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BY GINNY VAN ALYEA
\r\n\r\nThe heart of Michigan Avenue can be a chaotic, visually draining place, but nine floors up from the corner of Michigan and East Erie is an elegant space filled with hundreds of art history’s most important and valuable works. Testaments to human artistic achievement line the walls. In a coat and tie seated at a partner’s desk along the windows overlooking the Magnificent Mile is Stanley Johnson, the gentleman who has researched, collected and shared these works with the world, a vibrant intellectual who has led a life filled with language, learning, and art.
\r\n","body":"BY GINNY VAN ALYEA
The heart of Michigan Avenue can be a chaotic, visually draining place, but nine floors up from the corner of Michigan and East Erie is an elegant space filled with hundreds of art history’s most important and valuable works. Testaments to human artistic achievement line the walls. In a coat and tie seated at a partner’s desk along the windows overlooking the Magnificent Mile is Stanley Johnson, the gentleman who has researched, collected and shared these works with the world, a vibrant intellectual who has led a life filled with language, learning, and art. From Northwestern University to travels throughout Mexico, Peru, Costa Rica, and Ecuador, followed by nearly a decade and a half in Europe, Mr. Johnson earned a reputation as a Renaissance Man. Mr. Johnson was formally recognized for his artistic contributions by France’s Minister of Culture as an Officer of Arts and Letters. He is the only United States art dealer who has been so decorated, and in the Midwest there’s only one other person who’s received the same honor, and that’s Douglas Druick, the current President of the Art Institute of Chicago. Johnson has placed art in more than 60 museums around the world, and he has published and mounted over 100 fine art exhibitions. In 2015 Mr. Johnson, with his wife Ursula, marks the 60th anniversary of the gallery his father started in 1955.
Stanley Johnson always loved being a student, but his journey to becoming a renowned art dealer was a circuitous one. From a young age he loved to travel – in some cases by bus, truck or traded horse, encountering friends, mentors, foreign ministers and even lethal anaconda snakes and earthquakes.
After a year studying art and architecture in Mexico City and a degree from Northwestern, Johnson ultimately arrived in Geneva, Switzerland in the mid-1950s to continue his study of art history. Following two semesters of art and philosophy in Geneva, Johnson went to France where he volunteered for the US Army; after basic training stateside, he was recruited to be a spy for the CIA in Vienna at the end of the occupation (his official title was Assistant Liaison Officer in Vienna), largely because of his extensive travels and language aptitude, something the army valued when they requested he attend cocktail parties to eavesdrop on foreign generals. Johnson says he was a total failure as a spy, but he was a very capable interpreter for the U.S. Commanding General in Vienna at the time. It was a wild time in his life and in the world.
Not content to be fluent in just French and Spanish, Johnson wished to improve his German, as well as his archeology and history studies, citing the language as a big block in his learning to date. He even promised a Northwestern German professor that in exchange for accepting a passing grade, he would never take another German course, as the professor said he was not capable of learning it.
His decision then to move to the University of Innsbruck in Austria would lead him to his future wife, Ursula, a beautiful young German girl who was doing post-graduate work in art history. Johnson’s German improved considerably – he says he spoke with his mother-in-law only in German, though he and Ursula communicated in French, which he still considers their best means of expression.
Together, Johnson and Ursula returned to the University of Vienna, where Johnson moved on to study ancient Greek. From Vienna, they went to Perugia, Italy to study Dante for nine months. And From Perugia Johnson went to Florence while Ursula spent time at home in Düsseldorf.
It was in Florence that art history truly began to permeate Johnson’s existence. Every morning he went to the Uffizi Museum and spent the next six hours, every day for 3-4 months, looking at each painting. He recalls, “I looked at each stroke. I became extremely familiar with the paintings there, and I always listened to what people had to say when they looked at those paintings.”
Eavesdropping in this case offered insights into global perspectives floating through the museum. Johnson observed some key lessons in looking at art: “The French had important things to say, but they all had the same things to say. The Germans had interesting and profound ideas, but they were all the same ideas. The Americans, on the other hand, could stand in front of the same paintings, and though they might not have intelligent or sophisticated ideas, they were often ridiculously silly, it was people from the new world who from time to time would offer a discovery about why something was truly beautiful. They looked at the art with an open mind.”
Johnson cites a Texas man’s blunt observation that a Michelangelo resembled a poster as an ‘ah-ha’ moment. Johnson had been trying to determine why he never really liked the work, and in fact it was as the man said – it lacked a third dimension. Today, Johnson says, “I’m still fighting for a freshness of vision. One of the reasons [the gallery has] one of the greatest art collections in the world, you see, is because I’ve been able to see things in advance.”
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Johnson’s father, S.E. Johnson, started the gallery in 1955, at 224 South Michigan Ave. when he bought a gallery that was for sale in the Roosevelt University building. In 1963 when the 645 N. Michigan Ave. building was built, the gallery moved north and took over half of the second floor. (Note: About a year ago the gallery moved to the ninth floor to a more intimate space largely due to the proportion of internet business the gallery now does.) Ursula recalls that the fall evening on which the gallery was first opening at the new address was on a Friday in November 1963; it was the night JFK was assassinated. “We were actually in Paris, and even from there we were shivering. It was a very bad November, and it was all quite memorable.”
In the gallery’s early days, the elder Mr. Johnson came to visit his son in Paris. Stanley and Ursula were living in Saint-Germain-des-Prés on the sixth floor of a 17th century walk-up, then the Hôtel de Verneuil, and as Johnson notes, there was cold, running water only down on the second floor. He says, “It was total misery, except we could look down towards the Louvre. When my father asked what would happen if there were a fire, I said I’d never thought about that. He said, ‘Well I have. Let’s go downstairs and have a cup of coffee.’ He didn’t want to be there one more minute.”
In the building’s defense, Ursula points out that it had been standing since the time of Louis XIV, most likely because the cement over old wood didn’t burn more than anything else would have. She says the building is still there today, though not the hotel.
Despite their transatlantic separation, Johnson began to work for the gallery from Paris, taking advantage of his proximity to some of the great minds and talents of the 20th century. When Johnson’s father said that he would love to show Jean Cocteau’s art in Chicago, he recalls, “I went downstairs to the corner café to use the phone, and I looked up in the telephone book: ‘Cocteau, Jean.’ When he answered, I told him my father had a gallery in Chicago and he wanted to do a show of his ceramics and drawings. He said, ‘I’d love to do it. But unfortunately today, morning, noon and night, I’m busy. Come to my house for tea tomorrow.’” The Chicago exhibition was quite successful, and it was just the first of several significant art dealings started from his neighborhood café.
Johnson traveled next to Rome with his parents. The trio arranged to meet Giorgio de Chirico while there and spent an afternoon speaking to him in French and Italian along with his wife.
Johnson says, “They just loved the three of us; we got along tremendously. My father bought 24 de Chirico paintings for $12,000. At the end of that whole thing, de Chirico said, ‘We love the three of you and would like to have you to dinner at our country house tomorrow. You must promise not one word about business – strictly friendship, friendship, friendship.’” It would be an important lesson for the younger Johnson on how to do business.
Following the successful visit, the 24 purchased paintings were sent back to Chicago for the gallery exhibition. Not one was sold.
Johnson admits, “That was a disaster. $12,000 at that time was a lot of money. My father wrote a letter to de Chirico, which I have, that said the reason nothing sold was because all the paintings had bad subject matter, so he wanted to exchange all 24 for new ones. de Chirico responded that it was not because of bad subject matter, it was because he was a bad art dealer. He did exchange six paintings, and one by one they sold for $950-$1,150 until finally all 24 were sold. Today the same ones at auction go for $300,000-$400,000.
From Paris Johnson, selling art was not yet Johnson's primary pursuit; the majority of the time he continued studying art history and philosophy alongside Ursula, learning from academic stars like André Chastel, one of the greatest art history professors of 20th century, at the Institute of Art and Archeology at the Sorbonne, and under Jean Wahl, also at the Sorbonne.
Mr. and Mrs. Johnson returned from Paris for good after Stanley’s father died suddenly in 1967. When I ask him if he had a different vision for the gallery than his father, he says, “It was a commercial gallery. [My father] did some terrible things and sold some junky stuff, but gradually we got some better things. Bad things could pay the rent for awhile.”
Johnson reflects that his opportunity to be a student was very different from his father’s. “When I was in Florence, he wrote me a letter saying, 'We are your parents and we are paying for you. What are you doing? What’s keeping you there?' I wrote back that I’m doing absolutely nothing and I intend to stay for two more months doing absolutely nothing (I was also there because of the GI Bill.) When I came back to Chicago, I told him I’d been at the Uffizi from 10am-4pm each day; his reaction was, ‘That’s wonderful. I’d love to be able to do that but I can’t get away from my business.’ Ultimately he appreciated what I was doing.”
Johnson’s language, travel and art knowledge were building blocks for the time when he would run the gallery.
When he and Ursula took the helm following the senior Mr. Johnson’s death, they brought their scholarly, worldly perspective to art research, collecting and selling. Notably, in 1991 the gallery mounted a Cubist exhibition at The Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and the Dallas Museum of Art. In 1992 Johnson’s companion book, Cubism & La Section d’Or: Reflections on the Development of the Cubist Epoch 1907-1922 was one of ten books nominated for the Alfred H. Barr Jr. Award for museum scholarship. Since 1991. He is currently close to submitting a revised version to publishers in London.
Mr. Johnson’s gallery specializes in a range of art, but the focus has long been on Post-Impressionism, Cubism and Expressionism (though an exhibition of contemporary paintings by Milwaukee artist Bruce Dorow opens May 1.) Johnson says they are always acquiring works, “We have to take time to decide what we will acquire. We don’t acquire works because they’re saleable - we have no interest in that. We determine if they’re in an interesting category of works and if we would like to own those works. If so we can go to our best friends and say we bought this and think this is a wonderful thing. We think we’re pretty exceptional that way. That’s the way we’ve been running the gallery.”
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He continues explaining why the gallery deals in say, Old Master prints vs. paintings, “Old Master paintings is a bad category for us because there aren’t any more great ones left. Our collection of drawings out of France, of Picassos, may be the greatest private collection of its sort in the United States. We reject the category of Old Master drawings when they go back to say, the 16th century or before, but when you get up to the end of the 17th century or into the 18th we still buy things in which we’re interested. Old Master prints are still fantastic and there’s still a possibility to buy things for relatively accessible amounts of money. We’re dealing more with European art than American art, and our competition is essentially European. As a result we have to outfox, out maneuver and out connoisseur European competitors, which is a fun challenge easily met, for the very reason I explained when I visited the Uffizi – the Europeans tend to have preconceived notions of what’s this and what’s that. They can’t conceive of some American knowing more about what they live with.”
What else makes this market so appealing to Johnson? Camaraderie, knowledge and competition. Johnson excitedly explains, “The Old Master Print market consists of auctions in London - where it all started. You’ve got the round table with the green velvet top and the work is being offered - there are ten dealers seated and they are all European, except me. The winner is the one who got the best deals in buying those things, not he one who has the most money. It doesn’t have much to do with who has the most money but the one who has the best eye. The other thing is that for an individual to be brought into that world is a difficult thing. You also can’t just have anyone show up since it’s a rare thing. Much of it is about friendship, friendship, friendship.”
Johnson attests that each work in his private collection has a story. He lists artists most of us encounter only in world famous museums: Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnard, Jacques Villon and Matisse. So, where did they come from? Johnson is eager to tell the story of another friendship he forged in Paris, one with Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, Picasso’s art dealer. As a result of his place within an intellectual group in Paris, which included Kahnweiler and others, Johnson eventually became one of the direct dealers of Picasso. In 1970 Kahnweiler, in his 90s at the time, had 120 drawings, watercolors and pastels of Picasso’s to unload, and there were nine dealers from around the world, including Johnson, who had first choice. Johnson clearly recalls, “I arrived at Kahnweiler’s Paris studio about an hour before this sale. I said to him, ‘It’s wonderful to be one of these nine, but I’m the ninth one as well as the youngest. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to take any drawing I want?’ He responded, ‘Monsieur Johnson, if it’s that important to you, go in there and take any drawing you want, but don’t tell the other dealers, and don’t leave it in the room – put it in my office so they don’t see it. You must promise me two things: the drawing you pick today, you will never sell. And every time you look at that drawing you tell yourself what a great guy Kahnweiler was.’”
Towards the end of our conversation, Mr. Johnson stops to ask me if I’m having fun. He continues, “I’m always having fun, and I enjoy the competition.”
Johnson’s career as a world traveler, a student of art history and an art dealer has been filled with stories and great relationships. His greatest partner of all has undoubtedly been his wife, his intellectual as well as business companion and the reason he finally mastered German. About Ursula he shares, “She is quiet, but she is very, very knowledgeable. We have formed the collection. It’s been a whole life together.”
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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.
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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.
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“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.”