Opening Celebration
Join the Smart Museum of Art at the University of Chicago for the opening event of the Chicago-wide exhibition Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40. Combining a gallery walkthrough with remarks and performances from local artists, museum representatives, and community partners, the opening promises to be a joyful celebration of four decades of meaningful artistic work, dialogue, and exchange, and our partners and community coming together ‘toward common cause.’
Welcome video
On the South Side
Visit Toward Common Cause venues across the South Side and the city of Chicago, many of which will also be open on Saturday:
Toward Common Cause
Hyde Park Art Center
Saturday, July 17, 10:30 am–2:30 pm • Make a reservation to visit »
Kara Walker: Presenting Negro Scenes Drawn Upon My Passage through the South and Reconfigured for the Benefit of Enlightened Audiences Wherever Such May Be Found, By Myself, Missus K.E.B. Walker, Colored
DuSable Museum of African American History
Saturday, July 17, 11 am–4 pm • Make a reservation to visit »
Black Wall Street Journey: 51st Street Pop-Up Gallery Opening
Urban Juncture
Saturday, July 17, 12–4 pm • Learn more about this free event »
Carrie Mae Weems: A Land of Broken Dreams
Logan Center for the Arts, The University of Chicago
Saturday, July 17, 12–4 pm • RSVP for the opening reception »
Whitfield Lovell: The Spell Suite
South Side Community Art Center
Saturday, July 17, 12–4 pm • Make a reservation to visit »
Dawoud Bey: Portraits from Chicago (1993–2001)
Arts + Public Life
Saturday, July 17, 3:30–7 pm • Make a reservation to visit »
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I think what art can provide is an option that has not been considered before, and I think that's important because those options might be the liberating factor that is necessary to understand how to cope with what is going around us.
Being one of the most prominent Chinese artists on the global stage, Xu Bing is known for his attempts to deconstruct traditional art forms for new creations to explore the issues of common meaning. Extending the dimensions of contemporary Chinese art but centering on the values which human beings share, his works built up a…
All my work is a response to reality, to a human situation, a human context, a human tragedy.
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Fazal Sheikh seeks to restore face, voice, and agency to the world’s displaced peoples. His work is often beautiful—visually stunning—but beneath the aesthetic qualities of Sheikh’s work lies this deeper purpose of aiding refugees around the world in their ongoing struggle to secure basic tenets of human livelihood. Sheikh’s entire approach—his choice of subjects, his…
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If art for me is a platform from which to speak, but not tell you something, that’s good. If that’s a way I give you a platform from which to think and debate, that’s even better. Ultimately, art for me does not reside in the object: it resides in what is said about the object. All of my work, even the most formal work, has an underlying politics to it, but I don’t want to reveal my position.
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Electronic music has a rich tradition of sampling. A well-crafted techno track might contain countless sources to build up texture: a reworked breakbeat, a transposed chord progression, and sped-up vocals taken from another recording. Dance music artfully partakes in appropriation. The trace of one song becomes the dominant theme of another, and so on. That…
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