Art Design Chicago


Visitor looking at a yellow painting installed on a white wall.

Visitors exploring Barbara Jones-Hogu: Resist, Relate, Unite 1968-1975 at DePaul Art Museum.

Art Design Chicago is a platform for collaboration and exchange developed with cultural practitioners throughout Chicago. The initiative seeks to catalyze transformative approaches to co-creation and community engagement and stimulate expansive narratives of Chicago art and design, past and present. Building new understandings of the city through the lens of its art and design history and legacy, Art Design Chicago aims to strengthen the local visual art ecosystem and encourage new and deeper partnerships between cultural organizations, creatives, and communities. 

Grounded in research and community and featuring a series of exhibitions and events starting in fall 2023 and continuing into 2025, Art Design Chicago highlights the stories and voices that are part of Chicago’s artistic identity and creative communities. By providing grant support and coordinating a network for collective learning and exchange throughout project development, the Terra Foundation encourages projects that broaden understandings of American art by highlighting artists and designers who have shaped Chicago’s creative heritage and contemporary life, with an emphasis on those who have been excluded from previous histories.   

The foundation encourages projects that employ inclusive and equitable approaches and are developed and implemented with the expertise and mutually enriching engagement of community partners. 

Grant Opportunities

Grant opportunities for this program are now closed. If you have any questions, please contact [email protected].

Art Design Chicago 2018

Art Design Chicago 2018 created a citywide partnership between more than 95 cultural organizations that produced 46 exhibitions and more than 300 programs.

Visit the archived website.

The 2018 edition supported the development of scholarly publications and digital resources, such as audio and video, exhibitions, and classroom tools, resulting in 45 publications and digital projects.

Explore digital resources.

Throughout 2018, more than 2.5 million visitors engaged in Art Design Chicago exhibitions and events.

Learn about the impact.

Frequently Asked Questions

For additional inquiries, please reference the Art Design Chicago 2024 FAQs.