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ART

One Critic’s 2026 Forecasting For The Art World

At Artnet, Ben Davis shares his observations on trends that may be coalescing in the cultural world as the year begins. Among them: The Hammons-Noland Meta. “There’s a lot of fatigue with that kind of [social media] visibility; people are bricking their phones and talking about deinfluencing. I’ve been thinking that the canonical figures who might represent a new ‘meta’ to cohere around are Cady Noland and David Hammons: artists who deliberately cultivated opacity and inaccessibility as a style choice. If I were teaching in an art school, I’d be assigning David Hammons’ classic interview on the value of misdirection.” Read the full list here.

RIP Art Photographer James Prinz

“We are deeply saddened by the passing of James Prinz, one of Chicago’s top art photographers and a longtime MCA staff photographer,” the MCA posts on Instagram with a few images. “Jim was a mentor to many and leaves behind a lasting legacy through his work.”

Elmhurst Art Museum Hosts Kelli Connell’s “Quietly Provocative” Photos

“Relationships, encounters and their sometimes fraught dynamics pervade Kelli Connell’s [Newcity Art 50 2025] thoughtful, quietly provocative images, which explore themes like queer identity and photographic truth,” writes the Sun-Times. “Starting Saturday, fifty-three of Connell’s images will unfold across two exhibitions inside the Elmhurst Art Museum, the largest-ever display of Connell’s work in the Chicago area. Until last year, Connell was a professor at Columbia College Chicago, where she mentored dozens of aspiring young visual artists and established herself as part of an important group of Chicago photographers exploring a distinctive brand of psychological portraiture.”

How Major Museums Are Adapting To Overcrowding

“As the world’s biggest museums grapple with overcrowding and the strain of mass tourism, Madrid’s Museo del Prado is drawing a line: after welcoming a record 3.5 million visitors last year, its director says the Madrid institution does not want or need any more,” sketches Artnet. “A museum’s success can collapse it,” the museum’s director warned. “The problem with the world’s most famous museums is precisely that they’re the world’s most famous museums… A new strategy will prioritize visitor experience over volume—part of a growing shift in how institutions confront overtourism.”

Visiting Artists Series Slated At SAIC

The SAIC’s Visiting Artists lecture series opens its season with Norman Teague on Tuesday, February 17. Teague’s “overarching goal extends beyond the mere act of design; it is a mission to rectify the narratives of design that falter with gaps, omissions and oversights. His work seeks to reintegrate the history and ongoing contributions of foundational Black labor, Black craftsmanship and Black design into our collective cultural identity.” The event is open to the public. More to come: Robin Wall Kimmerer in conversation with Sekile Nzinga; JJJJJerome Ellis; Lauren Lee McCarthy; Cecilia Vicuña; Linda Sormin; and Haegue Yang.

Robert Lostutter Show Opens At Wesleyan

Paintings and drawings since the late 1960s by Chicago artist Robert Lostutter will be on view at Wesleyan University along with stained-glass sculptures by Kristi Cavataro. “Lostutter is known for creating meticulously rendered hybrid human forms in surreal settings. Seemingly beatific, even when contorted with exposed innards, these adorned creatures demonstrate both a technical mastery and wild imagination that is at once bound up with and reaches beyond the human figure.” January 27-March 1. More from Wesleyan here. Alison Cuddy spoke to Lostutter for Newcity here.

Walker Art Center Joins Today’s Minneapolis Citywide Protest

The Walker Art Center will close on Friday, “one of the most high-profile organizations to announce a closure during the Day of Truth and Freedom protest in Minnesota,” records Minnesota’s Bring Me The News. “Organizers of the January 23 action—a group of faith leaders and unions—have asked Minnesotans to not work, spend money, or go to school in protest of Operation Metro Surge and the presence of ICE in communities across the state.” Said a Walker rep, “This reflects our institutional values to center our community, support our staff, and to approach our work with care and safety in mind.”

DESIGN

Eames Institute’s John Cary Joins Mitchell Lecture Series

John Cary, the architect and writer behind the Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity, will talk design at the School of the Art Institute on Thursday, January 29. He “will share his thoughts on design, preservation, and arts leadership as part of SAIC’s distinguished Mitchell Lecture Series—the School’s public platform for conversations about design and related disciplines.” Cary has also worked as a consultant to the Aspen Institute and the Obama Foundation. Free and open to the public. LeRoy Neiman Center, Thursday, January 29, 6pm.

Mas Context Publishes Monograph On An Aurora Bruce Goff Home

Mas Context has announced the publication of “Sam and Ruth Van Sickle Ford House,” beginning a series on individual homes. The book, edited by Iker Gil with photography by James Florio, documents the house designed by Bruce Goff located in Aurora. “Florio spent several days documenting the Ford House with a medium format film camera, capturing the spatial qualities and details of this remarkable house in depth. The book has been designed by Chicago-based graphic design practice The Normal Studio, responding to Florio’s photography and the design of the house. The colors of the cloth cover, inside cover, and edge stitching were all inspired by the building materials.” More here.

Global Architects Feel Optimistic

A survey of top architecture firms “shows a global uplift in sentiment, with the Middle East leading the way and cautious optimism on India,” writes Building UK. “Our industry tends to be a bellwether for general economic confidence and optimism about the future,” said Phil Harrison, CEO of Perkins&Will. The firm is among the largest in the world, and is headquartered in the Wrigley Building.

DINING & DRINKING

How To Watch The Banchets This Sunday

The Banchet Awards, an annual “celebration of culinary excellence in Chicago,” will be available to watch on Sunday, posts Channel 5 news. While tickets to the ceremony are sold out, the event will be available to watch live from 6:30pm-8:15pm on NBC. More here.

Loop Gets Fatback Butcher And Sandwich Shop Next Month

Fatback, a new downtown Chicago restaurant and market, opens next month from chef Charlie McKenna (Lillie’s Q, Roux) in partnership with Fifty/50 Group. It’s “a hybrid sandwich shop, in-house butcher, and specialty market bringing fine-dining technique to globally inspired sandwiches.” Chicago magazine has a peek: “‘I love the sandwich shops where you walk through a bodega and the sandwiches are in the back, so I wanted to recreate that,’ McKenna says. The retail side of the business is as important to McKenna as the sandwiches. ‘It feels to me that we’ve lost a little of our concern about quality. The Dean & DeLucas of the world have closed. I want to create just a little bit of that in a small venue.’”

FILM & TELEVISION

Record-Breaking Oscar Nominations For “Sinners”

“The nominations for the ninety-eighth Academy Awards were dominated by Hollywood’s most endangered species—highly original, studio-made films with hefty budgets,” proclaims the New York Times (gift link). “Sinners,” “a horror fantasia set in the 1930s and rooted in Black culture, and ‘One Battle After Another,’ a primal scream about authoritarianism and citizen resistance, emerged as films to beat by securing nominations in most major categories, including picture, director, actor, supporting actress, supporting actor cinematography and screenplay. ‘Sinners,’ which sold $368 million in tickets, received sixteen nominations in total, more than any other film in Academy Award history.”

“The two films were produced by Warner Bros., the studio that Netflix and Paramount Skydance are fighting each other to purchase. Studios have mostly stopped making these kinds of movies, instead pursuing spectacle-driven sequels with the potential for $500 million or more in box office returns. (In fact, the Warner Bros. executives who backed ‘One Battle After Another’ and ‘Sinners,’ Mike De Luca and Pamela Abdy, were widely expected to lose their jobs for taking those swings. Now they look shrewd.)” The Academy’s full list of nominees is here.

LIT

Ragdale Names John Rich Deputy Director

John Rich is the new deputy director of Ragdale, the Lake Forest-based artist residency nonprofit, the foundation announces on Instagram. Rich “has served most recently as the dance and theater subject matter expert at the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, where he advocated for the performing arts, curated programs and oversaw the development and management of funded artist residencies in dance and theater… Prior to DCASE, John served as manager of performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, director of the Guild Literary Complex, administrative director for the architecture, designed objects and historical preservation programs at SAIC, company manager for Goat Island Performance Group and founder of the Chicago Book Expo for independent publishers.”

MUSIC

CIVL And Choose Chicago See Nearly $3 Billion From Indie Music Venues

The Chicago Independent Venue League (CIVL) and Choose Chicago have released a Chicago-specific economic impact study showing independent music venues generate $2.8 billion a year, support nearly 17,000 jobs, and produce about $185 million in state and local tax revenue. But at the same time, only twenty-two percent of venues reported being profitable in 2024. “The bottom line is a mismatch between what venues generate for the public and how financially fragile they remain.”

Says Metro owner Joe Shanahan, “Independent venues are the backbone of Chicago’s music ecosystem. They are where artists grow, scenes collide, and culture is built from the ground up. Chicago’s independent music community is broad and interconnected, spanning genres, neighborhoods and generations in a way few cities can claim. When we think globally, we can act locally and protect these spaces, which in turn protects the city’s creative identity.” More here.