Chicago Museum Shows This Winter: Rashid Johnson at the MCA and New Art Institute Openings

Rashid Johnson at the MCA

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago sits just off the Magnificent Mile, at the top of a wide flight of outdoor stone steps. A Poem for Deep Thinkers is his first major retrospective and the largest exhibition he has had anywhere. It runs from his early experimental photographs through the black-soap shelf paintings to the Anxious Men and Broken Men series. His 2024 film Sanguine is here too, in a version adapted for Chicago.

Adult tickets are $22, or $19 if you live in Chicago, and anyone 18 and under gets in free. Illinois residents come in free on Tuesdays from 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. The museum opens at 10 a.m. and closes at 5 p.m., 9 p.m. on Tuesdays, and shuts on Mondays. If you have a second hour, Slow Dance is on until 14 March.

New openings at the Art Institute

The Art Institute of Chicago is the limestone Beaux-Arts pile on Michigan Avenue with the two green bronze lions by the steps. Mary Cassatt: After Impressionism brings together paintings, pastels and prints from the height of her career, and it closes on 3 January. The exhibition ticket is $7 on top of general admission, which runs $32 to $40 depending on where you live. Weekends and holidays sell out, so buy a slot before you fly.

Two newer shows run well past the New Year. Beatriz González: In Series and Full Color, a retrospective of the Colombian artist, is up to 1 March, and Tony Cokes: On Boredom to 14 March. The Neapolitan Crèche, the museum's painted terracotta nativity scene, is in Gallery 203 from 21 November to 4 January. Doors open at 11 a.m. and close at 5 p.m., 8 p.m. on Thursdays, with the whole museum shut on Tuesdays.

The White City and the Lincolns

The Richard H. Driehaus Museum is the 1880s Nickerson Mansion off Michigan Avenue, lined floor to ceiling in coloured marble and carved wood. Dreaming of the White City gets one month, from 2 December to 3 January. It brings out decorative art and keepsakes from the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, some of it never publicly shown. Tickets are $20, and the house is free for everyone on Wednesday evenings from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. It opens at 11 a.m. Wednesday to Sunday, until 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Wednesdays, and allow about 90 minutes.

Up in Lincoln Park, the Chicago History Museum has Threads of a Nation until 18 July, on the clothing worn by the Washingtons, the Adamses and the Lincolns. Mary Todd Lincoln's blood-stained cape is in it, and the show spends as much time on how conservators keep cloth this fragile intact. Admission is $24 and covers every exhibition in the building, with no advance ticket needed. It opens 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tuesday to Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday.

Darger in West Town

Intuit Art Museum on Milwaukee Avenue has rebuilt Henry Darger's one-room apartment and studio inside its galleries, down to the piled papers and the tracings. That installation is there for years yet. The show to catch now is Cutting and Pasting a World, on the paper dolls and scrapbooks that fed his work, and it ends on 31 January. Entry is $20 and free if you are 24 or under. Open 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday to Sunday, so don't plan it for a Monday or Tuesday.

A free stop on Michigan Avenue

The Chicago Cultural Center is free to walk around, and the Tiffany glass dome above Preston Bradley Hall is reason enough to go in when it's cold out. Resisting the Long Wars: Creative Rebellion is in the fourth-floor hall until 7 March. Free guided tours of the building run on Thursdays and Fridays at 1:15 p.m.

Hyde Park and Washington Park

The Smart Museum of Art costs nothing and has teamLab: Everything Exists in Infinite Continuity until 21 February. The galleries are dark and filled with projections of drifting flowers and falling water that react as you move through them. It's the collective's first show in the Midwest and covers about 25 years of their work. Two Nina Chanel Abney shows are on in the same building and run into the summer. Open 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., closed Mondays.

The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center stands among the bare trees of Washington Park, close enough to do both in one afternoon. Paris In Black follows the Black artists, writers and thinkers who made their lives in Paris, and runs to 28 February. It comes with the normal ticket, $14.50 for adults and $5 for children, and the museum opens 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday to Sunday. If you only have one day and it's downtown, leave this pair for another trip.

Pokémon fossils at the Field

The Field Museum has SUE the T. rex under the skylight of its main hall. This winter it also has Pokémon Fossil Museum, the show's first stop outside Japan. Life-size models of Fossil Pokémon stand against real fossil casts from the collection, with excavation tools along the route. Admission is $30, or $21 if you live in Chicago. The Pokémon show is a $20 add-on on a timed slot, and the slots go early, so book ahead. The museum opens 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily with last entry at 4 p.m. The show stays to 11 April, and Cleopatra & Egypt's Sunken Cities opens on 20 February.

Out to Skokie

The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center reopened on 11 November after a long renovation, so this is the first winter in the rebuilt galleries. Blacklist: The Hollywood Red Scare runs from 15 November to 24 April. In the holographic theater, recorded survivors answer questions put to them by the audience. Tickets are $18 and must be bought in advance, and the building is cashless. Entry is free on the last Wednesday of each month.

It's at 9603 Woods Drive in Skokie, outside the city. Driving, it's about half an hour from the Loop on I-94 to the Old Orchard exit, and there's free parking. The Yellow Line to Oakton–Skokie leaves you a 15 to 20 minute walk away. Door to door that trip takes well over an hour, so go by car if you have one. Open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day except Tuesday, last admission 4 p.m.

Before you go

Almost everything here closes on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, and several of them on New Year's Day too, so check the date you're planning. Buy two tickets before you arrive: Cassatt at the Art Institute and the Pokémon slot at the Field. If your trip starts after 3 January, both Cassatt and the White City show will have come down. See the Chicago guide and the Chicago hotel search.