Design Museum of Chicago

Chicago has a long, complicated relationship with the bicycle. In the first Bicycle Boom in the 1890s, more than 2/3rds of American-made bicycles were manufactured here in Chicago. Today, we are seeing more examples of how the bicycle highlights inequity in the city, and discussing broader social issues, like gentrification and policing, through the lens of the bicycle. This adventure focuses on the early years of the bicycle and the innovations and innovators that came from Chicago.

Keep Moving: Designing Chicago's Cycling History

Join us as we explore iconic sculptures brought to life by Statue Stories Chicago! Acclaimed writers, public figures, and performers worked with producer Sing London to activate the city's treasure chest of historic art, offering lessons from the past with a modern twist. This citywide project was made possible by the Driehaus Foundation and will run until August 2018.

Driehaus Foundation

Statue Stories in Grant Park

Jackson Park, seven miles south of Chicago’s business and cultural heart, was designed in the last half of the 19th Century by famed landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and his partner, Calvin Vaux. In 1869, the newly formed South Park Commission was authorized to establish a major park on Chicago’s South Side, then the Village of Hyde Park. Explore the history and landscape that make up Jackson Park.

JPAC

Jackson Park In Your Pocket

Discover graphic design, architecture, and urban planning as you explore Dearborn Street in the heart of Chicago’s Loop.

Design on Dearborn Street

With their colorful walls, Chicago artists launched an international community mural movement in the 1960s and 70s. Follow Rebecca Zorach, Northwestern University art professor, as she recreates some of the highlights of these lost murals in the city.

Rebecca Zorach

With their colorful walls, Chicago artists launched an international community mural movement in the 1960s and 70s. Today most of the hundreds of murals they produced are gone. Rebecca Zorach is a Professor at Northwestern University who teaches and writes on early modern European art (15th-17th century), contemporary activist art, and art of the 1960s and 1970s. Walk with Rebecca, as she recreates some of the highlights of these lost murals in the city.

Lost Murals of Chicago

Get to know Chicago’s greatest forgotten artist/designer/craftsman, Edgar Miller, through the beautiful and whimsical houses he build and remodeled - merging 19th Century Arts & Crafts with the then-groundbreaking German Bauhaus School of design.

Edgar Miller Legacy

Edgar Miller was a multi-talented artist, craftsman, and designer who lived and worked in Chicago from 1917 until 1967, and then returned from 1986 until his death in 1993. His storied career spanned decades and included hundreds if not thousands of projects, ranging from murals and sculptural work for restaurants, hotels, and public buildings; graphic design jobs for department store catalogs, and advertising firms; and creative art. However what he is most well known for are his rehab projects from the 1920s and 1930s where he handmade homes from inside as well as outside. Join Zac Bleicher from the Edgar Miller Legacy as he takes you on an adventure through these iconic homes, all handmade by Edgar Miller.

Edgar Miller’s Handmade Homes

Join Julia Bachrach, former Chicago Park District historian, on a journey through Humboldt Park to learn more about the role the 150-year-old park served as key experimental grounds for Jens Jensen's Prairie style of landscape architecture.

Julia Bachrach

Established 150 years ago, Humboldt Park can be thought of as a living landmark with layers of history that reflect contributions by important landscape designers, architects, and artists. The most noteworthy, Danish immigrant Jens Jensen (1860 – 1951), revered the indigenous scenery of the Midwest and created the Prairie style of landscape architecture. Humboldt Park provided important grounds for his process of experimentation. Jensen went on to design estates for prominent businessmen such as Julius Rosenwald, Harold Florsheim, and Henry Ford. Join Julia Bachrach, former Chicago Park District historian and author of "The City in a Garden: A History of Chicago’s Parks," on a journey to learn more about how Humboldt Park served as Jens Jensen’s Experimental Grounds.

Humboldt Park: Jens Jensen’s Experimental Grounds

Art Design Chicago is a celebration of the vital role Chicago plays as America’s crossroads of creativity and commerce. Led by the Terra Foundation for American Art, this partnership of cultural organizations explores Chicago’s art and design legacy with exhibitions, talks, tours, and special events throughout 2018.

Art Design Chicago

New York

Grand Rapids

Chicago

Inspiration

Virginia

Tucson inspires a sense of freedom among all who visit. Freedom of thought and expression. Freedom to discover and explore. And the freedom to be yourself.