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The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is one of the world’s largest museums dedicated to contemporary art. Here, the public can experience the work and ideas of living artists and understand the historical, social, and cultural context of the art of our time. Since our inception in 1967, it has been our mission to exhibit new and experimental work in all media, paired with ambitious learning programs. In 1974, the MCA expanded its mission to include collecting and preserving contemporary art for future generations with the inauguration of a collection that has grown to include more than 2,000 works.
The MCA engages audiences of today and tomorrow, working closely with our community to create space for dialogue, learning, and growth. Learn more about who we are, the museum’s commitments, and our Community Partnerships and Engagement program."
Descending the Staircase
Dec 16, 2023 - Jul 06, 2025.
Third and fourth floors of the MCA. Descending the Staircase presents figures of all kinds, from the fragmented, absurd, and surreal to the curated, self-aware, and media savvy. Together, these artworks (drawn primarily from the MCA's permanent collection) delve into fundamental questions about the human body in the contemporary world, including its relationship to labor and machines, its presentation in advertising and social media, and its role within the everyday domestic sphere.
Trade Windings: De-Lineating the American Tropics
May 18, 2024 - Dec 01, 2024.
McCormick Tribune Gallery on the MCA’s second floorTrade Windings: De-Lineating the American Tropics interrogates the history and legacy of trade routes by mapping them in relation to the economic and migratory realities of today. Working across media and with an expansive range of materials, including colonial products such as coffee, tea, gunpowder, and cotton, the artists in this exhibition expose the structural and material dimensions of coloniality while highlighting the ways it continues to haunt the world today.
Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence
May 04, 2024 - Jan 05, 2025.
Bergman Family Gallery on the MCA’s second floor. Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence is the first major retrospective and largest monographic exhibition to date of the work of Virginia Jaramillo (b. 1939, El Paso, TX; lives in Hampton Bays, NY). Principle of Equivalence traces the artist’s practice from the mid-1960s through the present, featuring more than 40 abstract paintings and handmade paper works that reveal her long-standing preoccupation with the relationships between the earthly and metaphysical realms.
Atrium Project: Do Ho Suh
Feb 24, 2024 - Feb 02, 2025.
Kovler Atrium on the MCA’s second floor. For this iteration of the Atrium Project series, internationally renowned artist Do Ho Suh takes over the entire second-floor lobby wall with a work that is as complex and moving as his larger practice, which often centers meditative explorations of belonging, identity, and home. In Who Am We? (Multicoloured) (2000), the artist consolidates thousands of 1/8 inch portraits from his high school yearbook into a single space, arranged in uniform rows. When viewed from a distance, the composition is almost indistinguishable, appearing as a speckled mass of dots. As viewers approach the work, discrete identities begin to emerge from the blur, simultaneously affirming and destabilizing the relationship between the individual and the collective.
Arthur Jafa: Works from the MCA Collection
Jun 01, 2024 - Mar 02, 2025.
Sylvia Neil and Daniel Fischel Galleries on the MCA’s second floor. Arthur Jafa: Works from the MCA Collection surveys the artist’s output over roughly the last ten years through a selection of artworks held in the MCA’s collection, including his videos APEX (2013), Love is the Message, The Message is Death (2016), The White Album (2018), and Akingdoncomethas (2018). Utilizing found imagery, music, and artistic techniques such as montage and collage, he has constructed an extensive assemblage of Black expression, layered and arranged in ways that reveal the diverse and complex realities of Black being.
Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons
Aug 03, 2024 - Feb 02, 2025.
Turner Gallery on the MCA’s fourth floorAndrea Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe/European descent, b. 1979; based in northern Minnesota and Chicago, IL) considers how landscapes are shaped by history, relationships, and power. Across painting, video, and sculpture, her artworks imagine places that are “everywhere and nowhere,” visualizing these shifting yet ever-present dynamics. Grounded in Anishinaabe understandings of space and time, the works in this exhibition reflect on how land holds memories of colonial expansion and violence, as well as Indigenous presence and resistance.Andrea Carlson is the 26th artist to participate in Chicago Works, a solo exhibition series at the MCA that features artists who are shaping contemporary art in the city and beyond.
Photography by Peter McCullough. | Andrea Carlson, Perpetual Genre, 2024. Oil, acrylic, gouache, ink, color pencil, and graphite on paper; overall: 45.5 × 61 in. (115.6 × 154.9 cm). Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Block Board of Advisors Endowment Fund purchase, 2024.2a-d. © Andrea Carlson. Courtesy of the artist and Bockley Gallery
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