City in a Garden: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago is an intergenerational group exhibition that highlights Chicago’s essential, yet often under acknowledged, role in the story of queer art and activism. The exhibition examines this history from the mid-1980s, when activists radically mobilized in response to the US government’s disastrous handling of the AIDS crisis. In this moment of change, activists reclaimed the historically pejorative epithet “queer” as a liberatory term, encompassing all who purposefully deviate from heteronormative society.

Drawn from the MCA’s collection and other local collections, City in a Garden follows this paradigm shift in LGBTQ+ history by bringing together work from over 30 artists and collectives working in Chicago from the 1980s to the present. The exhibition's curator, Jack Schneider, will walk us through the exhibition and share insights on his curatorial process.

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