City in a Garden

The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago is excited to announce its latest exhibition, City in a Garden: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago, open July 5, 2025–May 31, 2026. The exhibition highlights Chicago’s essential yet often overlooked role in the stories of queer art and activism, examining the city’s queer history from the 1980s to the present. The exhibition’s title is based on Chicago’s official motto, Urbs in Horto, meaning “city in a garden.” In the context of this presentation, the title speaks to the exhibited artists' and activists’ utopian visions of a metropolitan sanctuary for people of all races, genders, and sexualities. These visions remain ever urgent, as queer people continue to fight for their lives and livelihoods under ongoing and renewed political threats.

The earliest works in City in a Garden date to the 1980s, when activists radically mobilized in response to the US government’s disastrous handling of the AIDS crisis. Around that time, the historically pejorative epithet “queer” began to be reclaimed as a liberatory term encompassing all who purposefully deviated from heteronormative society. Organized around five themes—Garden, Club, Street, Cinema, and Utopia—the exhibition draws on this history of activism to map the ways queer life in Chicago has taken shape, as well as the ways it continues to be imagined.

Drawing from the MCA Collection and key loans from local collections, City in a Garden features more than 30 artists and collectives who address the show’s themes 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. Artists include Doug Ischar, Patric McCoy, Amina Ross, Edie Fake, Jeanne Dunning, Nick Cave, Diana Solís, and Brendan Fernandes. Fernandes’s installation, The Rite (2019), will be activated with performances throughout the show’s run; times will be announced on the exhibition webpage.

In addition to in-gallery activations, the MCA will also host a series of programs centered on the themes of City in a Garden. Included in these events is the return of the MCA’s Primetime celebration, which features Smartbar’s legendary LGBTQ+ party Queen!, on July 18, 2025.

City in a Garden: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago is organized by Jack Schneider, Assistant Curator, with Korina Hernandez, Curatorial Assistant.