Exhibition History

In this exhibition, the Ambiguous Standards Institute, founded by architect Cansu Cürgen and designer Avşar Gürpınar, investigates how our lives are inevitably shaped and impacted by standards—whether for time, measurements, building components, food, or health care.

The prints designed by Japanese artist Itō Shinsui (1898–1972) feature traditional subjects, bold colors, and realism that went beyond 19th-century norms, a combination that achieved remarkable commercial success.

Fourteen works by the acclaimed Chinese artist dissolve and even transcend distinctions between the traditional and the innovative. 

Each year, members of the Society for Contemporary Art’s acquisition committee carefully select a group of contemporary works to consider purchasing and giving to the Art Institute for its permanent collection. This year’s selection focuses on five artists who are based in Chicago or have strong ties to the city: Candida Alvarez, Torkwase Dyson, Tony Lewis, Julia Phillips, and Catherine Sullivan. The works are installed in various locations in the museum’s galleries of contemporary art and are identified with a special label.

In 1962 at the age of 71, Joseph E. Yoakum (1891–1972) reported having a dream that inspired him to draw. Thereafter the retired veteran began a daily practice and over the next 10 years produced some 2,000 works. This exhibition follows the shifting progression of Yoakum’s work, testifying to the rich imagination of an exceptional American artist as well as to the remarkable circumstances that led to his lasting legacy.

Mimi Cherono Ng’ok has worked for more than a decade to understand how natural environments, botanical cultures, and human subjects coexist and evolve together. For her first solo museum exhibition in the United States, Cherono Ng’ok presents photographs and a film made across Africa, the Caribbean, and South America, all as part of an ongoing inquiry into the rich and diverse botanical cultures of the tropics.

Summer 2021 brings Kehinde Wiley’s painting of President Barack Obama and Amy Sherald’s portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama to our galleries.

This selection of photographs presents a variety of perspectives on the complex interactions between humans and the environment. 

This exhibition of works from the museum’s collection showcases a spectacular moment of color in landscapes.

If only this mountain between us could be ground to dust—the first exhibition by Palestinian artists Basel Abbas and Ruanne Abou-Rahme in a major US museum—combines a site-specific installation of the artists’ ongoing multimedia projects with a commissioned work created specifically for the Art Institute of Chicago.

For more than 40 years, American artist Barbara Kruger has paired images and provocative text to expose the power dynamics of identity, desire, and consumerism. With this exhibition, she takes over the Art Institute—her immersive installations transcend the traditional exhibition space, extending into multiple spaces throughout the museum and the city beyond.

The artist’s first exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago features massive and gravity-defying sculptures that transform defunct playground equipment into something entirely new. 

Acclaimed photographer André Kertész honed his eye as a Hungarian émigré in Paris, where he made some of his most enduring photographs on postcard paper.

In Is the Museum a Battlefield? Hito Steyerl ponders the parallels between conflict zones and spaces where art is displayed. 

Onchi Kōshirō eschewed the ukiyo-e method to conceive, carve, and print his own works as part of Japan’s creative print movement.

Cascades of white pigment rhythmically stream across the panels of a pair of folding screens. Under a combination of white light and UV lighting, the works evocatively express the force and motion of falling water. These enchanting painted screens are the work and a gift of Senju (born 1958), a contemporary proponent of Nihonga, traditional Japanese painting. Known for his signature Waterfall works, Senju created the panels on view at the Art Institute specifically for the museum’s Gallery 109, the space designed by architect Andō Tadao.

The Art Institute’s spectacular 18th-century Neapolitan crèche returns once again this holiday season. This crèche, or Nativity scene, tells the story of Jesus Christ’s birth using more than 200 painted terracotta figures staged in an elaborate environment inspired by 18th-century Naples.

This exhibition devoted to “New York’s most famous unknown artist” focuses on Johnson’s collaborations with friends and correspondents as his most consistent means of self-reinvention.

Beginning in the early 1970s, a handful of British and American photo-driven alternative magazines came on the scene. The Face, i-D, Rags, Out/Look, and other new publications amplified marginalized voices, especially those of queer makers and makers of color, and made room for those makers to question who and what was accepted as mainstream. This exhibition brings together over 130 magazines as well as photographs and time-based media works that evidence how these publications challenged mainstream definitions of culture and belonging.