Lori Waxman

Lori Waxman is a freelance writer for the Chicago Tribune.

“Ten Symbols of Longevity,” a 19th century folding screen created by court painters of the Joseon dynasty. Part of the exhibition "Korean National Treasures: 2,000 Years of Art" at the Art Institute of Chicago. (Provided by AIC)

Review: ‘Korean National Treasures’ at the Art Institute is a once-in-a-lifetime visit

May 5, 2026 at 3:37 p.m.

Masterpieces from an elite family collection take a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Chicago in this Art Institute exhibition.

Photographer Kelli Connell's "Pictures for Charis" at the Elmhurst Art Museum includes portraits and landscapes that revisit iconic sites photographed by Edward Weston in the 1930s and 1940s. On the walls are Connell's photographs, on the display tables are Weston's. (Lizzie Moo)

Review: Love and Modernism: Photographer Kelli Connell at the Elmhurst Art Museum

February 25, 2026 at 5:00 a.m.

In dialogue with photos by Edward Weston, Kelli Connell's images examine the complicated relationships between humans and the landscape, photographers and their models, and pairs of lovers.

Contemporary British artist Ed Fairburn painted over an old map of Cardiff, hijacking its existing contour lines to reveal the portrait hiding therein. Many more maps — old and new, geographic and artistic —are on view in "Mapping Outside the Lines." (Provided by the Newberry Library)

Review: We can map that: Newberry Library exhibits 500-plus years of borders, folds and graticules

January 20, 2026 at 5:30 a.m.

From maps that become art to a rack of Rand McNally road maps, straight out of gas stations of yore, “Mapping Outside the Lines” covers a lot of ground.

A mid-career survey of Firelei Báez at the Museum of Contemporary Art includes “Man Without a Country (aka anthropophagist wading in the Artibonite River),” an installation of 225 collage-drawings on old book pages. (Oriol Tarridas photo)

Art exhibitions for winter 2026: Don’t miss these 10 at the MCA, Art Institute and in Elmhurst

January 22, 2026 at 4:19 p.m.

Photography at the Elmhurst Art Museum and MOCP, “Chair-ish” in Glen Ellyn, and coming in March, some very artful visual puzzles at the DePaul Art Museum.

Chicago Architecture Biennial 6, titled "SHIFT: Architecture in Times of Radical Change,” includes a neon sign with the motto “Beauty for All” by R&R Studios of Miami and a sporty triumphal arch fashioned from zippers, stuffed fabric, and rope, by BURR, of Madrid. (Robert Chase Heishman)

Review: Better buildings for all — what to see at the 6th edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial

November 24, 2025 at 9:37 a.m.

The sixth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial is now on view at sites across the city through the end of February.

Scott Burton's "Two-Part Chaise Longue," 1986-87, is made of polished Rosa Benveno granite. “Scott Burton: Shape Shift” has two on display, including one that visitors can try out. (Daniel Eggert)

Review: More seating please: Scott Burton’s furniture as sculpture at Wrightwood 659

November 3, 2025 at 1:02 p.m.

Though mostly we ignore it, furniture says a lot about a place, its priorities and the people who use it.

Three versions of Helen Frankenthaler’s “Divertimento” lithograph from 1983, on view in “Pouring, Spilling, Bleeding,” a survey of the Abstract Expressionist artist’s works on paper at the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern University. (Provided by Block Museum of Art, gift of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. Photographs by Thomas Barratt)

Art for fall 2025: From the Art Institute to the Architecture Biennial, 10 exhibits for all kinds of realities

September 5, 2025 at 5:30 a.m.

Look for visionary artwork by Elizabeth Catlett, Theaster Gates and Yoko Ono, plus a new show at the Elmhurst Art Museum.

Edie Fake’s mural “The Free Clinic for Gender Affirming Care” on display as part of the “City in a Garden: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago” exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art on July 15, 2025. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)

Review: ‘City in a Garden’ spans decades of local LGBTQ+ art and activism at the MCA

July 25, 2025 at 12:32 p.m.

The MCA’s “City in a Garden: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago” is a messy, exuberant gathering of painting, sculpture, photography, film and ephemera from the 1980s to the present...

“The Great Wave off Kanagawa” by Katsushika Hokusai. “Hokusai & Ukiyo-e: The Floating World” is now at the Cleve Carney Museum of Art in Glen Ellyn. (Edoardo Chiossone Museum of Oriental Art of Genoa, Italy)

Review: Going to Japan by way of Glen Ellyn in ‘Hokusai & Ukiyo-e: The Floating World’

June 18, 2025 at 4:41 p.m.

“Hokusai & Ukiyo-e: The Floating World,” a multimedia extravaganza inspired by the art of 18th- and 19th-century Japan, is on view through September at the Cleve Carney Museum.

A visitor views a Romaine Brooks self-portrait from 1923 at "The First Homosexuals" exhibit at Wrightwood 659 in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood. (Chris Sweda/Chicago Tribune)

Art for summer 2025: Top 10 exhibitions from Impressionists to protest art

May 22, 2026 at 7:46 p.m.

The Art Institute has a big summer show on Gustave Caillebotte, the Intuit Art Museum has reopened and "The First Homosexuals" at Wrightwood 659 is not to be missed. That's...

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