Richard Hunt’s life is on exhibit in Chicago — and it’s a walk through Civil Rights history

A new exhibition titled “Freedom in Form: Richard Hunt” opens at the Loyola University Museum of Art in Chicago, exploring the 70-year career of the late sculptor Richard Hunt, who died in 2023 at age 88. The show includes his tools, workbench, personal books and photos, alongside key works such as “Hero’s Head” (1956), a welded bust created in response to the murder of Emmett Till, who was Hunt’s neighbor. The exhibition originated at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library Museum in Springfield and was conceived in 2019, with curator Ross Stanton Jordan and director Lance Tawzer aiming to present Hunt as a young artist deeply engaged with Civil Rights history.