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By GINNY VAN ALYEA
This past fall a creative synthesis of art and design arrived on the South Side of Chicago when Brooklyn-based artist Fabiola Jean-Louis brought her life-size paper gowns and carefully staged photographs to the DuSable Museum in Hyde Park. I met the artist herself in the spring, and we took a tour of the exhibition with Clinée Hedspeth, Director of Curatorial Services at the museum and the woman who brought Jean-Louis to the DuSable. We talked about how art and beauty can be used as vehicles for contemplating and understanding larger issues. After meeting Jean-Louis I not only looked at paper in a whole new light, but I understood the possibilities of recontextualizing multiple histories.
Jean-Louis was born in Haiti, and she says her work is primarily informed by her Afro-Caribbean heritage, black culture and the dialogue of mysticism. By reinterpreting generally recognizable images of European (white) nobility and recreating the traditional trappings using deceptively simple materials such as paper, Jean-Louis sets up immersive scenarios though which viewers can reconnect to a violent and complicated past while reimagining a more beautiful and hopeful history. Viewers who encounter her work first see a stunning, familiar image, and then they detect the questions beneath the surface. This, for Jean-Louis, is how she seeks to rewrite history – not to change the past but to use history to challenge the present and therefore change society in the future.
The DuSable is an institution devoted to the historic and artistic examination of the African American experience, an evolving mission that is carried out in endless ways. This latest exhibition represents a new direction for the museum. Following is an edited transcript of my conversation with both Jean-Louis and Hedspeth. –GV
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CGN: Clinée, when we first met you told me you discovered Fabiola’s art online at 2 o’clock in the morning. Her work was so personal to you, even through a screen, that you were compelled to contact here. Tell me how you came to collaborate on an exhibition at the DuSable Museum.
Clinée Hedspeth: I wasn’t in curatorial here at the time. I was in education, but as a collector I was just in love with her work. So I sent her an email, and she responded. That was before we had a chief curator at the museum, so we kept talking, I looked at more of her work, and then all of the sudden I said, “You need to come here. Let me see what I can do.”
Fabiola Jean-Louis: And then we started having conversations with the new curator at first, and then for about a year and a half, about a small group show with two other artists.
CH: I had to climb the ladder where I could bring her in. [Laughter]
FJL: There were changes happening at the museum and they were looking at the new face of the DuSable and what the new exhibitions would look like, and that took time. When Lee Bey came on board, together with Clinée he said, “We’re gonna make it happen.” And at that point it was like a race to get ready.
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CGN: Have you had an exhibition on this scale anywhere prior to now? You must have needed a lot of time to get everything ready.
FJL: A lot of time. The first ever show that I had with Rewriting History was when it was still very young at the Harlem School of the Arts. That show consisted of two and a half sculptures and maybe four to six prints. By the time Clinée and I started working together I had added more pieces and improved my skill set with how I was making the dresses.
So, I got to the point where I needed to remake dresses again. Here is a dress [points] with a totally different type of paper. It’s an archival paper. The original was a newsprint. This paper just had a better flow. Also the cut of the dress is different. I wanted something that is more true to what existed, as far as shape, and the original wasn’t. So for display purposes, I really wanted the actual sculpture to have the right cut and proportion, and it needed to be redone. I also had to spray a dye onto it versus using acrylic paint.
The DuSable is my first museum show, and I’m so happy. I’ve always said that it was really important to show my work in a black museum. It also helps that DuSable is a Smithsonian affiliate, since another goal for me has been to get to the Smithsonian. This is a dream come true. This is like the granddaddy of all the granddaddies.
CH: Fabiola doesn’t make work catered to the space, and that’s what I loved about her work. At first I didn’t know what was done to make a piece, but once the show was going to happen I had to ask, ‘What’s the checklist?’
FJL: It actually takes me four to five months to get one shot, because of conceptualizing, and making the dress. I had to get to a point where I could pump out a dress in a week.
CGN: The beauty of each piece is the tip of the iceberg. There’s also the historical context and the story behind it. Are there different stories connected to each piece, or are they each different chapters of a larger story?
FJL: Different chapters of a larger story. I do my research and think about history, but I’m not an academic. It’s something that I have to go and find. Also, prior to doing Rewriting History, I was a pre-med student. My career was set to become a doctor, so I’m academic in that sense, but when it comes to the work for Rewriting History it really has to start from this very organic, raw place. Sometimes I don’t even read; it’s about what I know has happened already. I think about the black experience as being non-linear, and I try to tap into as many different aspects of that story as I can. For instance, being a black woman, being Afro-Caribbean – I don’t identify as African American – personally it’s me working from those different places. I also look at the space of the black experience being African American. What does that look like and how does that relate to me? It ends up being part of a larger story, but it’s different chapters. It doesn’t mean that the stories aren’t related in some way. They’re all relative. It’s ultimately about the same thing – injustice, trauma, and violence against black bodies.
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CGN: When you think about the horrors of so many aspects of history for African Americans, Afro-caribbeans, black people, are you using beauty to get attention or communicate? Is there an element where beauty is a sort of mask? How do you use beauty to connect to something so atrocious?
FJL: I like that word, actually. I haven’t used that word mask, and it’s making me think. I think that here beauty can be seen as a mask used to uncover something deeper, for sure.
CGN: We do that all the time.
FJL: That’s right, because I use beauty as a vehicle to carry my viewers through this journey and take them to a place that’s uncomfortable at some point. But mask, I think, is also very true to that. It’s also being used to uncover something that’s very ugly. It definitely speaks to my response to how I see our society being desensitized to injustice and again, violence against black bodies.
Early on in the series when I was creating, I knew for sure that I wasn’t interested in showing the blood and the gore. Us being murdered. Even when I do presentations, I don’t include pictures that are during slavery or even in the ‘50s when black men and women are hanging. It’s so important, to me, to preserve us in some way. And I feel like every time we see us being shot and blood and all that it’s just like there’s no respect.
CGN: Well sometimes it ends up being distracting. People just want to look at the blood and gore without thinking about how it got there.
FJL: Exactly, without connecting to the actual thing or incident. So I knew early on that I wasn’t going to do that. I took my time to think about how I was going to present it, and beauty became a very clear means, because at the same time I wanted to create work that would be welcoming to different people, and not just the Black Diaspora, but anyone interested in talking about race. I want them to feel welcomed into this space to talk about it. That’s not to say that there’s [something] apologetic in the work at all or that I’m going to hold back from what I feel is important to the story.
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CGN: When talking about history you said you reference historical situations you know are true, but you’re not relying on academic texts or timelines. The title of the exhibition is Rewriting History. What do you think about being revisionist? It sounds to me like you’re not trying to rewrite the past. You’re actually just trying to understand it from now going forward.
FJL: Right. The rewriting part is not literal. It’s not for me to do, because I can’t anyway.
CGN: You’re not rewriting it because you’re showing what happened.
FJL: It’s more of a What if? What if I could? What if we were always celebrated? The series just shows black female bodies, black women. That’s what I’m most comfortable showing. It’s not that I don’t want to include black men in the work, but as a photographer, as an artist, I’m more comfortable working with the black female body. We’ve been disrespected, so this for me asks a question, while also remembering what actually happened.
I’m a firm believer in the saying that in order to know where you’re going, you have to know where you’ve been. You have to know where you are. It’s not about forgetting the past. It is about rethinking how we see beauty, how we celebrate the black female body, and rethinking what freedom actually looks like. Is freedom always this big grand thing, or is freedom the simplicity of just sitting for a portrait? The leisure of having the time to be painted or photographed. We take the simplicity of freedom for granted. So the series is about going deeper into what freedom actually looks like, and what freedom is.
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CGN: There’s another level of just considering a woman’s lifestyle – the trappings of beauty, all of the stuff that has to be out adorning, rather than just within, the body.
FJL: We can talk about leisure and the freedom to be painted, but we also acknowledge how even those women were imprisoned, in a way. Fashion was a means to do that. They had to wear these tight corsets.
CGN: You mean beauty is pain.
FJL: The corset for me takes this on. It’s something really beautiful and aesthetic, but when we think about what it actually stands for, it’s not. It’s confining. It’s choking. The corset represents, for the black women in my works, society, racism and all the limitations that we’ve had. It’s always a dance between how fashion and the celebration of beauty and taking and owning space relates to the things that we take for granted: like fashion, a painting, or who gets to wear what.
CGN: Tell me about your artistic process. The sculptures are each related to the photographs, and you said it can take months to set up a single shoot.
FJL: I don’t look at other photographers as inspiration for my work. I always look at paintings. My library has just books and museum catalogues that show actual garments, if they have it, and paintings – Boucher, Fragonard, Rembrandt, artists like that. Rewriting History is me showing a contemporary way of what I think a painting looks like. I’m not a painter, even though the pieces in my photographs I’ve painted.
I try to get a digital photograph to look like a painting. The first part of the process is looking at those master painters and doing research. Sometimes, the work is a response to what’s happening currently. Other times it’s intuition – a conversation I’m having with my ancestors.Then through that space I think about the concept I want to bring to life. When I figure that out I decide on the style and design. I’m always looking at 16th–19th Century Fashion for reference.
CGN: That’s a pretty big time-span.
FJL: [Laughter] Well, I think about the style that’s most appealing to me, and sometimes the dresses are going to be replicas of what was in a painting. Early on the dresses were a mixture of different periods. Now, I’m more interested in replicas. I don’t sketch anything. I just can’t operate in that space. It’s too limiting for me.
CGN: I would not have guessed that.
FJL: I have five notebooks for sketching that I convince myself that I’m going to use, but I just can’t do it.
CGN: So, it’s really as you go?
FJL: That’s what’s so free about it. I can add on, and it’s all about emotion. At the same time I’m also thinking about the set. I have to think about the design and how I’m going to bring the lighting in and tell the story.
CGN: Does every piece end up as part of a photograph?
FJL: Usually, yes,but not every single piece. For the DuSable they have two dress that have not been worn yet, and so there are no photographs of these pieces. It doesn’t mean there’s not going to be. I have to work backwards because I had the design and the dress already, but I want to add them into the photographs.
CGN: Your photographs have a painterly quality, as you said. Here you photographed your daughter wearing your sculpture and props, and then you digitally apply a veneer that makes it not quite real.
FJL: It’s become my style of photography. I just love everything that’s painterly. That in itself takes hours to do. After the photograph is done, it takes me about four days of editing to just paint and Photoshop to get it to look that way. And there’s another reason why it needs to be like a painting – that’s where we are often missing. If I go to a museum, I’m not going to see the black body in a master painting celebrated in that way. If the black body is in that painting, someone is often either enslaved, or they just disappear into the backdrop.
CGN: Or they’re in an exotic culture.
FJL: And fetishized in some way. So it starts there with a painting; the goal was always to have them in a museum.
CGN: You want to put them where they are not.
FJL: So I’m not very interested in a photograph really. Even though I use the camera as a tool, like a painter uses a brush, my goal is not to get something that literally looks like a photograph. I’m more interested in something that seems otherworldly.
CGN: What materials do you use?
FJL: I use acrylic paints. I use dyes, coffee [and] natural stain. I use handmade Japanese paper, or just a simple French craft paper. Sometimes I make my own paper. It depends on what I’m working on and the scale of it. Now my work has progressed to include furniture, jewelry and shoes. So, it’s a madness.
CGN: You are at the beginning of your career. Where do you think you will go next?
FJL: Rewriting History is inspired by my history and my identity. It’s about analyzing myself and who I am as a black woman, as an artist, as a mother. I’m grateful for the series because it inspired a lot of work that’s going to be an extension of Rewriting History. The work is continuous and still developing. It’s never-ending.
Rewriting History is on view through May 23 at the DuSable Museum of African American History.
Note: After the interview was conducted Clinée Hedspeth moved on from curatorial work with the DuSable Museum in April 2018 to independent art consulting and appraising. She continues to represent Fabiola Jean-Louis’s projects.
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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.”