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Reimagining What’s Possible

A collage of photos from across Toward Common Cause

John Palfrey, President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, sits down to discuss the development, scope, and impact of Toward Common Cause.

Building Black Wealth in Chicago and Beyond

The words Black Wall Street Journey overlaid on a satellite map of a city block

In recognition of the Tulsa Race Massacre’s centennial anniversary, Black business and cultural leaders came together to discuss the complexities behind building up Black communities. It’s been a century since the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, when hundreds of Black people were killed and the thriving business district of Greenwood—the city’s “Black Wall Street”—was nearly destroyed. […]

A West Side Itinerary

A shadow box altar with a photographic backdrop of girls at a religious ceremony

Your guide to exhibitions on the West Side with Toward Common Cause Spend an afternoon exploring exhibitions that are rooted in the multiple histories of life on the West Side of Chicago. These installations document community collaborations, rituals and dreams, and illuminate the impact of Latinx heritage in Chicago. Hours of operation and reservation policies […]

“Art is Always Around Us”: The Cultural Stewardship of BBF Family Services

A gold frieze depicting images from the Bud Billiken parade and images of an eclipse and the moon

A conversation with Joseph Kellman Family Foundation art advisor Clinee Hedspeth In celebration of Kerry James Marshall’s Untitled (Circulation) on view at BBF Family Services as part of the ongoing Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40, we spoke with Kellman Family Foundation art advisor Clinee Hedspeth about the […]

Loteria

A series of colored rectangles in the style of loteria cards

Inspired by interactions and collaborations with Toward Common Cause artists, UChicago third-year undergraduate student and Smart Museum intern Sarahi Rincon Molina creatively and critically reflects on space and identity through a Loteria artwork.

Thinking Toward a Relational Future

A brightly colored quilted collage repeats the words STAND YOUR GROUND

Building upon the central themes of Toward Common Cause, the symposium Relational Futures invites us to question: for whom have environments been protected, conserved, or honored? Program co-organizers Teresa Montoya and Rose Miron discuss their approach to centering Native voices and designing a program for scholarly and general audiences.

A South Side Itinerary

Your weekend on the South Side with Toward Common Cause Toward Common Cause is a collaborative effort that offers the opportunity to spend an afternoon—or a whole weekend—visiting a combination of engaging group and solo exhibitions across the South Side of Chicago. Choose a day, explore one of the project’s main themes, and reflect on […]

An Invitation to Engage Our Community

A person lifts a baby into the air, surrounded by the hand-written message: I will lift you up, once, twice, and many more times

Toward Common Cause offers an opportunity to come together “to learn about and engage in meaningful dialogue about the legacies and inequalities that mold our shared spaces,” writes Juan Pablo Azuero-Dajud.

Artist Feature: Mel Chin and A Bill for IL

Mel Chin speaks to a group of people during a gallery tour.

The Toward Common Cause projects of artist-MacArthur Fellow Mel Chin are lively entities in constant states of transformation that challenge traditional museum and artistic practice.

From the Archive: Hamza Walker on Kara Walker

The artist stands on a chair to make a large chalk drawing on black paper

Kara Walker’s installation, 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, now on display at the DuSable Museum of African American History as part of Toward Common Cause was initially conceived for the Renaissance […]

Safehouse Temple Door

A metal bank vault hangs over the doorway of a church

Newly commissioned public artwork Safehouse Temple Door presented at the Civic Arts Church in Chicago, in a collaboration between MacArthur Fellow Mel Chin and the Smart Museum of Art, Sweet Water Foundation, S.O.U.R.C.E. Studio, and UNC Asheville STEAM Studio.

Beading for Boneta

A series of paintings hang behind a glass display case

The juxtaposition of objects across geographical, temporal, and cultural boundaries is at the crux of Sweet Bitter Love, Choctaw and Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson’s first institutional exhibition in Chicago.

It Remains to Be Seen

A painting of two overlapping reclining figures

In an essay, curator Abigail Winograd reflects upon how An-My Lê and Shahzia Sikander are connected by an impulse to see America, to see oneself in America, and to see America seeing itself.

What’s on this Spring

Three exhibitions marking the 40th anniversary of the MacArthur Fellows Program open across Chicago in Spring 2021, ushering in the first wave of projects presented in conjunction with Toward Common Cause.

Toward Common Cause

Toward Common Cause seeks to explore the role art can play in society, to engage the history, geography, and citizens of the city of Chicago, and it is predicated on the belief that art is a vital social resource. Curatorial statement from Abigail Winograd.

Reimagining What’s Possible

A collage of photos from across Toward Common Cause
Clockwise from top: Guests at the opening of Toward Common Cause at Stony Island Arts Bank; Installation view of work by Njideka Akunyili Crosby at the National Public Housing Museum; Rick Lowe at the opening of Black Wall Street Journey at Urban Juncture; Work by Wendy Ewald in collaboration with youth from Centro Romero, at Weinberg/Newton Gallery.
Photo by Nancy Wong; Jonathan Loïc Rogers; Photos by Nicolette Stanton; and Evan Jenkins

John Palfrey, President of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, sits down to discuss the development, scope, and impact of Toward Common Cause.

Toward Different Versions of Our World: A conversation with Kate Lorenz

A grid of photographs displaying aerial vantages of the desert
Fazal Sheikh, Desert Bloom, 2011, 48 inkjet prints. Collection of Yale University Art Gallery, purchased with a gift from Jane P. Watkins, M.P.H. 1979. Installation view, Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40, Hyde Park Art Center, 2021.
Photo by Tom Van Eynde

Kate Lorenz, Executive Director of the Hyde Park Art Center, discusses how a trio of projects by MacArthur Fellows that engage with themes of environmental justice help broaden the conversation to put Chicago art in a national and global context.

Building Black Wealth in Chicago and Beyond

The words Black Wall Street Journey overlaid on a satellite map of a city block
Black Wall Street Journey

In recognition of the Tulsa Race Massacre’s centennial anniversary, Black business and cultural leaders came together to discuss the complexities behind building up Black communities. It’s been a century since the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, when hundreds of Black people were killed and the thriving business district of Greenwood—the city’s “Black Wall Street”—was nearly destroyed. […]

A West Side Itinerary

A shadow box altar with a photographic backdrop of girls at a religious ceremony
Installation view, Toward Common Cause at Weinberg/Newton Gallery, 2021 showing a shadowbox by Amalia Mesa-Bains titled Religion
Photo by Evan Jenkins, courtesy of Weinberg/Newton Gallery.

Your guide to exhibitions on the West Side with Toward Common Cause Spend an afternoon exploring exhibitions that are rooted in the multiple histories of life on the West Side of Chicago. These installations document community collaborations, rituals and dreams, and illuminate the impact of Latinx heritage in Chicago. Hours of operation and reservation policies […]

“For the Common Cause of This Nation”

Gallery installation showing a TV monitor on a wall covered with posters and a pair of chairs
Rick Lowe, Black Wall Street Journey, 2018–present, Multimedia installation. Installation view, Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40, Smart Museum of Art, The University of Chicago, 2021.
Photo by Michael Tropea

“What would Black Wall Street look like in the 21st century?” A conversation with artist, community organizer, and 2014 MacArthur Fellow Rick Lowe

“Art is Always Around Us”: The Cultural Stewardship of BBF Family Services

A gold frieze depicting images from the Bud Billiken parade and images of an eclipse and the moon
Installation view, Kerry James Marshall: Untitled (Circulation), at BBF Family Services, 2021.
Photo by Nathan Keay

A conversation with Joseph Kellman Family Foundation art advisor Clinee Hedspeth In celebration of Kerry James Marshall’s Untitled (Circulation) on view at BBF Family Services as part of the ongoing Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40, we spoke with Kellman Family Foundation art advisor Clinee Hedspeth about the […]

Loteria

A series of colored rectangles in the style of loteria cards
Loteria by Sarahi Rincon Molina

Designed in the style of a Loteria card, a Latin American board game, the artwork is composed of a series of colored rectangles. Each has a number in the upper left-hand corner, an image in the center composed of printed images and illustrations, and a caption along the lower border. The rectangles depict experiences, institutions, events, and other factors of the University of Chicago experience. From top left, these are, “El FGLI Student,” “El Homesick,” “El Mental Health,” “El Token Brown Kid,” “El Seasonal Depression,” “La Bureaucracy,” “El Cost of Attendance,” “La $1 Milkshake,” “El UCPD,” “El Seal,” “El Imposter Syndrome,” “La Free Expression,” “El Academia,” “La Gentrification,” “El Capitalist,” and “La Tradition.”

Inspired by interactions and collaborations with Toward Common Cause artists, UChicago third-year undergraduate student and Smart Museum intern Sarahi Rincon Molina creatively and critically reflects on space and identity through a Loteria artwork.

Thinking Toward a Relational Future

A brightly colored quilted collage repeats the words STAND YOUR GROUND
Jeffrey Gibson, STAND YOUR GROUND, 2019. Cotton and linen, digitally printed fabric, polyester thread, cotton batting, 87 1/2 x 68 in. (222.3 x 172.7 cm). Courtesy of the Artist and Kavi Gupta, Chicago, IL.

Building upon the central themes of Toward Common Cause, the symposium Relational Futures invites us to question: for whom have environments been protected, conserved, or honored? Program co-organizers Teresa Montoya and Rose Miron discuss their approach to centering Native voices and designing a program for scholarly and general audiences.

A South Side Itinerary

Installation view, Toward Common Cause, at Stony Island Arts Bank, 2021, featuring Whitfield Lovell’s Missoura.
Photo by Nancy Wong

Your weekend on the South Side with Toward Common Cause Toward Common Cause is a collaborative effort that offers the opportunity to spend an afternoon—or a whole weekend—visiting a combination of engaging group and solo exhibitions across the South Side of Chicago. Choose a day, explore one of the project’s main themes, and reflect on […]

An Invitation to Engage Our Community

A person lifts a baby into the air, surrounded by the hand-written message: I will lift you up, once, twice, and many more times
Zuli in collaboration with Wendy Ewald, I will lift you up, once, twice, and many more times, 2021, from Daily Life and Dreams in the Pandemic: A Project with the Centro Romero Youth Program.

With their back to the camera, a person raises a baby into the air. They are both wearing matching red flannel pants and long-sleeved white shirts. To their right, garland frames the doorway to a kitchen. Rising up and circling around the central figures is the hand-written text: I will lift you up, once, twice, and many more times.

Toward Common Cause offers an opportunity to come together “to learn about and engage in meaningful dialogue about the legacies and inequalities that mold our shared spaces,” writes Juan Pablo Azuero-Dajud.

Artist Feature: Mel Chin and A Bill for IL

Mel Chin speaks to a group of people during a gallery tour.
MacArthur Fellow Mel Chin at the opening of Toward Common Cause at the Smart Museum of Art.

An open guitar case bearing a green stencil that reads FUNDREDS is installed on a low platform in a gallery. Standing behind the installation, the artist Mel Chin, speaks to a semi-circle of people.

Photo by Spencer Bibbs

The Toward Common Cause projects of artist-MacArthur Fellow Mel Chin are lively entities in constant states of transformation that challenge traditional museum and artistic practice.

From the Archive: Hamza Walker on Kara Walker

The artist stands on a chair to make a large chalk drawing on black paper
Kara Walker installing 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, at the Renaissance Society, 1997.
Photo by Tom van Eynde

Kara Walker’s installation, 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, now on display at the DuSable Museum of African American History as part of Toward Common Cause was initially conceived for the Renaissance […]

Safehouse Temple Door

A metal bank vault hangs over the doorway of a church
Installation view, Mel Chin: Safehouse Temple Door, at Sweet Water Foundation’s Civic Arts Church, 2021
Photo by Ben Premeaux, courtesy S.O.U.R.C.E. Studio

Newly commissioned public artwork Safehouse Temple Door presented at the Civic Arts Church in Chicago, in a collaboration between MacArthur Fellow Mel Chin and the Smart Museum of Art, Sweet Water Foundation, S.O.U.R.C.E. Studio, and UNC Asheville STEAM Studio.

Beading for Boneta

A series of paintings hang behind a glass display case
Installation view, Sweet Bitter Love at the Newberry Library, 2021.
Photo by Anne Ryan

The juxtaposition of objects across geographical, temporal, and cultural boundaries is at the crux of Sweet Bitter Love, Choctaw and Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson’s first institutional exhibition in Chicago.

It Remains to Be Seen

A painting of two overlapping reclining figures
Shahzia Sikander, Kinship, 2019-2020, Ink and gouache on paper. Paper: 60 x 96 inches (152.4 x 243.8 cm), Framed: 65 5/8 x 99 1/4 x 2 1/4 inches (166.7 x 252.1 x 5.7 cm). © Shahzia Sikander.

A gouache painting in a white frame on a gallery wall depicts an abstracted, faceless figure lying flat with their head at the left of the paper, arms at their side, legs outstretched. They are surrounded by waves of blue brush strokes against an unpainted background. Overlapping and melding with this figure is a second, less defined figure in a similar pose, their head at the right side of the paper, arms at their side. Urdu scripts are written in layers over both of the figures.

Photo by Adam Reich, Courtesy of the artist and Sean Kelly, New York.

In an essay, curator Abigail Winograd reflects upon how An-My Lê and Shahzia Sikander are connected by an impulse to see America, to see oneself in America, and to see America seeing itself.

What’s on this Spring

Three exhibitions marking the 40th anniversary of the MacArthur Fellows Program open across Chicago in Spring 2021, ushering in the first wave of projects presented in conjunction with Toward Common Cause.

Gómez-Peña’s Mex Files: Audio Art and Strange Poetry from the US/Mexico Border

Portrait of Guillermo Gómez-Peña
Guillermo Gómez-Peña, courtesy of the artist.

A man sits upright at a table wearing a black hat, sunglasses, and an open black jacket with yellow shoulder pads exposing his chest with tattoos. A stack of white paper sits on the table along with a vase of flowers, an intricate ash tray with skulls, candles, and a plastic alien head labelled with the text “Alien Pops.” The room is red behind the seated figure, with artworks, photographs and carved items decorating the walls. A prominent neon sign that reads "La Nostalgia BAR” sits above the seated person.

Photo by Zen Cohen

A year-long series of experimental audio performances from Guillermo Gómez-Peña, a performance artist, writer, activist, and MacArthur Fellow.

Toward Common Cause

Toward Common Cause seeks to explore the role art can play in society, to engage the history, geography, and citizens of the city of Chicago, and it is predicated on the belief that art is a vital social resource. Curatorial statement from Abigail Winograd.

Chicago Fundred Initiative: A Bill for IL

A person creates their own unique Fundred
Fundred: Invest in a quest for a future free of lead poisoning

A close up shot of two hands drawing on a Fundred, artist Mel Chin's alternative currency template. The hands are drawings a the twitter logo, a sun with sunglasses, and the words "WASHINGTON D.C.

Photo by the Fundred Project

Using creativity to fight lead poisoning as part of Toward Common Cause.

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