
SPOTLIGHT | The Street, the Store, and the Silver Screen: Pop Art from the MCA Collection
The Street, the Store, and the Silver Screen: Pop Art from the MCA Collection Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago "Pop is everything art hasn't been for the last two decades. It's basically a U-turn back to a representational visual communication, moving at a break-away speed...Pop is a re-enlistment in the world...It is the American Dream, optimistic, generous and naïve." – Donald Judd When I think of Pop Art – a controversial and sometimes dismissed art movement – I can hone

REVIEW | The New Contemporary
The New Contemporary Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute is a collection of collections, each compelling on its own terms yet capable of telling richer, more extraordinary stories when brought into focused and compelling dialogue. This past December, they unveiled just such a conversation in the galleries of contemporary art. Featured among this revelatory exhibition are more than forty iconic works gifted to the museum by Chicago collectors Stefan Edlis and Gael Nees

SPOTLIGHT | Pop Art Design
Pop Art Design Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago When we talk about Pop Art, its often relegated to Warhol’s Soup Cans and Lichtenstein’s over-dramatic tableaus; but it reaches much farther than that. It’s spirit, inspired by culture, became a culture unto itself – entire collections of furniture, architectural statements, and objects of design blossomed from and within this phenomenal period. Pop Art Design, an exhibition organized by the Vitra Design Museum, one of the pr

IN THE STUDIO | Jessica Calderwood
From the powerful and powerless to the beautiful and absurd, artist Jessica Calderwood creates symbolic sculptures and jewelry that humorously and ironically address the very complex narratives of human life. At first glance, her works are handsomely seductive and I am compulsively drawn in by the voluminous and bulbous forms and her bold confident use of color. Upon closer examination, I find delicately cropped feminine features meticulously crafted and strategically place

REVIEW | Homegrown: The School of the Art Institute in the Permanent Collection
Homegrown: The School of the Art Institute in the Permanent Collection Art Institute of Chicago Given even just its close proximity, it is of no surprise that the Art Institute of Chicago holds a significant number of works in its collection by alumni from the very institution training artists across the street that shares part of its name: School of the Art Institute. It has been able to acquire so much of this work, in fact, that even this particular exhibition could not p