If you’re looking for something artsy to do this holiday season, Art Design Chicago has a cultural tour laid out for those following the guide to the good life. You don’t have to be an art fan to appreciate the variety of exhibitions and events to be experienced and appreciated by young and young-at-heart.
There’s something for everyone in neighborhoods across the city. From community-driven art installations to exhibitions exploring diverse cultures and histories, Art Design Chicago is the perfect way to experience the city’s artistic richness while getting in the festive spirit.
Eva Silverman is the American Art’s Project Director for Art Design Chicago. With an MA in art history from the University of Chicago, she says, “Working with Art Design Chicago is a culmination of my degree, plus my many years’ experience, and my passion for showcasing black and brown artists. It’s like a dream job.”
Prior to joining the Terra Foundation, Eva was the Associate Director of Arts Alliance Illinois. Previously, she was the Director of Arts & Community Engagement for the Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture (COTC), where she oversaw the development and implementation of programs and resources for the local arts community. Before joining COTC, she was the Director of Collaborative Programs for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. “The Terra Foundation and I are a match made in heaven,” she tells us.
The vision of the Terra Foundation is “to illuminate diverse histories, inspire present connections, and create equitable futures.”
It’s mission, in partnership with organizations and individuals locally and globally, is to foster intercultural dialogues and encourage transformative practices to expand narratives of American art.
For the last ten years, the Terra Foundation’s grantee for Chicago has been Art Design Chicago. Art Design Chicago is a special series of exhibitions that shines a spotlight on the work of Black, Brown, Asian, and Native artists—both past and present. Their works not only celebrate Chicago’s dynamic artistic communities but also engage with the contemporary challenges they face.
Through this multi-year project, Art Design Chicago has provided 124 grants in collaboration with eighty cultural organizations across the city, ensuring that art by underrepresented groups is celebrated as a vital part of the American artistic landscape. Ms. Silverman explains that “Each of the eighty organizations had an opportunity to apply for grant funds, and they decided on what the exhibition would be about. They decided to tell stories that have not been told or tell them in a new way. We brought those organizations together to share information, best practices, bringing new people and new audiences. In addition to what’s out there for the public, the organizations worked together to bring what they do collectively.”
There are three exhibitions on the south side of Chicago, which are as follows:
Robert Earl Paige: Give the Drummer Some!
Smart Museum of Art
Ends July 31, 2025
“For the Smart Museum’s 50th anniversary, South Side artist Robert Earl Paige creates a multi-part pattern-based installation and sprawling public art project that invites communities into a collective experience of space.
Give the Drummer Some! is rooted in Paige’s decades-long practice as an interdisciplinary artist, designer, and educator who bridges cultural boundaries. A lifelong resident of the Woodlawn neighborhood just south of the University of Chicago campus, he merges African aesthetics, modernist painting, and Bauhaus architecture in creations that blur the line between fine art and craft. Paige’s infectious rhythm of repeating motifs originates as a complete environment in the Smart’s lobby, where the artist layers gold-trimmed fabrics and Chicago-inspired designs over the building’s walls, floors, and furniture.
The project then extends outward, wrapping around the exterior of the museum and ultimately out across the UChicago’s historic Hyde Park campus and beyond.
Through Paige’s iconic and wildly patterned designs, Give the Drummer Some! makes the Smart’s building more porous and inviting and fosters a shared sense of belonging between campus, neighborhood, and global communities.
Theaster Gates: When Clouds Roll Away: Reflection and Restoration from the Johnson Archives
Stony Island Arts Bank
Ends March 16, 2024
Over the last nine years, artist Theaster Gates has been the steward of the Johnson Publishing Company’s ephemera, periodicals, furniture, inventory, and architectural fragments originally housed at the Johnson Publishing Company building on Michigan Avenue in Chicago. The devices for the interrogation of these objects and their permission to be public have created one of the most fascinating mazes of artistic repertoire among contemporary practices. For his Art Design Chicago exhibition, Gates uses his most noted architectural site, The Stony Island Arts Bank, as a space for deep contemplation on the life of Black objects and Black archives. Pulling from his personal archive of Johnson’s architectural fittings and furniture, Gates makes available newly restored objects, everyday office furniture, and works of art owned by John H. Johnson to give insight into the publisher’s artistic practice and one of the most formidable Black companies to have ever existed—the Johnson Publishing Company.
Through this exhibition, the artist hopes to show the responsibility of and urgency for cultural leaders to preserve and create continued access to our cultural treasures. Gates’ reflections on the Johnson legacy are a simple demonstration of what archival and collective care might look like. The Stony Island Arts Bank, the cornerstone of Theaster Gates’s Rebuild Foundation, is temporarily turned to Johnson as a portal for public memory, new conceptual questions, and the archive as a launching pad for new artistic production.
RESOURCE: Art and Resourcefulness in Black Chicago
South Side Community Art Center
Ends December 21, 2024
Since the time of Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, Chicago’s Black culture has been defined by its creative ethos of resourcefulness. Thinking ecologically before there was an environmental movement, generations of Black artists have worked their alchemy to transform simple materials and castoff objects into beautiful art, breathe life into the city’s forgotten corners, and reinvent and reclaim ancestral traditions. The South Side Community Art Center’s ReSOURCE exhibition brings together 40 artists and 70 artworks (including 4 projects commissioned for the exhibition) in partnership with local community gardens and urban farms to tell this story.
These innovative exhibitions show us that art is not limited to drawings and paintings, nor does one have to go to another part of the city to enjoy true culture. This holiday season treat yourself and your loved ones to the cultural richness of Chicago’s south side.
