On July 5, 2025–Jan. 25, 2026, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), 220 E. Chicago Ave., will hold the exhibition “City in a Garden: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago” in its Sylvia Neil and Daniel Fischel Galleries.
According to a press release, “The exhibition examines this history beginning in the mid-1980s, when activists radically mobilized in response to the US government’s disastrous handling of the AIDS crisis and reclaimed the historically pejorative epithet “queer” as a liberatory term encompassing all who purposefully deviate from heteronormative society. With works drawn from the MCA Collection and other local collections, the exhibition features more than 30 artists and collectives working in Chicago from the 1980s to the present.
“These artists address queerness and related topics through diverse media and methods—including social documentary photography of clandestine queer spaces; craft-informed sculpture that challenges normative depictions of gender and sexuality; drawings, paintings, and videos that explore queer intimacy; archival materials related to groups who innovatively combine artistic and activist strategies; and more.”
As for the exhibition’s name, it comes from Chicago’s official motto, “urbs in horto,” which means “city in a garden.”
Assistant Curator Jack Schneider is organizing “City in a Garden.”