The article previews three major art exhibitions in Chicago for fall 2025. Theaster Gates will present his first solo museum exhibition in his hometown at the Smart Museum of Art, featuring new installations derived from his collections of glass lantern slides, display vitrines, and the Johnson Publishing archive. Diane Simpson, at age ninety, makes her Art Institute of Chicago debut with an installation of three new works on the Bluhm Family Terrace, based on drawings from the mid-1980s. A comprehensive survey of Scott Burton, who died in 1989, opens at Wrightwood 659, showcasing nearly forty sculptures, photographs, ephemera, and the only known video of his performance work.
These exhibitions matter because they highlight significant yet overdue recognition of artists with deep ties to Chicago. Gates’s hometown debut underscores his growing institutional stature, while Simpson’s first Art Institute show at ninety corrects a long gap in representation for an older female artist. The Burton survey revives the legacy of a multidisciplinary artist whose career was cut short by the AIDS crisis, offering a fuller understanding of his contributions to sculpture, performance, and public art.