CGN's 2025 Culture List
By CGN Staff
Events and exhibitions happening in galleries and museums are added to chicagogallerynews.com throughout the year. Highlights for 2025 include everything from museum blockbusters to under-the-radar shows and international art fairs – something everywhere for everyone. There are also shows yet to be announced in the galleries listed in CGN.
To stay up to date with galleries and museums in 2025 subscribe to CGN or purchase a copy of the print edition of our annual Arts Guide.
Wafaa Bilal (b. 1966, Najaf, Iraq), Domestic Tension, 2007. © Wafaa Bilal. Courtesy of the artist.
Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me
Wafaa Bilal: Indulge Me is the first major survey of internationally renowned artist Wafaa Bilal. Working in performance, sculpture, and with online and interactive technologies, Bilal’s interdisciplinary practice investigates the dynamic between international and interpersonal politics while highlighting the tension between his home in the United States, which he has deemed the “comfort zone,” and the “conflict zone” of Iraq.
Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA)
Feb 1–Oct 19, 2025 • mcachicago.org
Lucia Koch, 3X3 Pots, 2024. IN/SITU installation view: In the Country of Last Things at EXPO CHICAGO 2024. Courtesy the artist and Nara Roseler, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, New York. Photo: Evan Jenkins.
EXPO CHICAGO
Under the vaulted architecture of Navy Pier’s Festival Hall, the exposition will bring together global galleries and unrivaled programming, alongside unforgettable events throughout the city during EXPO ART WEEK. The 12th anniversary of EXPO CHICAGO returns in April.
Navy Pier
April 24–27, 2025 • expochicago.com
Hokusai and ukiyo-e: The Floating World
This exhibition showcases 50 artworks by the masters of Japan’s Edo period (1603-1868). Works by acclaimed artists such as Hokusai and Hiroshige are a window into the life during this time when the city of Edo (present-day Tokyo) thrived as the center of Japan’s economy and culture.
Cleve Carney Museum of Art
Summer 2025 • theccma.org
Gustave Caillebotte, Paris Street; Rainy Day, 1877, The Art Institute of Chicago, Charles H. and Mary F. Worcester Collection
Gustave Caillebotte: Painting His World
At a time when modernity was synonymous with fashionable young women and new forms of entertainment, Caillebotte focused instead on a more intimate and individualized sphere: his family and friends, fellow sportsmen and neighbors. This exhibition, which opened at the Musée d’Orsay in Paris in October 2024, includes more than 120 works—paintings, works on paper, photographs, and other ephemera from throughout Caillebotte’s career.
Art Institute of Chicago
June 29–Oct 5, 2025
The Door County Contemporary Art Fair
A new art fair in the region will take place in June in Door County, Wisconsin. DCC will include several Chicago galleries, Wisconsin artists, as well as their Midwestern peers. The three-day program will introduce art to art enthusiasts in an event yet unseen in Wisconsin. Born from the desire to address a lack of contemporary art in an otherwise culturally enriched and dynamic destination, it will also feature a wealth of site-specific art works and projects, plenty of Wisconsin-centric food and drink, and curated events and art-related projects.
Peninsula School of Art in Fish Creek, Wisconsin
June 6–9, 2025 • doorcountycontemporary.com
Mapping Outside the Lines
For centuries, mapmakers have experimented with the placement, density, and purpose of lines like these to make maps seem simple and objective. Just follow this line and you’ll have everything you need—or so the map leads you to believe. These lines are never as straightforward as they seem. This exhibition follows lines on maps to their extremes. By exploring how maps use lines to make the world legible, the exhibition will bring you through examples of mapmakers and artists who have created, bent, and broken these linear rules.
Sept 11, 2025–Jan 3, 2026
Newberry Library • newberry.org
100 Links: Architecture and Land, in and out of the Americas, 2023, The Buell Center and AD—WO, Columbia University. Photo by Cory Dewald
Chicago Architectural Biennial: CAB 6
The Chicago Architecture Biennial’s public programs explore issues at the heart of urban experience and architectural practice. These events invite dialogue about how we engage the world we live in. More than 100 organizations across Chicago partner with the Biennial, serving as host venues and producing independent exhibitions and programs throughout the neighborhoods. This year’s biennial is CAB 6: Shift: Architecture in Times of Radical Change
Taking place city-wide and at the Chicago Cultural Center (78 E. Washington Blvd.)
Sept 12, 2025–Feb 28, 2026 • chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org
Intuit is reopening
Intuit, the organization founded in 1991 to promote Outsider art, has been undergoing an extensive renovation for the past couple years. This spring they will reopen and also debut a new name, the Intuit Art Museum. In the meantime they are still hosting programs online.
756 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Chicago, IL 60642
