April 2026 Issue: The Big Art Issue (Print Edition)

The 2026 Breakout Artists

Hai-Wen Lin
Mauricio López F.
Isabelle Frances McGuire
Mariana Noreña G,
 Monika Plioplyte
Nick Raffel
Taitai xTina
Noelia Towers
Carina Yepez
Sangwoo Yoo

Chicago Artists Coalition will host a centerpiece exhibition of this year’s Newcity Breakout Artists. The exhibition will have an opening reception on Wednesday, April 8, 2026 from 5-9pm. This event is free and open to the public, hosted at CAC’s space on Hubbard Street. RSVP here, or get a ticket to the first look reception on April 7 here.

A Righteous Scream

Florence + the Machine makes musical sense of our moment

"It’s a mad, mad world for a woman. A noisy one, too. Here a 'shut up and sit down,' there the procreationist directive to 'hurry up and have children,' everywhere a cacophony of voices reminding the 'Second Sex' of the limited number of things the female body is for.  To which Florence Welch, the frontwoman of Florence + the Machine, channeling female frustration the world over, replies, 'Everybody Scream!'” (Anne K. Ream and R. Clifton Spargo)

Round and About

The Driehaus dance of Brendan Fernandes

"It started with the building. About two years ago, artist Brendan Fernandes was walking through the opulent Driehaus Museum with Lisa Key, the museum’s executive director. Key guided Fernandes into a building he hadn’t seen before: the Murphy Auditorium, located next to and recently acquired by the Driehaus. 'I was like, "What is this?” he recalls, wide-eyed. 'I think Lisa saw the wheels in my head turning.'" (Sharon Hoyer)

The Public I

Poets laureate and Chicago’s literary legacy

"avery r. young starts talking about a picture of him from years ago and a poem he’d written equally long ago. He laughs with recognition of this younger self. Mayda del Valle smiles along on her screen.  “We were babies,” avery says of when they met. “Like a long time. Ninety-five.”  “That long ago?” Mayda asks with a wide-eyed look of equal recognition." (Robert Eric Shoemaker) 

On the Mountain Top

Where can you find some of the best Chinese landscape paintings in the world? In Kansas City.

"It’s three in the afternoon, and I’m scrambling around Kansas City’s Nelson-Atkins Museum in search of an elusive “business entrance.” I’m late to a private viewing of Chinese landscapes which, I’m realizing more every minute, never should’ve been possible. Never mind that I’m eighteen, an amateur at best when it comes to the Chinese tradition, and that some of the works I’ll be seeing haven’t been on public view for over a decade—somehow, an interest in spreading the word about the Nelson’s Chinese collection permitted me to see what many others more qualified than me had been refused." ( Charles Venkatesh Young)

A Hamilton Redemption

After Kennedy Center withdrawal, producer Jeffrey Seller turns to Chicago "

"When I first met producer Jeffrey Seller in October 1997, he was promoting the first Chicago production of “Rent.” His self-introduction was memorable.  With carefree curly light-brown hair and intense blue eyes that focused in, Seller surrounded my hand gently with both of his and said somberly, “I’m sorry you have to talk to me. You really should be talking to Jonathan, but you can’t for obvious reasons. This is something I really need to do for him.” " (Dennis Polkow)

The Jazz Witch of Chicago Rises

How the Gertrude Abercrombie renaissance is reaching a new apex at the Milwaukee Art Museum

"Gertrude Abercrombie's body of work incorporates dreamlike images of spare interiors, stark landscapes and enigmatic self-portraits. As a leading figure in the Hyde Park art set, she enjoyed a local following for her work and was a figure in the visual art and jazz music communities from the 1930s into the 1970s in Chicago. During a quiet period after her death, Abercrombie's work was off to the side of the mainstream. An important gallery show in New York in 2018 renewed interest in her career, which has climbed steadily. And now a museum exhibition should help reintroduce her work to the public as well as demonstrate the reason for the intense and growing interest in her aesthetic ideas." (Bruce W. Pepich)

Arts & Culture

Art: Meet the MCA’s newest curator, Ionit Behar

Dance: Bright and shiny objects from Hedwig Dances

Design: What Tanner Woodford built

+ Mood: Vases and Vessels

Film: Inside the Onion City Experimental Film Festival

 Lit: The Great Lakes feel intimate and expansive in new collection

Reviews

Go see some shows because you can

Poetry

"Your Heart, Too”: A new poem by Rachel DeWoskin