Isaac Julien, Phil Collins, and supakid, plus many gargantuan sound systems. Through Sept. 20 at the MCA Chicago, 220 E. Chicago Ave., visit.mcachicago.org
“Jeff Carter: The Singer Pavilion Project”
Only one building designed by Bauhaus founder Walter Gropius remains standing in Chicago, and just barely. The Singer Pavilion is all that’s left of the Michael Reese Hospital campus in Bronzeville, the rest having been demolished as part of the city’s failed 2016 Summer Olympics bid. Jeff Carter, one of the more clever if underrecognized sculptors working in Chicago today, employs digital imaging, installation, site interventions, zines, and sound — oh, and stickers! — to think through the effects of policy, institutions and the public on architecture. June 6 to Sept. 20 at the Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave., hydeparkart.org
“Willem de Kooning Drawing”
The most figurative of the Abstract Expressionists, and also the most raw and intense, Willem de Kooning dissolved boundaries between body and gesture, male and female, high and low. As with so many masters, studying his drawings offers deep insight into his oeuvre, and this unprecedented survey promises to provide it, via some 250 works spanning seven decades, from a still-life penciled at 15 to his most famed midcentury paintings and ending with the sinuous line drawings of his eighties. June 14 to Sept. 20 at the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Ave., artic.edu
“Perennial City: Experiments in Urban Gardening”
‘Tis the season to dig in the dirt, and as this exhibition of rare archival materials and new artist commissions demonstrates, that act can have meaningful consequences. Land reclamation, the sustaining of cultural traditions, and the building of healthier lives in the city are explored via Carlos Flores’s mobile seed library altar, custom wallpaper by Relativity Textiles, and a look at how Hull-House helped immigrant, working-class communities grow their own food in Chicago a hundred years ago. Through Dec. 15 at Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, 800 S. Halsted St., hullhousemuseum.org
“Monumental: Sculpture by Dr. Charles Smith”
If you can’t make it to the Kohler Art Preserve in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, to witness the hundreds of sculptures Charles Smith has created since 1986 to honor the lives and histories of African Americans, see this sampling newly on view at Intuit. Included is the outsider art center’s recent acquisition, the small but powerful “Libby – A Visitor at the Museum,” fashioned, like most of Smith’s tributes, from painted concrete. Through April 25, 2027, at Intuit Art Museum, 756 N. Milwaukee Ave., art.org
Lori Waxman is a freelance critic.