Museums

Simone Biles attends The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute benefit gala celebrating the opening of the "Superfine: Tailoring Black Style" exhibition on Monday, May 5, 2025, in New York. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)

Photos: Met Gala 2025 celebrates Black style

By Chicago Tribune

May 5, 2025 at 8:25 p.m.

This year, the dress code is about tailoring and suiting as interpreted through the history...

As with the 1894 opening at the Palace of Fine Arts in Jackson Park, crowds line up when the Field Museum opens in its Grant Park location on May 2, 1921. (Field Museum)

Today in Chicago History: 8,000 people attend opening of Field Museum

By Kori Rumore

May 2, 2025 at 9:59 a.m.

Here's a look back at what happened in the Chicago area on May 2, according...

Visitors check out an exhibit on quilting at the National Museum of Mexican Art on April 24, 2025. The Chicago museum has worked to make exhibits more accessible by displaying art lower on the walls to aid visitors who might be wheelchair bound and using larger type for the descriptions of the art to help the visually impaired. (Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune)

Your museum’s federal grant has been terminated. Best wishes, Keith E. Sonderling.

By Tess Kenny

April 30, 2025 at 1:50 p.m.

Dozens of Illinois museums expected federal funding this year. The Trump Administration is now rescinding...

The natural area along the southern tip of Northerly Island Park on Aug. 27, 2024, in Chicago. The island is a 119.7-acre park along the Lake Michigan shoreline and was the site of the Century of Progress World Fair in 1933. The natural area features prairie and savanna, a 5-acre pond, and walking paths. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)

Northerly Island’s potential as an urban oasis goes unrealized as grand plans come and go

By Karina Atkins

September 1, 2024 at 5:00 a.m.

A century after its construction, the island is home to traffic bottlenecks on concert days,...

Gov. J.B. Pritzker and his wife, M.K. Pritzker, listen to speakers during a remembrance ceremony honoring the victims and survivors of the Highland Park shooting on July 4, 2023, in Highland Park. On Tuesday, the Pritzkers donated a historic document to the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum. (Stacey Wescott/Chicago Tribune)

Gov. J.B. Pritzker and wife donate key Civil War document to Lincoln presidential library

By Jeremy Gorner

May 3, 2024 at 6:31 p.m.

Gov. J.B. Pritkzer and his wife, M.K., donated a key document from the Civil War...

This image released by The Metropolitan Museum of Art shows a British waistcoat. The waistcoat is one of many items included in The Costume Institute’s 2024 exhibition, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion,” on view from May 10 through Sept. 2, 2024. (Nick Knight/The Metropolitan Museum of Art via AP)

Upcoming Met Gala exhibit ‘Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion’ aims to be a multi-sensory experience

By Jocelyn Noveck

April 15, 2024 at 12:41 p.m.

Open to the public beginning May 10, “Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion” features 250 items that...

A sign marks the Paul Powell Home and Museum, Oct. 8, 2020, photo in Vienna, Ill. (AP Photo/John O'Connor)

Southern Illinois home of Paul Powell, the ‘Shoebox Scandal’ politician, could soon be sold

By Associated Press

February 20, 2024 at 9:58 a.m.

The birthplace of one of Illinois' more notorious politicians might soon be up for sale....

Various Field Museum display cases in the Halls of the Ancient Americas and the Hall of Northwest Coast and Arctic Peoples are covered on Jan. 18, 2024. The decision was made in response to new revisions to the Department of Interior's regulations regarding Native American human remains, funerary objects, and sacred artifacts. The revisions partly insist that institutions consult with tribes before exhibiting or even studying such objects.

Off display: As new rules about Native American artifacts go into effect, the Field Museum and others in Illinois must comply

By Christopher Borrelli

January 24, 2024 at 11:00 a.m.

If you stop by the Field Museum right now and find yourself in the Alsdorf...

A few of the nearly 50 sculptures on view in "Ruth Duckworth: Life as a Unity," up through early February at the Smart Museum of Art in Chicago.

Review: So many lumps of clay: Exhibitions by Ruth Duckworth and contemporary Japanese women artists

By Lori Waxman

January 18, 2024 at 11:45 a.m.

Lovers of sculpture who prefer clay to other materials have much to celebrate this month...

José Ochoa is the new president of the National Museum of Mexican Art in Pilsen, taking over from founder Carlos Tortolero.

National Museum of Mexican Art announces new president

By Doug George

January 16, 2024 at 4:54 p.m.

The National Museum of Mexican Art has a new leader, announcing on Tuesday that José Ochoa will...

People look over a selection of pottery on displayed at the Field Museum's exhibit The Ancient Americas when it opened in 2007.

Field Museum covers some Native American displays as new rules take effect

By The New York Times

January 12, 2024 at 3:54 p.m.

The Field Museum in Chicago has covered up several display cases that feature Native American...

Lanterns are strung south of the Chinatown Gate in the 2200 block of South Wentworth Avenue in Chicago. The Chinese American Museum on 23rd Street is a short walk from many of the area's restaurants.

Top 10 for museums for winter 2024: Plenty worth leaving the house for

By Hannah Edgar

January 4, 2024 at 10:16 p.m.

Real Chicagoans know winter is the best season for museum-hopping in this city. New exhibitions...

"Bronze Statue of Saigo Takamori in Ueno Park, Tokyo" (1899; Ukiyo-e woodblock-printed vertical oban triptych, ink and color on paper) by Watanabe Nobukazu. Part of the exhibition "Meiji Modern" at the Smart Museum.

Art in winter 2024: Plenty of new exhibits in the new year, from speculative futures to documentary pasts

By Lori Waxman

January 4, 2024 at 11:00 a.m.

From speculative futures to documentary pasts, obsessive sculpture to coolly meditative spaces, historical Japanese design...