Chicagoan of the Year in Arts: Maria Gaspar
Artist Maria Gaspar grew up in Little Village, a Mexican-American neighborhood on Chicago's West Side. La Villita is home to El Milagro Tortilleria, a spectacular Mexican Independence Day Parade and...
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Dancing about architecture
The Graham Foundation occupies a stately mansion on the Gold Coast. Rooms that used to be richly wallpapered and filled with fine furnishings now house spare displays devoted to architecture....
Chicago’s best visual art in 2014
This has been a year of bittersweet goodbyes, as some of the brightest curators in Chicago have left for Toronto, Philadelphia, Kassel, Germany, and beyond. 2015 will fill those Lucite...
Seductive hells
Wangechi Mutu is squatting on the forest floor, gorging on a three-tiered chocolate cake with bare, bejeweled hands. Chunks of dough lodge in long, curly acrylic nails, dark frosting smears...
The desires of art
What does art want? Is art more comfortable in a group setting or alone? Does it opt for indirect natural light or a bright, focused spot? Is art chatty or...
Amy Vogel’s non-retrospective at College of DuPage
"Amy Vogel: A Paraperspective," currently on view at the Cleve Carney Art Gallery of the College of DuPage, is an odd duck of a show. Not that there are any...
Jenny Kendler puts ethics, empathy in art
"Human exceptionalism has got to go," artist Jenny Kendler tells me. "Yes, we have great skills, but so does every other species on the planet." Witness the mantis shrimp, one...
Fall art preview: 11 shows not to miss
What to see this fall? Play it close to home with shows about Chicago, motherhood, composting, American history, demons and failure, or go far out and explore the entire galaxy....
Simon Starling brings his elegant alchemy to the MCA and Arts Club
The atrium of the Museum of Contemporary Art currently contains a challenge rare in art but common in engineering. It asks the viewer to trust the structural integrity of an...
A trip through expanded reality with Magritte
Getting through the day requires a certain amount of repression. There is order in the ordinary: a pipe is a thing to be packed with tobacco and smoked, the word...