Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago – Clef Notes Chicagoland Journal for the Arts

MCA Chicago Announces “On Stage: Lineages,” A Showcase of Four Performance Works Moving Toward Canon Correction

November 15, 2024 Patrick Curran Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago announced the return of the On Stage performance series. Since 2022, the On Stage series has focused on a curatorial theme that rotates annually. This spring, On Stage takes Lineages as its guiding concept, featuring four separate artist works that explore notions of identity and shared history from both inside and outside of the art world.

Art Museums

MCA Chicago Talk Featuring Lee Quinones, Dao-Yi Chow, and Romi Crawford Takes Place on November 12, 2024

November 11, 2024 Patrick Curran Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (MCA) will present a talk with street art luminary Lee Quinones and his recent collaborator, Creative Director of New Era and streetwear designer Dao-Yi Chow, for the Chicago launch of Quinones’s monograph, “Lee Quinones: Fifty Years of New York Graffiti Art and Beyond.”

Concert Museums

Asian Improv aRts Midwest (AIRMW): “Reduction 10” & “Taiko Legacy 21” Concerts at MCA Chicago, December 14-15, 2024

October 30, 2024 Patrick Curran Asian Improve aRTs, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Asian Improv aRts Midwest (AIRMW) and Tsukasa Taiko, with director, multi-instrumentalist and media artist Tatsu Aoki, celebrate a decade of “Reduction” concerts with “Reduction 10” at the Edlis Neeson Theater at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 220 E. Chicago Ave. at 7 p.m., Saturday, December 14, 2024.

Autumn 2023 Classical Music Music

Asian Improv aRTs Midwest Celebrates 20 Years of Taiko Legacy

November 9, 2023 Fred Cummings Asian Improve aRTs, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

Creative performance is often at its most impactful when it imparts a true message. When that message pays homage to a culture, it becomes even more poignant, and therefore impactful. Directed by multi-instrumentalist and media artist Tatsu Aoki, Asian Improv aRts Midwest (AIRMW).

Art Spring 2023

Museum of Contemporary Art to Present “Garry Simmons: Public Enemy”

April 14, 2023 Isaac Jacobs Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

This summer, The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago will present Gary Simmons: Public Enemy, a survey of artist Gary Simmons’s work, organized by James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator René Morales and assistant curator Jadine Collingwood on view from June 10, 2023, through October 1, 2023. It will be presented in the Griffin Galleries of Contemporary Art. The exhibition is the most comprehensive look at Simmons’s work to date, covering 30 years of Simmons’s career and featuring approximately 70 works.

Dance

Joffrey Academy of Dance to Present New Slate of “Winning Works”

March 14, 2023 Fred Cummings Joffrey Academy of Dance, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago

The Joffrey Academy of Dance, School of The Joffrey Ballet, will present four world premieres in the culmination of Joffrey’s national call for ALAANA (African, Latinx, Asian, Arab and Native American) artists to submit applications for their Winning Works Choreographic Competition. This year’s Competition winners—Natasha Adorlee, Christian D’Ariano, Kameron N. Saunders, and Mike Tyus (Recipient of the Zach Lazar Winning Works Fellowship)—each have choreographed an original work created for the Joffrey Academy Trainees and Studio Company to a commissioned score by a chosen composer collaborator. An additional performance has been added to the program this year due to popular demand.

Art Autumn 2020

Surreality: Preview of “The Long Dream” at MCA

November 3, 2020 Isaac Jacobs COVID-19, Dawoud Bey, Jim Nutt, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Nice Cave, William Pope.L

Equal parts farce and harsh reality, the year 2020 has been something of a surreal moment for most of us. Few, if any, can boast of lives untouched by the events that have thrown our nation, nee world, into flux these past eight or night months. On our hands, we’ve got a worldwide pandemic which has amassed millions of victims worldwide and killed more than 200,000 (and still counting) in the U.S. alone; public unrest has mounted quickly over what is seen as unjust, state-absolved killings of unarmed African-Americans at the hands of police; shutdowns from coast to coast that have upended any sense of normalcy for most households; pulsing upticks in white-nationalism have taken place in the public square; and on top of all of that, we’ve got a contentious presidential election on our hands.

Museums

Museum of Contemporary Art Awarded $2.5M from The Andrew Mellon Foundation

September 27, 2020 Vickie Moore Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The Andrew Mellon Foundation

With the announcement that it is receiving the largest foundation grant in its history, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago has recently said the $2.5 million award from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will enable the museum to take continued action in its mission to elevate contemporary art and artists, while accelerating the museum’s commitments to the values of IDEA (inclusion, diversity, equity, and access), during the challenges presented by the COVID pandemic. The MCA is one of 12 mid-sized cultural institutions across the country awarded funding from the Mellon Foundation’s new Art Museum Futures Fund, based in part on the vital function the museums serve in meeting the needs of their communities and their admirable response during the pandemic.