Neighborhood News: Streeterville’s Museum of Contemporary Art celebrates cultures, creativity
While the Art Institute of Chicago houses the works of art masters through the centuries, one museum, The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) Chicago, 220 E. Chicago Avenue, is one of the largest museums in the world displaying the works of contemporary masters.
Take, for example, their latest exhibition, Gary Simmons: Public Enemy,which opened Tuesday and runs through October 1. Just in time for Juneteenth, in this exhibit, Simmons exposes and analyzes histories of racism inscribed in US visual culture, and is the first comprehensive career survey of his work. As the website states, it’s not the first time he has explored such topics. Over the course of his 35-year career, Simmons has revealed traces of these histories in the fields of sports, cinema, literature, music, and architecture and urbanism, while drawing heavily on popular genres such as hip-hop, horror, and science fiction.
In a recent interview with Vocalo, explaining his motivation to the Los Angeles Times, Simmons shared, “I started to think about the cartoons that parents would sit you down in front of then walk away, almost letting the television babysit you. I was looking at Dumbo.
The crows had this prominent role in teaching Dumbo how to fly, but they were highly racialized and very stereotypical. I talked to a cross-section of different people about their memories of Dumbo and I realized that the memories kind of broke down along racial lines. And I thought, ‘Wow, this is very interesting that people that look like me remember the racialized racist images and white folks didn’t.”
A Brief History of MCA Chicago
MCA Chicagoopened in fall 1967 in a small space at 237 East Ontario Street that had served as the corporate offices of Playboy Enterprises, according to Wikipedia sources.Initially, the museum was conceived primarily as a space for temporary exhibitions, in the German kunsthalle model.
However, in 1974, the museum began acquiring a permanent collection of contemporary art objects created after 1945, hosting several notable debut exhibitions, including Frida Kahlo’s first U.S. exhibition and Jeff Koons’first solo museum exhibition. Koons later presented an exhibit at the museum that broke the museum’s attendance record. The current record for the most-attended exhibition is the 2017 exhibition of Takashi Murakami.
Other modern collections at the museum include the works of Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Cindy Sherman, and Kara Walker, and encompassing a wide variety of mediums: late surrealism, pop art, minimalism, and conceptual art; contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, video, installation, and related media.
Today: A Cornucopia of Arts
MCA Chicago also presents dance, theater, music, and multidisciplinary arts. On Tuesdays at the Terrace, when MCA is open late and admission is free for Illinois residents, they host free concerts highlighting Chicago artists on their outdoor terrace, paying tribute to jazz, blues, and soul, among others.
A Juneteenth Celebration at MCA!
Juneteenth marks the day all enslaved people were ensured to be freed. On Friday, June 16 from 5pm-9pm, MCA is hosting its Third Annual Juneteenth Freedom Market. As Choose Chicago says, the market includes over 50 local Black-owned businesses participating, and entertainment from the renowned 40+ Double Dutch Club, an open art studio experience + complimentary sample wine tastings with Chicago’s Raspy Rivera X Michael Lavelle.
MCA Chicago is open Tuesdays from 10am-9pm, and Wednesday-Sunday 10 am–5pm. They are closed on Mondays. For tickets and information, click here.
Alison Moran-Powers and Dean’s Team Chicago
