Lori Waxman

Lori Waxman is a freelance writer for the Chicago Tribune.

Top 10 for Visual Art in Chicago: Big shows, big messages in the first months of 2022

January 6, 2022 at 11:45 a.m.

As museums carry on showing pandemic holdovers too good to cancel, the embarrassment of riches continues. So many great shows, so little space to mention them all! "Art and Race...

Andrea Bowers at MCA: This is protest art by an artist long experienced in the genre. But does protest art change minds?

December 19, 2021 at 8:56 p.m.

In the 20 days following the opening of Andrea Bowers' retrospective at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Supreme Court heard arguments challenging a Mississippi law banning abortion after...

"Southside Sunday Morning" by artist Bisa Butler hangs in the exhibition,"Bisa Butler: Portraits" at the Art Institute in Chicago.

The best (and worst) in visual art in Chicago in 2021

December 9, 2021 at 11:46 p.m.

This most awkward of year-end lists must begin with the Most Consequential Art Event of 2021: the return to seeing art in person. When galleries and museums reopened after months...

Review: ‘Stockyard Institute’ and ‘Successful Failures’ retrospectives show how successful art hasn’t always hung on the wall

November 12, 2021 at 1:00 p.m.

Paintings and photographs get hung, sculptures placed, videos projected, installations installed. Easy-peasy. The real challenge for museums is figuring out how to present artworks that ended, that function like businesses...

Barbara Kruger’s ‘THINKING OF YOU’ at the Art Institute: Her words surround you, make you wince, stay with you

October 20, 2021 at 4:29 p.m.

It's not easy to single out an individual phrase or sentence from the reams that make up "THINKING OF YOU. I MEAN ME. I MEAN YOU.," Barbara Kruger's career-spanning exhibition...

How essential is art? 29 MacArthur ‘geniuses’ answer that question in ‘Toward Common Cause’

September 24, 2021 at 1:51 p.m.

"Why are artists and performers not considered essential workers?" The powerhouse performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña posed this question during one of his pandemic radio broadcasts, and it begets more. What...

Top 10 art shows in Chicago for fall 2021: All the art you didn’t get to see because of the pandemic

September 8, 2021 at 3:07 p.m.

The schedule of exhibitions this fall is as thrilling and full as ever, no doubt because so many of the terrific shows that were delayed due to COVID-19 have been...

The invisible resistance of photographers Jo Ractliffe and An-My Lê on display in Chicago

July 22, 2021 at 2:44 p.m.

Artists are no strangers to politics. They participate in and sometimes lead protests, like those organized by Strike MoMA for 10 weeks this spring, exposing the Museum of Modern Art's...

DePaul Art Museum reckons with dearth of Latinx artists in U.S. collections

June 25, 2021 at 12:00 p.m.

Before viewing LatinXAmerican, a vigorous and timely exhibition of 40-plus artists of Latinx heritage that fills the entire DePaul Art Museum, you must first pass a 12-foot-tall green plumed headdress....

People check out a painting of water lilies in the new exhibit "Monet and Chicago" at the Art Institute of Chicago on Sept. 10, 2020.

Commentary: Where have all the arts critics gone?

November 3, 2020 at 9:25 p.m.

Closed since the coronavirus pandemic hit Chicago in March, the Art Institute reopened July 30 with exhibitions by perennial favorite Monet, legendary local sculptor Richard Hunt, and the late Mozambican...

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