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Chicago Seen and Heard

Exhibition Audio Tours

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Chicago has always had a multifaceted and complex identity—perhaps never more so than in the decades between 1950 and 1980, as urban renewal projects, the civil rights movement, and an increasingly influential art and music scene transformed the city. A new exhibition—drawn primarily from the museum’s collection—takes a look at this turbulent and transformative period through the work of photographers and filmmakers who focused their lenses on the city’s many distinct neighborhoods and communities, capturing them with immense pride, defiance, and nuance.

For the audio tour that accompanies Never a Lovely So Real: Photography and Film in Chicago, 1950–1980, we had the unique opportunity to interview several of the exhibition’s artists as well as other figures associated with the works on view. Below you’ll find a few samples of the tour featuring photographers who worked in the South Side in the mid-1960s through the 1970s—pivotal years coinciding with the rise of the Black Arts Movement, during which artists explored black history and celebrated black identity, aesthetics, and beauty.

Never A Lovely 3
University of Islam School Assembly, 1966

Ozier Muhammad
Never A Lovely 2
Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka) at Dunbar High School, 1967

Darryl Cowherd
Never A Lovely 1
Untitled (Gwendolyn Brooks Speaking at the Wall), 1967

Roy Lewis

Find the full audio tour on the Art Institute Official Mobile App, as well as on the audio guides available at the museum.

Never a Lovely So Real: Photography and Film in Chicago, 1950–1980 runs May 12–October 28, 2018.

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