Rod Slemmons is the Executive Director of the Museum of Contemporary Photography at Columbia College Chicago. He’s had a very distinguished career as a museum professional, teacher, curator, writer, editor and printmaker.

graphic design, lettering, logo, illustration … Vandalism, punk rock, video, sandwich making … Teaching, editing, beard growing, book covers …

Dee Clements is a local painter, curator and aspiring gallerist.  Although Simple Gallery has been in the works as a brainstorm for ten years, it’s just within the past year that benefits have been held and the first artist grant has been awarded. Conducted over email between the end of July and beginning of August, [...]

In order to share hard truths, you need a vehicle. The vehicle could be something that I invent to reveal and other times, the stories come from the mouths of people who have lived them.

I think that the art institution has to change from being a warehouse to being a site for potential action.

Paul Chan’s digital videos and projects combine outsider art, surrealism, and popular culture in dystopian visions engendered by events of grave social injustice.

“As far as a scene, I feel that especially right now with photography in the art world, people just want to come up fast. They want to be the shit right now.”

This interview is part of 5 Questions About Critical Art In Chicago, an online publication presented by AREA Chicago.

Sure, you could call Steve Lambert a prankster, but that would be too simple a title.

“This is my studio… I’ve converted it into a cafe for four hours a day, serving art students coffee and hopefully engaging them…

…at the University of Chicago’s Smart Museum, Stephanie Smith has organized articulate exhibitions marked by expansive investigations of focused themes.

Among the things Horvitz mails to strangers: photographs of the sky, the sea, himself kissing a moon tree; a rock from the Hudson River

“I think there is always a gap to be bridged, with integrity on one side and compromise on the other.”