Summer in Chicago never disappoints and one of my favorite things to do is catch a good exhibition around town. We are blessed to live and play in a city with so many cultural offerings. Here’s a curation of some of the top exhibitions presented at their respective institutions in Chicago this summer. Catch these exhibitions before they are gone!
DANCING THE REVOLUTION: FROM DANCEHALL TO REGGAETÓN – MCA CHICAGO
DATES: April 14-September 20, 2026
Dancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaetón is a major exhibition that explores and expands the visual, political, and spiritual histories of dancehall and reggaetón through contemporary art—two dynamic genres that have transcended their grassroots origins to shape global culture. From Kingston to San Juan through Panama, New York City, and London, Dancing the Revolution positions music and dance as a revolutionary practice for collective liberation rooted in the struggle against colonial oppression.
Presenting work across varied mediums, Dancing the Revolution includes painting, sound sculptures, installations, photographs, and video, showcasing how artists have been and continue to be inspired by these histories and the visual forms that emerge from them. The exhibition features more than forty contemporary artists, including Isaac Julien, Edra Soto, Alberta Whittle, Carolina Caycedo, and Lee “Scratch” Perry. A special commissioned mixtape project by Juan Rivera invites visitors to learn about the evolution of these popular genres in Panama and hear the iconic songs that have paved the way for the global phenomenon of reggaetón.
Dancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaetón is curated by Carla Acevedo-Yates, former Marilyn and Larry Fields Curator and Director of Curatorial Initiatives, with Cecilia González Godino, former Marjorie Susman Curatorial Fellow, Iris Colburn, Curatorial Associate, Nolan Jimbo, Assistant Curator, and nibia pastrana santiago, Curatorial Consultant. The exhibition is designed by SKETCH | Johann Wolfschoon, Panamá.
Lead support for Dancing the Revolution: From Dancehall to Reggaetón is provided by the Harris Family Foundation in memory of Bette and Neison Harris, the Zell Family Foundation, Cari and Michael Sacks, and the Mellon Foundation. Major support is provided by Julie and Guy Lakonishok. Generous support is provided by Anne L. Kaplan and Étant donnés, a program of Villa Albertine.
INK & OUTRAGE: 18TH-CENTURY SATIRICAL PRINTS IN LONDON & DUBLIN – DRIEHAUS MUSEUM
DATES: May 15-September 13, 2026
Ink & Outrage: 18th-Century Satirical Prints in London & Dublin is a lively and revelatory exhibition that explores the golden age of caricature and the networks of art, politics, and piracy that connected Britain and Ireland.
The exhibition examines how artists such as James Gillray, Thomas Rowlandson, and Isaac Cruikshank used humor and exaggeration to lampoon the great and powerful—giving rise to one of the most distinctive visual languages of dissent in Western art. It also highlights how, exploiting a legal loophole in British copyright law, Dublin publishers pirated London satires, creating their own inventive and often subversive versions. These Irish “copies,” far from derivative, reveal an independent wit and political perspective that captured the pulse of a nation on the edge of revolution and reform..
Ink & Outrage: 18th-Century Satirical Prints in London & Dublin, was organized by guest curators Silvia Beltrametti and William Laffan and following its debut at the Irish Architectural Archive in Dublin in 2025.
Lead support for Ink & Outrage: 18th-Century Satirical Prints in London & Dublin is provided by Sallie and Allan Bulley. Major Support is provided by the Driehaus Trust Company, LLC., Karen Z. Gray-Krehbiel and John H. Krehbiel Jr., and the Irish Georgian Society. Generous support is provided by Shawn M. Donnelley and Christopher M. Kelly, Joyce and Bill Gordon, Ellen O’Connor and Friends of Ink & Outrage.
IT’S ABOUT TIME COUNTERPRODUCTIVE CONCEPTUALISMS IN CHICAGO – GRAY GALLERY
DATES: Jul 10 – Aug 22, 2026
GRAY Chicago is pleased to present IT’S ABOUT TIME: Counterproductive Conceptualisms in Chicago, an exhibition that traces the contours of a newly emerging conceptual art ethos among younger generations of Chicago-based or -trained artists. The Gray also has on view David Hockney: The Moon Room also showing through August 22. The exhibition centers on a recently released series focused on the artist’s observations of the moon. Created in 2020 at his Normandy studio in France, Hockney used his iPad to make daily paintings of the surrounding landscape, working en plein air to capture the changing seasons as illuminated by moonlight.
IT’S ABOUT TIME includes artists with disparate practices but who maintain a shared spirit of studied nonchalance: what might be described as a “Midwestern” alternative to the demands of artistic production as a rat race. The artists include Alex Chitty (b. 1979), Shir Ende (b. 1993), Max Guy (b. 1989), Jinn Bronwen Lee (b. 1984), Dave Lloyd (b. 1991), Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle (b. 1961), Devin T. Mays (b. 1985), Pope.L (b. 1955 – d. 2023), Nick Raffel (b. 1982), and Miao Wang (b. 1988). Working in a broad range of disciplines and media—from drawing, painting, and photography to installation, moving image, performance, and sculpture—these artists often combine different artistic personas and profiles.
Organized by DRAW, the curatorial duo composed of Dieter Roelstraete and Abigail Winograd. The Moon Room was first presented by Florence Calame-Levert in David Hockney: Normandism, presented from March 3 through September 22, 2024, at the Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen in Normandy, France.
SELF, MADE: FOURTEEN MODERN ARTISTS FROM THE RICHARD AND ELLEN SANDOR FAMILY COLLECTION – ART INSTITUTE
DATES: Jun. 25–Nov. 9, 2026
Self, Made: Fourteen Modern Artists from the Richard and Ellen Sandor Family Collection tells stories of self-invention in photography, drawing, and sculpture, most of them from artists working beyond the gallery and museum system that typically validates creative work. The exhibition includes nearly 40 works across photography, drawing, painting, and sculpture that tell stories of self-invention. Some of these works come from artists who studied fine arts, such as Cindy Sherman and Kara Walker, while other pieces are by makers from outside the art-school and art-market system, including William Edmondson, Lee Godie, John Waters and Joseph Yoakum.
This exhibition is drawn exclusively from the Richard and Ellen Sandor Family Collection. Ranging in date across the 20th and 21st centuries, the works reflect the egalitarian, broad-minded vision of the Sandors, who have been prolific collectors of modern and contemporary art since the late 1970s. The Sandor Family has gifted 42 of their works from this collection to the Art Institute
Self, Made: Fourteen Modern Artists from the Richard and Ellen Sandor Family Collection is curated by Matthew Witkovsky, Richard and Ellen Sandor Chair and Curator, Photography and Media, and vice president for strategic art initiatives.
GEORGE CLINTON, MOTHERSHIP – MARIANE IBRAHIM GALLERY
DATES: July 25 – September 5, 2026
Mothership Centering on the iconic spacecraft that in 1976 transformed Parliament-Funkadelic concerts into interstellar journeys, the exhibition coincides with the 50th anniversary of the Mothership: a visionary creation that, in Clinton’s words, took “the ’hood into outer space.” This will be George Clinton’s first solo exhibition with the Mariane Ibrahim gallery.
As ambitious as it was improbable, the Mothership – a silver, pyramid-shaped vessel that landed on-stage with Clinton himself as Dr. Funkenstein on board – captured the imagination of Parliament’s audiences by bringing psychedelic culture into the mainstream at a moment when the space race remained an ongoing cultural obsession.
Across the paintings, Clinton deploys a vivid palette of electric pinks, saturated blues, and radiant yellows that has become synonymous with the visual culture surrounding Parliament-Funkadelic and its Afrofuturist imagination. Suggestive of celestial atmospheres and synthetic light, these colors transform pictorial space into an environment of continual emergence. Together with the recurring form of the Mothership, they produce a visual language in which cosmic travel becomes synonymous to Clinton’s music and performances.
Mothership is organized by the Mariane Ibrahim gallery.
OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY
The Obama Presidential Center features over 28 commissioned art installations that encourage visitors to open their imaginations and reflect on their ability to bring change home. From the White House to the Obama Presidential Center, President and Mrs. Obama have used the arts as a tool to inspire, empower, and connect people from around the world. Pieces from artists Njideka Akunyili Crosby “The Obamas: Springing Forth,” the 83-foot-high abstract painted glass window by Julie Mehretu “Uprising of the Sun,” Richard Hunt “Book Bird,” Theaster Gates “To See What They Could See and American Vista,” Alison Saar “Torch Song,” Carrie Mae Weems “The Cool Blue Wind,” and Nick Cave and Marie Watt “This Land, Shared Sky” to name a few.
The artist commissions are curated by Virginia Shore, Shore Art Advisory LLC, Curator of the Obama Presidential Center Art Commissions. Dr. Crystal Moten is the Curator of Collections and Exhibitions at the Obama Presidential Center Museum.
POKÉMON FOSSIL MUSEUM
Pokémon Fossil Museummade its North American debut at the Field Museum, following its availability in Japan. Fans visiting the exhibition can expect to see Fossil Pokémon models like Tyrantrum and Archeops side by side with ancient lifeforms, including scientific casts of Field Museum dinosaurs like SUE the T. rex and the Chicago Archaeopteryx. Trainers of all ages are invited to visit and discover the incredible world of fossils both in the Pokémon world and in the real world.
In this special exhibition, you’ll immerse yourself in the worlds of Pokémon and natural history with models of fan-favorite Pokémon, real fossil excavation and preparation tools, and exhibition soundscapes. You’ll also be guided by illustrations of real-world, Field Museum scientists, interspersed throughout the exhibition.
IMAGES OF FAITH: : 3000 YEARS OF SPIRITUAL EXPRESSIONS IN MEXICO – NMMA
Images of Faith, this extraordinary exhibition brings together ancient artifacts and contemporary icons that trace three millennia of spiritual beliefs and sacred rituals in Mexico. From the profound cosmovisions of Mesoamerica through the arrival of 16th-century Roman Catholicism, to the living expressions of popular faith today, these works of art tell a powerful story of devotion. Together, they reveal sacred rituals and beliefs that transcend time—bearing witness to humanity’s enduring search for meaning and connection, and echoing themes of resilience, purpose, and, above all, hope. Images of Faith was the inaugural exhibition at the National Museum of Mexican Art in 1987. This new presentation revisits and expands that vision, embracing not only Catholic traditions but also the spiritual principles of ancient Mesoamerican societies and present-day Indigenous communities.
LONGER THAN THE SKY: ART OF THE OBAMA YEARS – LOGAN CENTER FOR THE ARTS
Longer Than the Sky: Art of the Obama Years charts a provisional history of art made during the years of the Obama presidency — a period marked as much by continuity as by change. Comprising nearly forty works by a multigenerational group of artists, it centers on artistic practices that gained relevance for the ways they engaged self-reflexively with their historical moment. Stylistically varied, these artworks have been assembled for the ways they offer distinct perspectives on the shared circumstances in which they were made. While some address specific political events, the majority evoke their political context more obliquely, highlighting a set of overlapping social, technological, and aesthetic concerns that shaped the art of this era.
PARIS IN BLACK – THE DUSABLE BLACK HISTORY MUSEUM
Paris in Black Internationalism and the Black Renaissance traces the profound journeys of Black artists, writers, performers, and intellectuals who found freedom, inspiration, and transformation in the in the liberating cultural and social environment of Paris. Be transported to the city of lights, where figures like Henry Ossawa Tanner, Josephine Baker, Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and James Baldwin lived and created in defiance of American racism.With over 100 objects, including masterpiece paintings and sculptures from The DuSable’s permanent collection, archival photographs, and multimedia elements, Paris in Black tells a global story of Black resilience and creativity.
HAYA ZAIDI UP AGAINST – KAVI GUPTA GALLERY
DATES: May 2-August 15, 2026
Haya Zaidi, a multidisciplinary artist based in Karachi, works at the convergence of Indo-Persian miniature painting, mixed media, and contemporary feminist discourse. Grounding her practice in the visual and literary lineages of South Asia, Zaidi examines how the brown female body becomes a contested site of inheritance, mythology, and resistance. Kavi Gupta is pleased to present Haya Zaidi’s Up Against, the artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States, marking a significant milestone in her practice.
Zaidi’s work interrogates the iconography of femininity and the systems that script its representation. Drawing from South Asian mythological frameworks and the codified language of Indo-Persian miniature traditions, she constructs new visual propositions for how the feminine may be claimed, embodied, and reimagined. Her compositions speak to questions of sovereignty and interior power, exploring how women create agency within, and in spite of, the structures that circumscribe them.
Kavi Gupta is pleased to present Haya Zaidi’s Up Against, the artist’s first solo exhibition in the United States, marking a significant milestone in her practice.
RAINBOW 100: A CELEBRATION OF SMILES
DATES: July 16-August 3, 2026
Rainbow Cone takes center stage, bringing its 100-year story to one of the city’s most immersive cultural destinations, The Museum of Ice Cream. The Original Rainbow Cone’s 100th anniversary collaboration with Museum of Ice Cream Chicago is a colorful, immersive celebration of Chicago’s most iconic cone and its iconic five-flavor treat featuring chocolate, strawberry, Palmer House, pistachio, and orange sherbet. This one-of-a-kind installation honoring 100 years of Rainbow Cone memories, magic, and unmistakable five-flavor joy. The immersive exhibition will then be open to the public at Museum of Ice Cream Chicago through August 3.
a creature who is aware of joy and despair and everything in between – Co-Prosperity Gallery
Katharine Joy Houpt conjures Chicago Imagists in the anthropomorphic form of a 30 foot quilted creature in the windows of Co-Propsperity Sphere, in a creature who is aware of joy and despair and everything in between. Houpt’s first solo show sprawls the windows of the gallery, involving the building itself in the body of work’s cosmic darkness and delight. In this solo show, artist Katharine Joy Houpt engages in a slow, expressive fiber arts process to create an absurdly large anthropomorphic creature and its dreams and memories, split into ten quilted panels. The work examines embodiment of subjectivity within an environment, a peek into a creature’s inner world within outer world constraints.
ORANGE & BLACK COLLECTION- THE DISTELHEIM GALLERY
Black & Orangethe use of it, can be traced back thousands of years to ancient Egypt, where orange mineral pigments were used not only decoratively in tomb paintings but symbolically. The Distelheim Gallery is launching with an emotional and intense Cornett collection called Orange & Black, with subsequent collections, The Blue Room and The American Spirit Collection, to be featured in the coming months. “Orange & Black is vibrant abstract art that delves into the dynamic interplay between these contrasting colors.”
The Distelheim Gallery™, is a multi-dimensional, digital-first platform that is reviving and building upon the legacy of Dr. Irving Distelheim and his famed Distelheim Galleries, which he established on Chicago’s Oak Street in the early 1960s. The new Distelheim Gallery follows a story-centric, single-artist model, featuring large-format, mixed media works by artist and creative strategist Jefferey Cornett. Customers can learn about and purchase art on the compelling digital platform, and can also make an appointment to visit the new gallery space and Cornett’s studio, located in the East Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago.
All Distelheim Gallery pieces are exclusive Cornett creations and are thoughtfully curated with a narrative approach.
KENZI SHIOKAVA – MCA CHICAGO
DATES: Jun 26, 2026–Jan 30, 2027
For 50 years, Kenzi Shiokava’s (1904–1997) sculptural practice revolved around a central preoccupation: the recovery and transformation of castoff materials. His studio—a cavernous warehouse in Compton and an artwork in and of itself—brimmed with items salvaged from secondhand stores, the street, and the shore: action figures, telephone poles, and driftwood among them, all awaiting reincarnation as wooden totems and assemblage. Through intuitive acts of carving and arranging, the artist unearthed what he described as the “inner movement” of everyday objects, revealing their spiritual vitality and reinvigorating them with life.
Kenzi Shiokava is the artist’s first solo museum exhibition, gathering over 50 sculptures made across five decades, from the 1970s to the 2010s. The presentation is anchored by two core bodies of work: abstract totems meticulously carved from wood and enigmatic box installations animated by toys, dried plants, and stones.
Kenzi Shiokava is organized by Nolan Jimbo, Assistant Curator.
WILLEM DE KOONING “DRAWING” – ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO
DATES: June 14–September 20, 2026
Willem de Kooning (1904–1997) was one of the most celebrated and prolific draftsmen of the 20th century.This major gathering of works from across the globe reveals how the act of drawing was foundational to de Kooning’s entire artistic process and production—his paintings, sculptures, and printmaking, as well as his drawings—and showcases the totality of his graphic production, from his earliest existing works to his late calligraphic paintings.Willem de Kooning Drawing features more than 200 artworks from public and private collections around the world. The exhibition presents iconic works like the Art Institute’s Excavation and the Museum of Modern Art’s Woman I (1950–52), as well as significant and lesser-known drawings, paintings, sculptures, and prints
Willem de Kooning Drawing is the first exhibition to examine the expansive drawing practice of this renowned American artist who immigrated to New York from the Netherlands at the age of 22.
Willem de Kooning Drawing is organized by the Art Institute of Chicago, in collaboration with the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, and in consultation with The Willem de Kooning Foundation. The exhibition’s curatorial team includes the Art Institute of Chicago’s Kevin Salatino, Chair and Anne Vogt Fuller and Marion Titus Searle Curator, Prints and Drawings; Mel Becker Solomon, associate research curator, Prints and Drawings; and Charlotte Healy, senior research associate, Prints and Drawings, with contributions from Margaret Holben Ellis, exhibition paper conservator.
Featured image: Courtesy MCA Chicago
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