To support the Cultural Transit Assembly, a public art installation taking place along Chicago’s CTA Green Line, to include a modified train car art gallery space and art installations located in Chicago Park District sites adjacent to the train route. The installations will interpret objects related to Chicago’s art and design history, with connections being further elucidated through on-site signage, neighborhood walking tours, and other interpretive programs.

To support “Where the Future Came From”, a collective research project on the integral role of feminism and women-run art activities throughout Chicago’s history. This project seeks to document and contextualize the role of women and feminism within Chicago’s art history, from the late-19th century to the present. This multifaceted project consists of symposia, a participatory-research space within an installation environment, a series of programs that will be documented via a publication, and an archive representing the history of women-run spaces in Chicago.

To support an international convening for scholars and the general public, to be organized in conjunction with the exhibition Chicago Calling: Art Against the Flow. Proceedings include panel discussions, participant workshops, and tours to Chicago-area sites and collections of interest. The program explores the theme and idea of place in relation to outsider art, considering the artists’ influences on places in which they worked, and how locality and sense of place have influenced the presentation of non-mainstream art nationally and internationally.

To support “‘Say It with Pictures’ Then and Now: Chicago’s African American Photographers from 1890 through the 1930s”, a multi-tiered academic project exploring the under-recognized impact of African American communities in Chicago on the history of commercial photography in the US. This program jumpstarts a collaborative research project charting the role of African American photographers, studios, and black media in Chicago from 1890 through the 1930s in shaping and disseminating a black modern subjectivity nationally and internationally.

To support “Art Moves: Chicago’s Innovative Structures of Address”, an innovative programming series inspired by a grass-roots model from the late 1960s and 70s for disseminating information about black artists to residents on the South Side of Chicago. Enlisting a diverse team of experienced community educators, MOVA seeks to expand art history lessons beyond the walls of institutions.

To support a program titled “Inclusion by Design: Celebrating the Contributions of African American/Black Professionals in Chicago”, which exposes middle- and high-school students to careers and professionals working in careers in design and the applied arts. This program focuses on design practices represented in several Art Design Chicago exhibitions, expanding youth engagement with ADC content and providing participants with meaningful career-related experiences and connections in the art and design world.

To support “Chicago Archives + Artists Project: Art Design Chicago Edition”, a two-day public symposium highlighting Chicago archives and special collections, in order to raise awareness of and access to archives and special collections that contain materials documenting Chicago’s art and design history, and to grow Chicago’s current archival holdings by documenting and archiving the personal papers of contemporary Chicago artists. As a part of the project, Sixty Inches from Center is commissioning three contemporary Chicago artists, who are creating original artwork responding to a Chicago-focused archival collection.

To support “Chicago’s Black Arts Movement on Film”, a film series exploring Chicago’s Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The program will explore film as a visual art in and of itself, while also screening films that highlight the intersections between art and artists, music, and literature in Chicago. All screenings will be held at South Side locations, and the selected films are intended to complement concurrent Art Design Chicago exhibitions.