Free with admission

Join Curatorial Assistant Jack Schneider for an in-depth tour of Direct Message: Art, Language, and Power on the museum’s fourth floor. Direct Message: Art, Language, and Power is a selective survey of artists working with language as a means of revealing power structures inherent to mass media and public discourse.

Inspired by the MCA collection, the works in Direct Message: Art, Language, and Power highlight the ways artists use text in visual art beginning in the 1960s, providing a useful lens for understanding the ways language and media operate today. Their work informs subsequent generations of artists featured in this exhibition who conceal, annotate, and remix conventional modes of communication, challenging the standards that structure language and, by extension, power.

Image: Lorna Simpson, Necklines, 1989. Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, gift from The Howard and Donna Stone Collection. © 1989 Lorna Simpson. Photo: Nathan Keay, © MCA Chicago