“Big Picture: A New View of Painting in Chicago” at Chicago History Museum
The Chicago History Museum was an unlikely venue for hosting the best art exhibit this year, but the museum’s context hammered home the show’s theme—paintings can tell the history of Chicago, from urban planning and political satire, in styles realist, Imagist and all points in between. Curators John Corbett and Jim Dempsey dug deep into the historical archive, exhibiting such rarely seen gems as a mural from the glory-hole days at Gold Coast—one of the city’s earliest gay leather bars—and gave privileged views to the backs of some paintings, revealing secret inscriptions.
