Last fall, Mayor Emanuel declared 2017 the Year of Public Art, promising a $1.5 million investment and new outdoor murals, sculptures, and performances in all 50 wards. As a result, Chicago’s streets have been transformed into the city’s most impressive permanent showcase of local and global talent. Here, five standouts from the artwork that emerged this year.
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Kerry James MarshallChicago Cultural Center
In September, fresh off his retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Bronzeville painter unveiled the details of his largest work to date. The capstone project of Rahm’s initiative, the mural is, as Marshall puts it, a “Forest Rushmore” honoring 20 influential women in Chicago culture. Look for the faces of poet Gwendolyn Brooks, artist Margaret Burroughs, and, naturally, Oprah Winfrey.Photo: Max Herman
A Kaleidoscope of Hidden Worlds
Renee RobbinsFullerton underpass at Lake Shore Drive
As you walk east toward the lake, Robbins’s 110-foot-long mural unfolds like a detailed story of biological life, from tiny to huge. First come the neutrinos and atoms, then DNA helixes and molecules, and eventually planets and faraway galaxies. The Albany Park–based artist even included underwater species she observed in Morgan Shoal, the 32-acre area just 300 feet off the Hyde Park shoreline.Photo: Max Herman
Bronzeville Solar Pyramid
Shala.440 E. 47th St.
The result of a summer-long collaboration between the artist, a Chicago native and University of Illinois at Chicago graduate, and 60 Chicago Public Schools students, this 15-foot-tall solar panel pyramid features a collection of unique hieroglyphics—basketballs, light bulbs, microphones—that represent talismans of daily life in contemporary Chicago.Photo: Max Herman
What I Am
Shinique Smith16th and State Streets
While Smith has exhibited her collages in museums around the country—at the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, for example—the New York painter was once a graffiti artist. In a nod to her past, she created a 65-foot-wide mural depicting a tangle of flowers and feathers atop the word “love” in her signature calligraphy.Photo: Max Herman