![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1760543124/iww4yml5opg4kl6x4ulu.jpg\")
Dirk Denison with a painting by Leasho Johnson
By GINNY VAN ALYEA
Dirk Denison has been a practicing architect for over 30 years. Originally from Detroit, Denison and his designs, both residential and commercial, are well known to many Chicagoans. Though his reputation is national, CGN readers are likely familiar with the gallery spaces he has constructed to showcase much of the city’s best art. A professor at the IIT College of Architecture and the Director of the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize, Denison also runs his own award-winning firm, Dirk Denison Architects, based in Chicago’s West Loop. I recently spoke with Denison about his art and design background, his connection to Chicago and what it’s like to design spaces for art as well as introduce his own clients to the world of art collecting.
CGN: Tell me where you grew up and how you were first introduced to art as well as architecture.
Dirk Denison: Well, I grew up around Detroit in a home that was filled with art as well as artists, so it’s always been a part of my life. My experience was enriched by going to Cranbrook for school in suburban Detroit, which has not only the world famous art academy, but also has an elementary and high school. I was fortunate to go through all the way, from nursery school through graduation. And actually both my parents went there as well. They met in high school. I left, of course with this great appreciation for design from a very holistic standpoint. If you have visited Cranbrook, the Saarinens* worked as a team, a family, and they designed the buildings and the furnishings and the tapestries, even the setting landscape that surrounds it. So, I arrived in Chicago with all of that not really consciously a part of my working reference, but it is certainly intuitively embedded in who I became as an architect.
*Note from Cranbrook: Saarinen House is Eliel Saarinen’s Art Deco masterwork and the jewel of Cranbrook’s architectural treasures. Designed in the late 1920s and located at the heart of Cranbrook Academy of Art, from 1930 through 1950 Saarinen House served as the home and studio of the Finnish-American designer Eliel Saarinen—Cranbrook’s first resident architect and the Art Academy’s first president and the head of the Architecture Department—and Loja Saarinen—the Academy’s first head of the Weaving Department and director of Studio Loja Saarinen.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1760543125/dqgsewppwmmgsd2ilsiz.jpg\")
Meeting room of Dirk Denison Architects, with works by Tadashi Kawamata, Ellsworth Kelly and Aron Gent.
CGN: It sounds like Detroit offered you so much inspiration. How did you come to Chicago?
DD: Chicago has been, for me, not only practice, but also teaching. I’m a professor at IIT, the College of Architecture, and also very involved with the Art Institute through the Society for Contemporary Art and through art, architecture and design departments. Early on at the MCA, there was something called the New Group, which was sort of my introduction to the cultural and collecting community in Chicago. Many of those collectors I met are still our closest friends.
I came to study architecture at IIT where I teach now. In the eighties there was a lot of fluctuation going on in the world of design, and IIT had a very, very strong program. So even though I had come from the University of Michigan–I studied there and then I went and did my Master’s at Harvard–I came back to Chicago because it has always been a city that had a real commitment to placemaking and to innovation and to thinking about what the next generation of architecture was going to be. It’s just a great place to work, and I’ve been fortunate to work all over the country. Chicago is a base that has allowed me that opportunity.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1760543125/txdo5yiil0cjie6vyaml.jpg\")
Bucktown residence. Chicago, IL. A renovation and addition whose material, form, and proportion follow those of the original postmodern structure, a sculptor’s studio designed by Harry Weese for his daughter and son-in-law; set back onto an unusual site, it maintains an existing, generous garden.
CGN: Where did you keep art in your mind while you were studying architecture and first becoming an architect?
DD: For me the whole richness of the creative world is part of thinking about place and space making–furniture, design, tapestries, all of the mediums, from painting to sculpture. I’ve always made spaces that are about creating opportunity for those other voices. It’s not just my voice. I’ve never espoused a Frank Lloyd Wright approach, where I design everything. I actually want there to be diversity and I want there to be other voices that I’m in conversation with, because that’s the way I live, and that’s the way I want my clients to make their space. I design for opportunity. With my clients, I can help them build a collection, but obviously many of them have collections before I work with them. They choose to work with me because they know I appreciate how art enriches your life. Sometimes we plan around very specific works of art. Sometimes we plan around very specific commissions working with particular artists. Other times it’s a sense that there will be a moment or a place that is going to be asking for a work of art.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1760543126/m6hwaggpwwgzzvgf9ioj.jpg\")
A team member works by a painting by Judy Ledgerwood
CGN: Do you personally have an art collection that is separate from what’s installed in your offices, or does your collection just exist where there is space?
DD: Well, it’s interesting. Our offices have been in the West Loop for 20 years, in this heavy timber building. The size of the space, the ceiling heights and the size of the walls was the first time that I had wall space this scale. My first painting before we even moved into the office was this quatrefoil painting by Judy Ledgerwood that I saw in her studio when I had took a client there to pick something out for their new home. I said, ‘Would you hold that for me? In the next year I’m going to be moving into new offices where I’ll have a wall finally big enough for an eight-foot square painting.’ It’s been somewhat of an opportunity for us, since the idea of having art in the office is that it’s how we design space, and I want my amazing creative team to work in that same environment. Many architects have photographs of their former projects and awards up on the wall. I said to myself, that’s not necessarily inspirational for the team that’s working on whatever they’re focused on. Why not have them learn and be inspired by these other creative voices? So that’s why there is art in the office.
We do switch the art out back and forth between home and work and [my partner] David’s studio as well. About a year ago we had a flood in our apartment, so we were forced to redo it. And as a result of that, we changed our whole philosophy at home, which is where we have just one work of art on each wall. And so as a result of that, we switched things out. We brought some of the bigger things from the office and took the smaller things out of the apartment. So it’s very fluid and we want to change things around. Nothing has a permanent place in how we live with it. The interesting thing is too, because of the artists, I’ve picked up on my parents’ philosophy that most of the artists in our collection are artists that we know, or as we get interested in them, we make a point of getting to know them. And that comes into not only our personal life and our friendships, but also into the office. So if you walked into my office now and talked to someone working there who’s fairly new out of school, they would know who Judy Ledgerwood is. They know there is a person behind the art that they work with.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1760543127/ruvycwmm6cvfg210ndac.jpg\")
Office view. On wall: Ad Reinhard’s ’Ten Screenprints’
CGN: Have you had challenging situations trying to blend works of art or a collection into a space you’re designing?
DD: Yes. I think the main thing about working on a collection–whether it’s clients who have never collected art before or long-time collectors–we’re working together. I spend this concerted amount of time in the beginning showing them different lines of thinking about medium or scale or geographic source for works of art. It may be a color story, or it may just be space specific, but it’s something I like them to get to the point of saying, okay, this is what will be fun for us to work on. Obviously I can do the primary selection of the art, but hopefully they’ll get the [collecting] bug because there are many more spaces that they’ll be able to place art in, so I hope they keep looking at art themselves and finding opportunities. Often I will create some specific spaces, like for a glass collection or a wall that’s about ceramics or something so that they can keep thinking as they travel and make their life intertwined with collecting art and living with art. But it’s also the story behind every work of art that is what makes us collectors.
I didn’t answer your question about the difficult works. I have had a couple of moments when someone bought something on a trip for something. One of my clients laughs about this fountain they bought in Morocco. We were starting the project and they were like, ‘We have this fountain. We’d love to find a spot for it!’ It didn’t end up making it into the home. We laugh about it now because we still have that thing sitting in the garage in a box, but they finally realized that there is some sort of line of thinking that does tie everything together. It’s really about things that speak well to each other. I just created a home with a wonderful Spencer Finch that was this very bright fluorescent light with amazing geometry. It was very eye catching, but it worked with the larger aesthetic of what they were doing.
CGN: It sounds like you try to spend a lot of time having those client conversations leading up to when you get started designing that maybe prevent some of those clashes.
DD: It’s another part of the process. I think when it is a couple, it’s important that they are both part of the decision and invested in it. It’s answering both their desires and needs for what we design in what they’ll live in. I feel the same thing with the art, where I really encourage them to make the decisions together and not buy one piece that one of them loves and the other one isn’t fond of. I’ve always approached that with my design work, that if you’re not in love with this option, let’s find the next thing that you are.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1760543128/kut7dx0lvnrarytocu7h.jpg\")
moniquemeloche gallery. Chicago, IL. The transformation of a hidden industrial building in Chicago’s West Town into a flexible space for encountering multiple forms of art.
CGN: With regard to commercial spaces, you have designed many gallery spaces in Chicago. What are your main considerations when approaching that kind of design need versus another office or residence?
DD: When you’re doing a space that’s specifically for art–a gallery or an exhibition space–you of course are not designing for particular works of art. Maybe a particular medium, but not specific works. In fact, you want it to be quite the opposite, quite flexible. My general attitude towards spaces for art is to create variety so that there is a sequence of experiences and spaces as well as the clarity of the wall, so that it doesn’t compete with what is going to be brought in, which you don’t know what it’s going to be in the future. So really simple detailing, ubiquitous materials, a flooring material, simple white walls, with maybe the exception of an entry moment or an office moment or something like that. And then lighting, of course, is the most important.
You want to always over-light a space for art and have lighting from more than one source so that you can both throw light on the whole space as well as on highlights. And then you make it all flexible. You make it all controllable so that you have that moment where you want to pin light for a particular work, or you want to flood for something that’s a wall mural. And I think that a lot of times you’ll see space that’s been overly dramatized and that’s fine for a particular effect, but if it’s not flexible, if it’s not dimmable or expandable, it’s too restricting.
I love to bring in natural light, but also moments where direct sunlight will work like a sundial to come in and make its way through a space is more flexible in a home or office than it is in a gallery.
CGN: What’s design moment stands out for you?
DD: Those are really difficult questions because my mind always goes to whatever we’re working on right now. My process tends to make things challenging. In other words, I’m looking for the constraints. I’m looking for the sort of requirements that will make the project better. And that’s fundamentally coming from how it’s going to be used, where it is, what we’re working with. I think what’s so important now is the clear attitude to working with what we have, using existing structures before tearing them down and building something new. More than half my work is restoration, preservation, adaptive reuse. The project that I did just two years ago at IIT, which is three towers that we made from staff into student housing, I actually won a competition at the school for a new 480 bed dorm. I convinced them we had these three legacy Mies van der Rohe designed buildings from the ‘50s on campus that we should do first before we build anything new. That ended up being very successful and has been an amazing opportunity for the students to live in these buildings. And economically, it was significantly less expensive to work with the existing structures than to build something new and of course, much more sustainable and much more environmental.
CGN: Would you like to add anything else?
DD: Even though I am often steering the boat or keeping it moving forward, I see design as having many voices, all of the expertises, all the vantage points. There isn’t just the the client, there are also the contractors, my amazing team of consultants and engineers, everybody at the office. The biggest challenge is listening to all that information, and then sorting out the priorities.
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Fall offers a full slate of exhibitions across galleries and museums throughout the Midwest. Behind the scenes, many people in the community are working tirelessly to support artists and bring fresh perspectives to the public. We spoke with five insiders about what excites them now and what they anticipate next.
The following preview is one of five conversations that appear in CGN's Fall 2026 magazine. To receive a copy of the print edition click here.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1789517637/noxz9olp47gfneafz8xg.jpg\")
“I’m thrilled to further expand my artistic and design practice by introducing other mediums into the mix. I’m looking forward to watching the seasons change and devoting a lot of time in the studio as well. Fall/winter is my favorite time to create new works.
I have an upcoming solo show with VSG Contemporary that I am excited about. The work will delve further into the topics of cultural mythology and how these tales and narratives have helped shape my worldview.
Also, it wouldn’t be right if I left out my excitement for this upcoming season of Chicago sports.”
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961823/s3lp0uull2s8mvd8funj.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Extension Cords, Glazed stoneware, chrome, Sizes vary 2021-present. Photo: Mikey Mosher
This interview is part of CGN's Fall 2026 issue. Purchase a copy or subscribe.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961824/mghrpnghxd9j9ko2dsjt.jpg\")
Andi Crist
BY ALISON REILLY
Andi Crist’s warm, engaging demeanor is evident in the first few minutes of our conversation. Generous with her time and forthcoming in her observations, she cares deeply about building relationships through her art making. Crist grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, devoured art classes, wrote songs and played music in high school, and moved to Chicago to study visual art at Columbia College. In 2024, she received her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She is a woodworker, sculptor, ceramicist, and conceptual artist, and she teaches at Illinois Institute of Technology. We discussed her multidisciplinary practice, her experience working as an art handler, preparator, and fabricator, and how she thinks about labor, creativity, and value in the art world.
CGN: You grew up in Birmingham, Alabama. How did that environment shape your point of view as an artist?
Andi Crist: That’s such a funny question. Nobody’s ever really asked.
CGN: Oh, really?
AC: Yeah, maybe because I never was super connected with the arts community down in Birmingham. I moved to Chicago in 2007, so it’s been 20 years since I lived in the South. I was definitely one of those art kids—one art credit was required in high school, and I graduated with like seven. I was surrounded by artists who had a big impact on me, because they were working artists. All my art teachers were trained in Alabama and then continued to teach and work in Alabama, which gave me this desire to try to expand my community outside of what I was familiar with.
CGN: Do you identify as a Chicagoan?
AC: My family still lives in Alabama, and I go back every year. I love being in Alabama. Maybe now being in Chicago for almost 20 years, I identify as a southerner living in the city. I carry on the social qualities of a friendly southern person [laughs].
CGN: You have a varied art practice—woodwork, ceramics, mold making. What drew you to those types of fabrication methods and that type of art making?
AC: My dad is a carpenter and a hobbyist woodworker, but his career was psychology, and my mom was a professor and an incredible craftswoman. I absorbed my mom’s model of creativity, which is to try a bunch of different things and not necessarily finish them but to try to learn as much as I can by just going for it. My practice over the years has become an exploration of conceptual elements of what makes art art and not just craft. Do you have to be a master craftsperson or a professional artist in order to make something that resonates with people?
I make a lot of work that references the mode of making and requires a variety of different media. I just finished teaching a ceramics production class where students learned how to produce molds, think about positives and negatives, and get into a level of production rather than just handicraft as a way to multiply their output.
I got into fabrication because I’ve always liked working with other artists. I have a background in theater and gallery work. I’m a voracious learner, and I like being able to share those skills with my community. Then I end up making work about that. It’s a self-feeding cycle.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961825/zzejqwibga5f5wk6einh.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Artist’s Ladder, 2023. Photo: Jeff Perlman
CGN: Thinking about your background as an art handler and preparator—how did you get to the point where you were making work about that experience?
AC: In 2010, right before I graduated from Columbia, I was living in a storefront in West Logan Square with my partner at the time. We started a gallery called Autotelic in the space and had to build it out using the worst tools with very minimal resources. Then we started curating shows there and that meant helping other artists figure out how to install their work in our unusual space. Eventually, I gained the reputation for knowing how to do that type of work. I started getting invited to work in museums and galleries.
The Holocaust Museum was the first museum I worked at, and as difficult as that subject matter is, that experience was really important to me because I was learning more about the larger world of gallery work. As an artist working as a preparator, you’re straddling both sides of that space. You’re really seeing how the sausage is made. You’re hearing all the conversations about artists, curators, the process of exhibition making. There is a lot of information you can gather about the economics of the art world by just being the person that has the know-how to touch and handle artwork. Eventually that started feeding into my art practice because I wanted to make work that was contributing to a conversation around art as a type of job. It fueled a methodology of seeing everything in the world as the result of a long line of processes that required effort and thoughtfulness by many hands.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961826/uv5bysb5fbne30gr5czh.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Fair Warning, 2025.
CGN: The title of your recent exhibition at the Cleve Carney Museum—Live, Laugh, Lo—sorry, not Live, Laugh, Love—Live, Laugh, Labor.
AC: [Laughs] That’s what everybody does.
CGN: I love the title—it’s perfect. You incorporate humor along with thoughtful critiques about labor and value in your work. What role does humor play? How does it help you connect with your audience?
AC: One of my biggest criticisms of art with a capital A is how easily it can be overly intellectualized. I think that’s why I end up making a lot of work that references things that already exist or have some kind of real purpose. It’s important to give people a foothold so there’s an obvious place to board that train of thought. As an artist—maybe this is me getting into a sweeping argument about what artists should be—but I personally believe in intellectual accessibility. Humor is a swift way to drop defenses and allow people to come in without feeling like they are not getting the joke or not understanding. I like to make work that can hold both of those things at the same time—it’s funny on the surface level, it’s kind of cheeky, but there’s also another way to look at it that is intellectually clever. There is a joy in the attempt to “get it”. Like the satisfaction of grasping how a crossword puzzle actually works.
It’s also so much a part of my personality. I take myself seriously as an artist, but my ego isn’t at the heart of it. It’s really something that I do because I love to make things, and I love to connect with other people. My parents raised me on puns, creating those language relationships between things and people and space. Understanding a joke is the same way that we understand art, and while neither of my parents would consider themselves artists, they taught me how to think about art.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961828/gnotyfijabr7e15kb6hm.jpg\")
Andi Crist, 69 Bananas
CGN: Your work, Artist’s Ladder, explores hierarchies, workplace cultures, and institutional values. What experiences shaped your reflections on these themes?
AC: The ladder piece distinctly represents the complicated relationship between front of house, back of house, and the hierarchy of labor. Who is the artist in those relationships? How much does another person’s knowledge and expertise contribute to the success of another artist?
There are enormous, industrialized art practices out there, warehouses full of people making things, and those people are also artists. When you make work that involves other people, it’s important to acknowledge their contributions. I’ve had complicated interactions with other artists who are like, ‘Hey, do you want to collaborate with me on this thing?’ but really they just want me to make their idea. I made Artist’s Ladder while I was in grad school at UIC, and it really represented my relationship with a lot of other artists, because I could be an actual support structure for them. Then it turned into this absurd physical thing. It’s extremely overbuilt with inlaid racing stripes made of exotic hardwood, and a butcher’s block-style plaid top. It’s not really like an FU as much as it is asking for acknowledgement of my skills and the essential support structures that exist.
CGN: I want to ask you about another piece, Five O’Clock Somewhere, a wool rug that resembles a children’s play mat. I work at a library, and it reminded me of rugs I see all the time. It’s a peaceful image of an office park with a large fountain surrounded by a parking lot. I’m curious why you chose a rug as the medium to depict that image.
AC: To me the heart of that joke was that it was a landscape. I wanted it to be physically traversable. And that was, I don’t want to say controversial, but it was something that I had to talk about a lot. The critique of that work was the fact that I didn’t want to hang it on the wall and turn it into a tapestry. I really wanted it to be a rug that people could walk on. When I showed that work at Chicago Artists Coalition for the New City Breakout Artists show. There was a lot of pushback about having it on the floor and allowing people to walk on it.
That, to me, was such an important conversation, because, in my mind, the fact that you could walk across it and traverse it was part of how I was thinking about the object. Rugs are utilitarian–they are floor coverings. When you make art that doesn’t do anything, you don’t get to participate in that part of the conversation.
I enjoy sparring around art like that. I am totally tickled by the pushback. The critique of display is exciting, and sorting through the politics of utilitarianism in art spaces is fun to me. And then—it was so crazy—we ended up showing it halfway on the wall and halfway on the ground.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961829/r1zylkwfw9rkw191skdl.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Five O’Clock Somewhere, on display at Live, Laugh, Labor: Thoughts on Usefulness and Other Myths at The Cleve Carney Museum of Art, 2025.
CGN: Oh, wow.
AC: I was like, this is the epitome of compromise! I had to build a structure so that it could hang that way safely.
CGN: I would say just put it on the ground if that’s what you want to do. It’s interesting that there are still very fixed ideas about the way that art should be displayed.
AC: That preparator part of it, that’s what I’m all about. I was having that conversation about what physically supports the work or what conceptually supports it in the way that it’s shown.
CGN: Have you always been a writer? How do your art and writing practices work together?
AC: I can’t say that I’m a writer, it’s probably the same way that it can feel weird to call yourself an artist. But I feel like I’ve always been relatively good at writing. The first time I ever did any kind of professional writing was contributing, a long time ago, to a website called eHow. The editors would send me a title, and then I would have to research how to do that thing. Then I would write out step-by-step instructions for how to do that.
I think that’s how I had to make myself think through my conceptual practice—I had to do the research, coagulate that into some kind of document, and then I would have stream-of-consciousness conversations with myself. “Why are we interested in this? Why would we make it this way? What would I want to talk about if someone were to ask me about this?” It’s almost like I was pre-interviewing myself.
I think the writing is just another way for me to process that idea before I put in all of the time and energy to actually accomplish it.
CGN: What are you working on right now? What projects do you have coming up?
AC: The biggest project that I have right now is my house. My family and I suffered a major house fire on New Year’s Day. We’ve been displaced since then and are navigating rebuilding our house. It was a total loss.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961830/kekfqzf9f87fq48juogh.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Single-Use Fireplace, 2025. Photo: Mikey Mosher.
CGN: I’m so sorry to hear that.
AC: Thank you. We’re all okay, but it’s been a really tumultuous year. I moved my studio into a storefront last summer, and so most of my, at least relatively recent, work is safe, and I still have all of my materials, but my home life is starting over. I just had my first full year at this space, and it’s got a little gallery built out in the front called Coming Soon. It’s beautiful with floor-to-ceiling windows on Division and Central Park. I’ve been inviting people into the space to try things out.
After teaching the ceramics class, I came into a bunch of nice slip casting molds, and I’m making some really playful, weird, ceramic stuff. I want to be open and not put too much pressure on myself. Having a big studio by myself is very expensive, so it’s easy to want to make it feel like it’s worth it. But if for now all I can do is make it a resource for other people, then that will be the thing I do. Be less selfish, but more selfish with my time. Saying I can’t do that, or I don’t want to do that. It’s not my nature to say no—I’m such a yes man. I’m learning how to be a yes man for myself.
CGN: That makes sense after going through something so traumatic.
AC: I have an amazing support system. Our friends started a GoFundMe. It was incredible. I’m so humbled and floored by how held I felt by Chicago. I can’t help but throw a little shout out to my Chicago people. I can see how people’s lives get totally ruined by this kind of tragedy. I feel so lucky. Chicago definitely showed its love back.
CGN: For your project Coming Soon, are you bringing in other artists?
AC: My philosophy is that I want to be involved as little as possible. I am thinking about it more as a hosted than curated space. I’m actively soliciting proposals or ideas for workshops, meetings, book clubs—I’m down for making it a resource, whatever that means. I don’t want to over-think it, I want it to be an intuitive and organic thing, which is why I call it Coming Soon—it can be a placeholder for anything. It’s exciting. Taking my hands off the reins is a good exercise for me.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1788961831/gno5dhliwfnzpuaim78s.jpg\")
Andi Crist, Extension Cords, Glazed stoneware, chrome, Sizes vary 2021-present. Photo: Mikey Mosher
Fall offers a full slate of exhibitions across galleries and museums throughout the Midwest. Behind the scenes, many people in the community are working tirelessly to support artists and bring fresh perspectives to the public. We spoke with five insiders about what excites them now and what they anticipate next.
The following preview is one of five conversations that appear in CGN's Fall 2026 magazine. To receive a copy of the print edition click here.
![](\"https://res.cloudinary.com/dfafo598z/image/upload/v1789516769/izokunnmrufdyjbjnypk.jpg\")
“Intuit Art Museum’s renovated, expanded spaces give audiences the chance to connect with art through daily art-making, third Thursday Art After Work, group Slow Looks designed to provide a mindful experience with a single work and upcoming conversations with sculptor Bill Brady (Oct. 3) and Dr. Mary Trent (Oct. 15), who curated our current exhibition on the role of scrapbook-making in Henry Darger’s art.
On view is the thought-provoking Monumental: The Sculpture of Dr. Charles Smith, which encourages guests to consider the lack of historical representation of African Americans and Black people in America. Dr. Smith’s memorials champion Black history and stories of everyday life he sees missing in mainstream narratives.
This fall we’re opening an exhibition of paintings by Karla Wong, an artist who immigrated from Oaxaca and who explores themes of life and death, gender identity and self-discovery.”