The Elmhurst Art Museum announces its major summer exhibition Legacies: Selections from the Elmhurst Art Museum Permanent Collection. Featuring dozens of artists from Salvador Dali and Mies van der Rohe to Kay Rosen and Michiko Itatani, the group exhibition presents a rare opportunity to see the Elmhurst Art Museum’s permanent collection. The exhibition explores the relationships between artists, collectors, and museums that lead to larger, ongoing narratives connecting people across time and place. Led by the Museum’s curatorial team, Legacies: Selections from the Elmhurst Art Museum Permanent Collection is open from May 31 through August 17, 2025, at 150 South Cottage Hill Avenue in Elmhurst. Visit elmhurstartmuseum.org for the full schedule of dynamic exhibition-related programming and program updates.
Allison Peters Quinn, Executive Director and Chief Curator of the Elmhurst Art Museum, says, “Museum art collections like ours would not happen without a community of collectors gifting their treasured artworks to us. With Legacies, we are telling the story of the Elmhurst Art Museum by way of the individuals such as Cleve Carney, The Broidy Family, Carol and Dick Cline, and artists including Suellen Roca and Phyllis Bramson, for example, who chose to put their artwork in our care so that it could bring joy to others for decades to come. Also, what does a collection say about the collector? We hope to broaden the conversation of collecting to think about how and why we all are attracted to collecting objects.”
A regional center of 20th century American Art and Midcentury Design, the Elmhurst Art Museum Collection began in the 1990s and now includes approximately 1,000 works drawn from over 200 collections or donors, with a focus on modern and contemporary art works by Midwestern artists, architects, and designers that have exhibited at the museum, and furniture design items related to McCormick House.
The exhibition will feature micro installations of paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures from over a dozen collections donated to the Museum, and includes local, regional, national, and international artists.
Legacies: Selections from the Elmhurst Art Museum Permanent Collection broadly considers the nature of collecting and how and why selections on view were collected by certain families, artists, and individuals. Accompanying the exhibition will be a lively program of music, film, talks, and tours to address collecting practices and access to collections, while inspiring people to build collections of their own.
Summer visitors are also invited to see CROSSINGS, a solo exhibition of acclaimed Chicago-based artist Bernard Williams traversing the Museum’s campus. CROSSINGS includes several outdoor vehicle sculptures in Wilder Park, an airplane sculpture inside the Museum’s Hostetler Gallery, and large paintings in the McCormick House. CROSSINGS is curated by Peters Quinn and will also be on view through August 17.
ABOUT CROSSINGS
A Chicago native who has been making and exhibiting his art since 1990, Williams is celebrated for his public murals, sculptures, and paintings that highlight little-known or forgotten narratives in history. For CROSSINGS, Williams takes visitors on a journey through the history of Black achievements in transportation and agriculture.
“CROSSINGS is in my mind a far-reaching exploration of American history and culture. The artworks venture into the past and present to open up conversations about important individuals and ideas which can inform and inspire us today,” says Williams.
In CROSSINGS, Williams explores the concept of mobility—not just as physical movement forward, but as the human aspiration to rise to better circumstances. One of the sculptures is a race car, honoring Wendell Scott, the first Black man to win a NASCAR premier league event. Across the body of the car sculpture, Williams paints site-specific symbolism— for Elmhurst, the artist will recognize the lifetime achievements of the local NASCAR winner, Fred Lorenzen (1934-2024).
A highlight of the exhibition is a large, fabricated tractor in homage to the strength, power, and labor of African American farmers in the US. Titled Black Tractor (2020), the tractor memorializes Williams’s uncle, an Alabama-based farmer who distributed money from the Black Farmers Settlement to his relatives and funded Williams’s creation of this sculpture with a small inheritance.
Two new sculptures resembling signposts will also be unveiled in CROSSINGS. One signpost addresses the achievements of Black cowboys in shaping the American West after the Civil War, tying into the agricultural history presented in Black Tractor. The second sculpture honors Bessie Coleman, the first Black woman pilot and a trailblazer who created opportunities for other Black pilots in the early 1900s. This sculpture accompanies Williams’s new, monumental airplane sculpture, which will be presented in the Hostetler Gallery inside the Museum.
CROSSINGS is generously supported by Lakeside Bank and Explore Elmhurst with important contributions from Illinois Arts Council, Community Bank of Elmhurst, Elmhurst Bank/WinTrust, Elmhurst Park District, a JCS mini-grant from the DuPage Foundation, and Wangler and Company, Inc.
RELATED PROGRAMS
Exhibition Reception: Legacies: Selections from the Elmhurst Art Museum Permanent Collection and CROSSINGS
Friday, May 30, 6-8 pm
$28
Elmhurst Art Museum celebrates the openings of its summer exhibitions Legacies: Selections from the Elmhurst Art Museum Permanent Collection and CROSSINGS with exhibition viewing and light fare with members, artists, and community members. RSVP required.
Create With Us: Sculptures with Artist Bernard Williams
Saturday, June 7, 1-4 pm
Included with museum admission
Chicago artist Bernard Williams presents an artist talk and art-making activity. Williams’s large-scale sculptures and paintings are featured in the Museum’s summer exhibitions installed in Wilder Park and across the Museum’s galleries and McCormick House. Williams will discuss his varied art practice and themes concerning Black farmers and cowboys, the life of Bessie Coleman, and car sculptures. He will then lead participants in a workshop to create small cardboard sculptures of their own.
Soundbites: An Evening of Music
Saturday, June 21 7-9 pm
$50
Elmhurst Art Museum presents an evening of art and music. Groups of local musicians will perform in a variety of styles and genres throughout the Museum’s campus. Inspired by the concept of a progressive dinner, guests will move freely through the museum’s galleries and art studios to listen to “collections” of live music at their own pace.
Film Screening: A Collection of Short Films from the Chicago Film Archives Media Mixer Series
Thursday, July 24, 7-9 pm
Elmhurst Art Museum in partnership with the Chicago Film Archives (CFA) presents an evening screening of selected short films from the Chicago Film Archives Media Mixers series. This project pairs visual and sound artists who collaborate to make new video work using archival footage from the CFA collection. The evening includes light bites, beverages, and an opportunity to view the summer exhibitions.
ABOUT THE ELMHURST ART MUSEUM
The Elmhurst Art Museum is located at 150 South Cottage Hill Avenue in Elmhurst (IL), 25 minutes from downtown Chicago by car or public transportation (Metra). On the museum’s campus is the McCormick House, a single-family home designed in 1952 by Mies van der Rohe, one of the great architects of the 20th Century. The McCormick House is one of only three residences designed and built by Mies in the United States – and one of only two open to the public.
The Museum is open Wednesday and Thursday from 12:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m., Friday through Sunday, 11:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Regular admission prices are $18 for Adults (ages 18+), $15 for Seniors, $10 for Students, and $5 for Children.
For more information, please call 630.834.0202 or visit elmhurstartmuseum.org.
