Latest Events in Chicago(January Updated)

This interactive exhibition will have its international premiere in Chicago. It's an unmissable event for science enthusiasts, Pokémon fans, and anyone who loves both. Bringing together Excavator Pikachu, Professor Pokémon, and scientists from the Field Museum, the exhibition takes you on a journey through time, filled with imagination and discovery—and it's only on display at the Field Museum.

Discover how Chicago’s African-inspired design scene connects global traditions with local creativity inConnecting Threads: Africa Fashion in Chicago. Featuring stunning garments, jewelry, and textiles from talented Chicago-based designers like Olivia Ogbara, Stephane St. Jaymes, Hayet Rida and Jennifer Akese-Burney, this exhibition explores fashion as a medium for storytelling and cultural expression. Visitors will experience thematic environments inspired by Chicago’s skyline, enhanced by Robert Earl Page’s custom patterns, and interactive programming like panel discussions and collaborations withBlack Fashion Week USA.

Step into the exciting world of one of the most beloved superheroes of all time in Marvel's Spider-Man: Beyond Amazing – The Exhibition. In this immersive exhibit, you'll see rare comic books, view props and costumes from your favorite Spider-Man movies, explore cutting-edge interactive installations and take photos with life-size statues of your favorite characters, like Miles Morales, Ghost-Spider and, of course, Spider-Man! Superfans can dive deep into the evolution of Spider-Man from his first comic book appearance to the latest TV, movie and video games, while kids of all ages can get hands-on with drawing activities and more.

City in a Garden: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago is an intergenerational group exhibition that highlights Chicago’s essential, yet often underacknowledged, role in the story of queer art and activism. The exhibition examines this history from the mid-1980s, when activists radically mobilized in response to the US government’s disastrous handling of the AIDS crisis. In this moment of change, activists reclaimed the historically pejorative epithet “queer” as a liberatory term, encompassing all who purposefully deviate from heteronormative society. Drawn from the MCA’s collection and other local collections, City in a Garden follows this paradigm shift in LGBTQ+ history by bringing together work from over 30 artists and collectives working in Chicago from the 1980s to the present.

Since the 1970s, artist Charles Gaines has worked with numeric systems and repeating visual structures to investigate representation. His subjects have ranged from race theory and language theory to objects in the natural world.This exhibition focuses on Night/Crimes, a series Gaines created from 1994 to 1997, in which he paired archival photographs of violent crime scenes, victims, and indicted murderers with images of constellations that could have been seen in the night sky when the crimes occurred. Written onto the Plexiglas covering each pair of photographs are the location and date of the crime, the astronomical position of the pictured constellation, and lastly, a date 50 years after the first one.

Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind presents one of the most comprehensive exhibitions to date of Yoko Ono, the trailblazing artist, celebrated musician, and formidable campaigner for world peace. This remarkable retrospective—on view at the MCA as the only US venue*—celebrates key moments of Ono’s career, showcasing art driven by ideas and expressed in poetic, humorous, and profound ways. Tracing Ono’s career since the 1950s, Music of the Mind presents over 200 works across a variety of media including performance footage, music and sound recordings, scores, film, photography, installation, and archival materials. Participatory artworks—a key aspect of Ono’s practice—also feature in the exhibition, and visitors are invited to partake in several interactive, instruction-based artworks throughout Music of the Mind.

The Chicago Bulls, established in 1966 and based in Chicago, Illinois, USA, play their home games at United Center. The Bulls have won the NBA Championship six times, including two three-peats from 1991 to 1998. Current key players include Zach LaVine and Nikola Vučević. The Denver Nuggets, established in 1967 and based in Denver, Colorado, USA, play their home games at Ball Arena. The Nuggets won their first NBA Championship in 2023. Current key players include Nikola Jokić and Jamal Murray.

Jitish Kallat’s site-specific installation, Public Notice 3, returns to the Art Institute of Chicago’s Grand Staircase this fall after a 14-year hiatus. Initially unveiled on September 11, 2010, the work connects two significant historical events separated by 108 years: the First World’s Parliament of Religions which began on September 11, 1893, and the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. At the earlier event, the World Parliament of Religions, held in an auditorium that encompassed the area that today includes both the museum’s Fullerton Hall and Woman’s Board Grand Staircase, a young Hindu monk, Swami Vivekananda electrified audiences with a powerful speech calling for an end to religious fundamentalism, intolerance, and bigotry.

H. C. Westermann’s work combines a graceful mastery of materials, rough and tumble physicality, commonsense philosophizing, acrobatic wit and wordplay, and a sensitive worldview shaped in equal measure by the horrors of wartime and the devotions of love. He used a wide-range of materials but was most dedicated to woodworking, once stating that wood was his “whole life.”

Discover how a colossal asteroid ended the dinosaurs' reign and paved the way for life’s astonishing comeback, shaping the world we know today. Meet unfamiliar creatures, explore immersive media experiences, and marvel at fossils from the Field Museum's renowned collections.