As the ivy changes colors and classes get underway, exhibitions across the University of Chicago are opening to the public.
From Anatolian kings to immersive digital art and Nigerian bodybuilders, check out these fall offerings across campus.
Created Equal: The Premises and Promises of the Declaration of Independence
Regenstein Library, The Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center | 1100 E 57th St | Open Sept. 8 to Dec. 11 | Weekdays, 9 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.
The story of the Declaration of Independence often centers on its revolutionary authors, prominent politicians such as John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and (above all) Thomas Jefferson. But the Declaration we know today is equally a product of generations of readers, individuals and groups who discovered divergent meanings among its self-evident truths.
What story, then, best suits our moment?
This exhibition, commemorating the 250th anniversary of the document in 2026, invites visitors to experience the diverse responses to the Declaration in the age of the American Revolution, consider unfolding understandings over time, and explore conflicting interpretations individuals and groups have proposed at significant moments in history.
Hartapu: The Forgotten King of Anatolia
Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures | 1155 E 58th St. | Open Sept. 17 to March 14
In 2019, an inscribed stone pulled from an irrigation canal in central Türkiye introduced the world to a king who claimed to have conquered Phrygia—one of the most powerful kingdoms of the ancient world.
The exhibition tells the story of Hartapu—who ruled in the eighth century B.C.E. during a period of intense rivalry between great powers—through ancient inscriptions, archaeological finds and new technologies. Contemporary works by artist SaraNoa Mark offer a counterpoint, reflecting on landscape, memory and the labor and care of preserving the past.
Smart Museum of Art | 5550 S. Greenwood Ave. | Open Sept. 22 to July 11
What can art tell us about how people have sought to heal from past traumas and grief? How can the process of making art become therapeutic? How Do We Heal? addresses the connections between art and healing.
How Do We Heal? takes an expansive view of healing from different challenges and considers the role of art in these processes through the Smart’s permanent collection. This thematic exhibition brings together artworks from across time, geography and artistic media to consider the relationship between art and healing both historically and into the present day.
Celebrate the Smart’s new fall exhibitions at the opening reception on Oct. 3. This program is free and open to all; Registration is encouraged.
Intentionality, 1960: Whose Dreams?
Arts Incubator Gallery at Arts + Public Life | 301 E. Garfield Blvd. | Open Sept. 24 to Dec. 12 | Thursday–Saturday 1–5 PM
A new solo exhibition by Chicago artist Candace Hunter centers on communities displaced by the construction of the Dan Ryan Expressway and the memories, relationships and histories carried in its wake.
A continuation of Hunter’s ongoing project, 50,831 +/– Dreams, the exhibition brings together photographic collage, architectural fragments, archival materials, maps, sound, sculpture and oral history.
The exhibition will be accompanied by Threshold: Conversations on the Stoop, a series of public dialogues on race, residential space, displacement, memory and belonging.
The Renaissance Society | 5811 South Ellis Ave. | Cobb Hall, 4th floor | Open Sept. 12 to Nov. 1
Tendered, a solo exhibition by British-born Nigerian artist and film director Karimah Ashadu, marks the U.S. debut of MUSCLE, a new moving-image installation centered on bodybuilders training in the heart of Lagos’s slums. The work situates bodybuilding within a broader field of exertion: the body as site of labor, investment and self-fashioning.
MUSCLE was co-commissioned and co-produced by the Renaissance Society, Fondazione In Between Art Film and Camden Art Centre, and is accompanied by a series of new sculptural works that draw directly from the film’s environments.
Karimah Ashadu: Tendered is presented in conjunction with the installation of the artist’s work Machine Boys at the Art Institute of Chicago, opening Sept. 11.
Pierre Bismuth: Love Bless America
Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society | 5701 S. Woodlawn Ave. | Open Sept. 26 to Jan. 8
The centerpiece of Love Bless America is a long-form meditative film by the French artist and filmmaker Pierre Bismuth. The film documents a creative collaboration between Joshua Abrams and Sharon Udoh, two leading figures from Chicago’s jazz and improvised music scene.
Bismuth has tasked them with composing a 21st-century spiritual based on a lyrical hymn he wrote for the project. The film traces the magic and workaday practice of “inspiration,” taking the traditions of religious music as a point of departure for a multi-layered reflection on love, music and the divine. In addition to this new film, Bismuth will present a series of digital images resembling American flags emblazoned with lyrics from the hymn.
teamLab: Everything Exists in Infinite Continuity
Smart Museum of Art | 5550 S. Greenwood Ave. | Open Sept 22 to Feb 21
The art collective teamLab is renowned for creating immersive digital art installations that blur the boundary between viewer and artwork. Based in Tokyo, teamLab engages in wide-ranging experimentation with digital technology to create art that explores the relationship between the self and the world.
Founded in 2001 by Toshiyuki Inoko, teamLab has grown into an international collective of hundreds of artists, scientists, computer programmers, mathematicians and architects.
teamLab: Everything Exists in Infinite Continuity is the collective’s first exhibition in the Midwest and presents some of teamLab’s most iconic artworks from the past 25 years as well as new work made specifically for this exhibition.
Celebrate the Smart’s new fall exhibitions at the opening reception on Oct. 3. This program is free and open to all; Registration is encouraged.
