SAIC Galleries is a vibrant, public art space that features the boundary-pushing work of emerging and established contemporary artists and designers.

Plan your visit

Both installations at SAIC can be experienced while outside. No appointments are necessary. 

Alfredo Jaar: This Is Not America (A Logo for America)
July 15, 2021–January 29, 2022
SAIC Galleries, 33 E. Washington Street

As part of Toward Common Cause, one of Alfredo Jaar’s better-known works, This Is Not America (A Logo for America) (1987/2014/2016), will be presented at the new SAIC Galleries space in the Loop. Visible from the street, the project features a sequence of projections which were originally displayed on a light board in Times Square, New York. While this project was first realized in 1987, in recent years it has been recreated in New York (2014) and London (2016).

Rick Lowe: Black Wall Street Journey
July 15–October 1, 2021
SAIC Sharp Building, 37 S. Wabash Avenue

Broadcasting from SAIC’s Sharp Building is the Black Wall Street Journal, a component of Rick Lowe’s broader project Black Wall Street Journey. Through a series of informative vignettes and a marquee scroll of data, texts and quotes, this video stream illustrates the journey of Black wealth, entrepreneurship, and business ownership in Chicago and beyond. It builds on the connection between Chicago and Tulsa, home to the prosperous neighborhood known as Black Wall Street and target of the 1921 race massacre which resulted in the killing of over 300 Black Tulsans and sending over 10,000 looking for refuge. Black Wall Street Journal’s goal is to highlight the innovative minds and entities that have made Chicago a hub of Black prosperity using public art to share information about Black wealth with the general public.

The Black Wall Street Journal is presented alongside the Black Wall Street Journey poster series produced by Natalie Moore in collaboration with Amanda Williams.

Other initiatives

In fall 2021, the Visiting Artist Program at SAIC—a public forum that features today’s most influential practitioners and thinkers—will host Toward Common Cause artists Mark Brandford and Julie Mehretu in a virtual conversation.

About

With a fine arts graduate program ranked number two in the nation by U.S. News and World Report, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) has been a leader in educating the world’s most influential artists, designers, and scholars for more than 150 years. Opened in October 2020, SAIC Galleries is a vibrant new public art space that features the boundary-pushing work of emerging and established contemporary artists and designers. Located at the corner of Washington and Wabash, SAIC Galleries is part of a four-story, 62,000 square-foot space with 26,000 square feet of public galleries, 60 individual studios for SAIC’s graduate students, three critique spaces, offices, and a student lounge and work area.