2023 Early Culture Preview
By CGN Staff
Events and exhibitions happening in galleries and museums are added to CGN's calendar throughout the year. Highlights for 2023 include everything from museum blockbusters to under-the-radar gallery shows and international art fairs – something everywhere for everyone. There are also shows yet to be announced in the 100+ galleries listed in CGN.
• Salvador Dalí: The image disappears
Focusing on the pivotal decade of the 1930s, when Salvador Dalí emerged as the inventor of his own personal brand of Surrealism, this exhibition of 25 paintings, drawings, and surrealist objects considers Dalí’s work in light of two defining, if contradictory, impulses: an immense desire for visibility and the urge to disappear.
Feb 18–Jun 12, 2023
• Jessi Reaves: All possessive lusts dispelled
Reaves combines iconic modernist design with an irreverent aesthetic in sculpture that toys with functionality. Reaves often begins with found furniture, which she dismantles, converts, remakes, enhances, pads, and embellishes in ways that still allow the suggestion of physical contact or use. By breaking things open, she proposes that they be examined visually and in terms of their purpose in life. The exhibition at The Arts Club of Chicago centers on the work Personal Heat, 2021, a deconstructed étagère with accompanying video that explores themes of renovation and rebellion. The sculptural aspect features a pop punk aesthetic of hot pink animal stripes, as if Reaves had been locked in a room in her great aunt’s house with a can of paint, a saw, and some wood glue.
Feb 16–May 20
• EXPO CHICAGO Turns 10
The tenth anniversary of EXPO CHICAGO takes place this spring under the vaulted architecture of Navy Pier’s Festival Hall. The exposition will bring together global galleries and unrivaled programming, alongside unforgettable city-wide events during EXPO ART WEEK.
Navy Pier
April 13–16, 2023
• Shahryar Nashat – It's All Just Stories
“Nashat leads his viewers to an understanding of the mechanics of being human, but stops short of arrival; it is up to us to traverse (or revel in) that uneasy gap.” — Simon Castets and Elena Filipovic
Curated by Myriam Ben Salah.
May 6–Jul 2, 2023
Image courtesy of Shahryar Nashat
• Warhol
The Warhol Exhibition includes 94 works from Andy Warhol Portfolios: A Life in Pop/Works from the Bank of America Collection on loan through Bank of America’s Art in our Communities program, and over 11,000 sq. ft. of interactive experiences including a Biographical exhibit, Video installation, 150+ photos taken by Warhol, Children’s Print Factory, Studio 54 experience and a Central Park-inspired outdoor space.
June 3–Sept 10, 2023
• Hector Guimard: Art Nouveau to Modernism
This exhibition explores the life and work of Hector Guimard (1867-1942), the French architect and designer whose name is synonymous with the French Art Nouveau movement. Bringing together furniture and design objects including jewelry, metalwork, ceramics, drawings, and textiles from collections worldwide, this is the first major American museum exhibition devoted to Guimard since 1970.
Guimard is best known for his designs for the Paris Métro entrances, but the exhibition aims to explore lesser-known aspects of the designer’s life.
Jun 22–Jan 7, 2024
Image: Entrance to Abbesses, Paris Metro. Art Nouveau design by Hector Guimard. Steve Cadman © CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
• Ruth Duckworth Life As a Unity
This monographic exhibition—the first since a 2006 retrospective—makes use of art historical advances of the last several decades to examine Duckworth’s Chicago work in a new light. Duckworth referred to herself not as a potter or ceramicist, but as a sculptor with clay. The exhibition takes her at her word, foregrounding her sculptural production. Ruth Duckworth: Life as a Unity is part of Art Design Chicago, an initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art.
Fall 2023
Image: Ruth Duckworth looking at the maquette for Earth, Water, Sky at the Smart Museum of Art in 2005. Photo by Jim Newberry.
• Chicago Architectural Biennial
The Chicago Architecture Biennial (CAB) is dedicated to creating an international forum on architecture and urbanism. CAB’s signature program stands as North America’s largest international survey of contemporary architecture, taking place every two years at the Chicago Cultural Center and sites across the city. CAB programming throughout the year engages global audiences. The Chicago-based collective Floating Museum takes the helm as the artistic team of CAB 5.
Various locations
Opening Sept. 2023
Bob Thompson, Blue Ma Tribune Tower, 6a architects | © Chicago Architecture Biennial / Tom Harris, 2017
