Floating Museum is an art collective that creates new models: exploring relationships between art, community, architecture, and public institutions. Using site-responsive art, design, and programming we explore the potential in these relationships, considering the infrastructure, history, and aesthetics of a space.
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Description /
for Mecca, 2025, polyester blend fabric, dye sublimation, air blowers, hardware, 30’x41’x24’
for Mecca is part of Floating Museum’s Floating Monuments series. A ghostly, inflatable architecture, this monument moves to sites across Chicago and beyond, serving as a dynamic platform for memory, conversation, exhibition, performance, and education. Its design honors the Mecca Flats apartment building—once a vibrant center of Black life in Chicago’s Bronzeville—and conjures traces of the neighborhood’s historic architecture. Though the Mecca Flats building was demolished in 1952 in the name of urban renewal, its legacy lives on through art, music, and memory.
Rather than replicating the original structure, for Mecca is an amalgam of photographs, writings, and sound recordings that collapse Bronzeville’s rich cultural history into the present. It invites reflection on the demolition of Mecca Flats and its replacement by S.R. Crown Hall—an act emblematic of broader patterns of displacement across Chicago and cities throughout the United States. By surfacing these histories, for Mecca fosters dialogue, reconciliation, and a call to deeper inquiry. It acknowledges how racism and capitalism have accelerated the destabilization and erasure of significant Black cultural spaces.
Drifting, collapsing, and reappearing, for Mecca challenges traditional monuments and prompts us to ask: How do we remember? Who are monuments built for? And how can resilience be cultivated through art, storytelling, and collective care in an ever-shifting city and world?
Click here to read the full Press Release.
for Mecca is a collaboration with Lead Archivist Skyla Hearn, and was made possible by generous support from the Mellon Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art. Additional project support was provided by the Poetry Foundation, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Indiana University, and the University of Illinois Chicago.
This project is part of Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that aims to expand understandings of Chicago’s creative communities, past and present.
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for Mecca, 2025, polyester blend fabric, dye sublimation, air blowers, hardware, 30’x41’x24’
for Mecca is part of Floating Museum’s Floating Monuments series. A ghostly, inflatable architecture, this monument moves to sites across Chicago and beyond, serving as a dynamic platform for memory, conversation, exhibition, performance, and education. Its design honors the Mecca Flats apartment building—once a vibrant center of Black life in Chicago’s Bronzeville—and conjures traces of the neighborhood’s historic architecture. Though the Mecca Flats building was demolished in 1952 in the name of urban renewal, its legacy lives on through art, music, and memory.
Rather than replicating the original structure, for Mecca is an amalgam of photographs, writings, and sound recordings that collapse Bronzeville’s rich cultural history into the present. It invites reflection on the demolition of Mecca Flats and its replacement by S.R. Crown Hall—an act emblematic of broader patterns of displacement across Chicago and cities throughout the United States. By surfacing these histories, for Mecca fosters dialogue, reconciliation, and a call to deeper inquiry. It acknowledges how racism and capitalism have accelerated the destabilization and erasure of significant Black cultural spaces.
Drifting, collapsing, and reappearing, for Mecca challenges traditional monuments and prompts us to ask: How do we remember? Who are monuments built for? And how can resilience be cultivated through art, storytelling, and collective care in an ever-shifting city and world?
Click here to read the full Press Release.
for Mecca is a collaboration with Lead Archivist Skyla Hearn, and was made possible by generous support from the Mellon Foundation and the Terra Foundation for American Art. Additional project support was provided by the Poetry Foundation, the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Indiana University, and the University of Illinois Chicago.
This project is part of Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that aims to expand understandings of Chicago’s creative communities, past and present.
Description /
This is a Rehearsal invites audiences to consider cities as a continuous process rather than an enduring object. “This,” is a pronoun, adjective, and adverb; it points elsewhere. It refers to the myriad forms of art and design that evolve and emanate from the perpetual churn of the city: architectures, infrastructures, landscapes, monuments, technologies, criticisms, poetic forms, performances, spaces, theories, histories, and social organizations. In parallel, the word “rehearsal” offers an alternative to a manifesto. Rather than declare one particular aim, rehearsal is an open-ended framework that is intentionally designed to allow for uncertainty, progress, failure, and redemption. Rehearsals, like cities, coordinate a range of people coming together from different contexts, cultures, and lived experiences to produce environments in fulfillment of a range of perspectives. In this sense, rehearsals are structures of constant coordination and re-negotiation.
“This” also refers to CAB itself. A biennial is a form that organizes other forms. We do not see it as a stranger or outsider; we see it as an integral function of the city. It is in itself a process of production. Biennials are informed by the city and offer a range of potential forms to the city. While CAB is expressed as a range of exhibitions, installations, performances, and spectacles, we see This is a Rehearsal as a feedback loop and timing device. A biennial is not merely a conversation about cities, but a conversation of, and with, the city. It is also a reflection on a range of cities, as they are, as they were, and as they could be.
List of Participants
For more information on CAB 5: This is a Rehearsal, please visit:
https://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/edition/cab-5/
This is a Rehearsal invites audiences to consider cities as a continuous process rather than an enduring object. “This,” is a pronoun, adjective, and adverb; it points elsewhere. It refers to the myriad forms of art and design that evolve and emanate from the perpetual churn of the city: architectures, infrastructures, landscapes, monuments, technologies, criticisms, poetic forms, performances, spaces, theories, histories, and social organizations. In parallel, the word “rehearsal” offers an alternative to a manifesto. Rather than declare one particular aim, rehearsal is an open-ended framework that is intentionally designed to allow for uncertainty, progress, failure, and redemption. Rehearsals, like cities, coordinate a range of people coming together from different contexts, cultures, and lived experiences to produce environments in fulfillment of a range of perspectives. In this sense, rehearsals are structures of constant coordination and re-negotiation.
“This” also refers to CAB itself. A biennial is a form that organizes other forms. We do not see it as a stranger or outsider; we see it as an integral function of the city. It is in itself a process of production. Biennials are informed by the city and offer a range of potential forms to the city. While CAB is expressed as a range of exhibitions, installations, performances, and spectacles, we see This is a Rehearsal as a feedback loop and timing device. A biennial is not merely a conversation about cities, but a conversation of, and with, the city. It is also a reflection on a range of cities, as they are, as they were, and as they could be.
List of Participants
For more information on CAB 5: This is a Rehearsal, please visit:
https://chicagoarchitecturebiennial.org/edition/cab-5/
Description /
The Garden, 2022, polyester blend fabric, dye sublimation, air blowers, hardware, 30’x22’x12’
Floating Monuments: The Garden with Kushala Vora places the monument–an already complex, hybrid, and enigmatic object–at the center as a catalyst for conversation, scenographic intervention, and a performance platform. The project includes a new inflatable sculpture exhibit in Floating Museum's Floating Monuments series. Docents engage the general public during the day and the sculpture and platform transform into a performance series at night. A curated series of sets will explore project themes of diaspora, improvisation, and create a space for musicians and performers.
The project focuses on the role of plants as world makers. The ephemeral monument, platform and performance series serve as a catalyst for conversation about the movement of people and plants such as cotton, black pepper, poppy, rice and clove. The word, diaspora–'dia' meaning across and 'spora' meaning scatter–itself has botanical roots. Vasco Da Gama and Columbus sought out the Indian subcontinent for direct access to spices. This 'discovery’/exploitation of people and plants as 'resources' have continued to shape the way we see ourselves, each other and the landscape that we reside with. The monument aims to connect multiplicities through these routes of trade and passage.
Profoundly linked to the empire, cultivation and trade, plant types have shaped and continue to shape wide-reaching systems. With an evident disruption of our global supply chains resulting from the pandemic, wars and climate change, how might we make different choices which would diminish neo-colonial tendencies? The project aims to use the metaphor of garden to conjure up these themes and associated questions, and the ways in which they have affected ecological change, colonialism, capitalism, and violence. Additionally, the piece aims to blur the lines between dialogic platform, sculpture, and performance to model a pluralistic approach to monumentality.
If, like Rebecca Solnit writes in the 'Ruins of Memory' from 2007, the United States is a country that in many ways functions as a country without a past, an amnesiac landscape, a country filled with cities that are the eradication, even the ruin, of the landscape from which it rose, Floating Monuments: The Garden proposes a monumental remembering of specific plant's histories as a framework to contest contemporary globalism's speed, dislocation and endless churning. In recognizing the ways in which ‘free' trade, and monoculture of plants have shaped the diaspora's of the world while taking time to reflect on movement of plants and people, our project aims to build a conversational structure.
This project is made possible with the generous support of the Illinois Arts Council, and the Joyce Foundation.
The Garden, 2022, polyester blend fabric, dye sublimation, air blowers, hardware, 30’x22’x12’
Floating Monuments: The Garden with Kushala Vora places the monument–an already complex, hybrid, and enigmatic object–at the center as a catalyst for conversation, scenographic intervention, and a performance platform. The project includes a new inflatable sculpture exhibit in Floating Museum's Floating Monuments series. Docents engage the general public during the day and the sculpture and platform transform into a performance series at night. A curated series of sets will explore project themes of diaspora, improvisation, and create a space for musicians and performers.
The project focuses on the role of plants as world makers. The ephemeral monument, platform and performance series serve as a catalyst for conversation about the movement of people and plants such as cotton, black pepper, poppy, rice and clove. The word, diaspora–'dia' meaning across and 'spora' meaning scatter–itself has botanical roots. Vasco Da Gama and Columbus sought out the Indian subcontinent for direct access to spices. This 'discovery’/exploitation of people and plants as 'resources' have continued to shape the way we see ourselves, each other and the landscape that we reside with. The monument aims to connect multiplicities through these routes of trade and passage.
Profoundly linked to the empire, cultivation and trade, plant types have shaped and continue to shape wide-reaching systems. With an evident disruption of our global supply chains resulting from the pandemic, wars and climate change, how might we make different choices which would diminish neo-colonial tendencies? The project aims to use the metaphor of garden to conjure up these themes and associated questions, and the ways in which they have affected ecological change, colonialism, capitalism, and violence. Additionally, the piece aims to blur the lines between dialogic platform, sculpture, and performance to model a pluralistic approach to monumentality.
If, like Rebecca Solnit writes in the 'Ruins of Memory' from 2007, the United States is a country that in many ways functions as a country without a past, an amnesiac landscape, a country filled with cities that are the eradication, even the ruin, of the landscape from which it rose, Floating Monuments: The Garden proposes a monumental remembering of specific plant's histories as a framework to contest contemporary globalism's speed, dislocation and endless churning. In recognizing the ways in which ‘free' trade, and monoculture of plants have shaped the diaspora's of the world while taking time to reflect on movement of plants and people, our project aims to build a conversational structure.
This project is made possible with the generous support of the Illinois Arts Council, and the Joyce Foundation.
Photography courtesy of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Description /
The Art Institute’s lion statues are beloved by many as icons welcoming them to a place that feels like a second home, but to others they represent gatekeepers who silently exclude. For this exhibition, the four members of Chicago-based art collective Floating Museum took these statues as a jumping-off point to consider questions of access, inequality, and the totemic power of art objects. The project results from interconnected collaborations that took place during the first two years of the pandemic. Curators in Photography and Media invited Floating Museum to explore the department’s collections. In response, Floating Museum invited ten community organizers and cultural hosts in Chicago, as well as ten local photographers, to help create new works based on the collection.
Hosts, photographers, Floating Museum, and the Art Institute curators learned more about one another in ten hour-long Zoom calls; excerpts play at the end of this show. In follow-up conversations, also conducted online, each host selected one of three photographs that Floating Museum offered from the museum’s collection (all of the images are on view in the next two galleries). The museum delivered reproductions of the selected works to the location each host designated as their home, after which the photographers produced new images in these settings, featuring the hosts and the works they selected. Finally, Floating Museum closed the circle by incorporating these commissioned pictures into the photo-sculptures on view in this gallery.
This project formed the basis of a new collaborative, community-based network, with art as the medium of communication. It encourages us to consider the potential of the Art Institute’s holding to act as a collective resource for all Chicagoans.
Photographers /
Sulyiman Stokes / Jonathan Castillo / Kirsten Leenaars / Nicole Harrison / Vidura Bahadur / Monica Boutwell / Tonika Johnson / Darryl DeAngelo Terrell / Guanyu Xu / Leonard Suryajaya
Hosts /
Serge JC Pierre-Louis / Maria & Roman Villarreal / Joann Podkul Murphy / Levette Haynes / Shireen & Afzal Ahmad / Heather Miller / Erika Allen / Curtis J. Tarver II / Alaka Wali / Stephanie Harris
Supporting Organizations /
Black Dog Fund
The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation
Floating Museum acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
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More to Read /
Exhibit Information
Official Art Institute of Chicago Exhibition Site
“With No Fear or Fence”: An Experiment in Collective Exhibition Making
by Matthew S Witkovsky
“If They Won’t Come to the Museum, Then the Museum Must Go to Them”
by Lori Waxman for HYPERALLERGIC
“Emergent Institutions: The Floating Museum’s 'A Lion for Every House' Makes New Connections”
by Pia Singh for NewCityArt
“An Exercise in Empathy and Trust: Collaborating with Lions”
by Joann Podkul-Murphy and Kirsten Leenaars for the Art Institute of Chicago
“A Lion For Every House: Interrogating How Art Exists In Space”
by Ayana Contreras for Vocalo
The Art Institute’s lion statues are beloved by many as icons welcoming them to a place that feels like a second home, but to others they represent gatekeepers who silently exclude. For this exhibition, the four members of Chicago-based art collective Floating Museum took these statues as a jumping-off point to consider questions of access, inequality, and the totemic power of art objects. The project results from interconnected collaborations that took place during the first two years of the pandemic. Curators in Photography and Media invited Floating Museum to explore the department’s collections. In response, Floating Museum invited ten community organizers and cultural hosts in Chicago, as well as ten local photographers, to help create new works based on the collection.
Hosts, photographers, Floating Museum, and the Art Institute curators learned more about one another in ten hour-long Zoom calls; excerpts play at the end of this show. In follow-up conversations, also conducted online, each host selected one of three photographs that Floating Museum offered from the museum’s collection (all of the images are on view in the next two galleries). The museum delivered reproductions of the selected works to the location each host designated as their home, after which the photographers produced new images in these settings, featuring the hosts and the works they selected. Finally, Floating Museum closed the circle by incorporating these commissioned pictures into the photo-sculptures on view in this gallery.
This project formed the basis of a new collaborative, community-based network, with art as the medium of communication. It encourages us to consider the potential of the Art Institute’s holding to act as a collective resource for all Chicagoans.
Photographers /
Sulyiman Stokes / Jonathan Castillo / Kirsten Leenaars / Nicole Harrison / Vidura Bahadur / Monica Boutwell / Tonika Johnson / Darryl DeAngelo Terrell / Guanyu Xu / Leonard Suryajaya
Hosts /
Serge JC Pierre-Louis / Maria & Roman Villarreal / Joann Podkul Murphy / Levette Haynes / Shireen & Afzal Ahmad / Heather Miller / Erika Allen / Curtis J. Tarver II / Alaka Wali / Stephanie Harris
Supporting Organizations /
Black Dog Fund
The André and Elizabeth Kertész Foundation
Floating Museum acknowledges support from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.
More to Read /
Exhibit Information
Official Art Institute of Chicago Exhibition Site
“With No Fear or Fence”: An Experiment in Collective Exhibition Making
by Matthew S Witkovsky
“If They Won’t Come to the Museum, Then the Museum Must Go to Them”
by Lori Waxman for HYPERALLERGIC
“Emergent Institutions: The Floating Museum’s 'A Lion for Every House' Makes New Connections”
by Pia Singh for NewCityArt
“An Exercise in Empathy and Trust: Collaborating with Lions”
by Joann Podkul-Murphy and Kirsten Leenaars for the Art Institute of Chicago
“A Lion For Every House: Interrogating How Art Exists In Space”
by Ayana Contreras for Vocalo
Description /
Building on the first exhibition presented at the Malmö Konstmuseum, Sustainable Societies for the Future: Chicago Edition includes work that engages with the following questions: How do we make societies more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable with all of the challenges we are facing today regarding climate, social inequality and the world’s growing population? And how can we accumulate change through art that explores collectiveness and social engagement for a better future together?
The second edition, which includes artists presented in the first exhibition in Sweden, is curated by Floating Museum and uses an LED truck as the exhibition platform and moves through the city over a period of three days. The exhibition presents a program that is mobile and investigates urban landscape, social geography and creates juxtapositions and complimentary moments between streetscape and the Nordic and American artist contributions.
The mobile exhibition format builds on using the ‘space of flows’ to stake a curatorial position outside of a static brick and mortar presentation, imagining possibilities for mobility, geography and mapping networks. The gesture also exists in the continuum of artists examining their relationship to institutions, and responds symbiotically to the evolution of museums—ranging from the cabinet of curiosities or Wunderkrammer between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, transitioning to the dense accumulations of time-capsule vitrines in nineteenth century museums, to the complete contrast of the contemporary art space, or as James Putman writes, “the modern art museum with its own, purist display aesthetic, a highly self conscious viewing space which proclaims the institutionalization of art.”[1]
Shifting from the modern art museum and repurposing a format generally used for mobile advertisement, the LED exhibition program visited locations across Chicago ranging from major art institutions, community spaces, a vehicle emission testing site, and historical spaces across the south, west and northsides.
[1] James Putnam, Art and Artifact: The Museum as Medium (New York: Thames and Hudson 2001)
Participating Artists /
Christian Falsnaes (DK) / Max Guy (US) / Minna Henriksson (FI) / Hesselholdt & Mejlvang (DK) / Ingela Ihrman (SE) / Toril Johannessen (NO) & Marjolijn Dijkman (NL) / Cheryl Pope (US) / Wang & Söderström (SE/DK) / Amanda Williams (US) / Michael x Ryan (US).
Curated by the Floating Museum (Faheem Majeed, Andrew Schachman, Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford, and avery r. young, US).
Building on the first exhibition presented at the Malmö Konstmuseum, Sustainable Societies for the Future: Chicago Edition includes work that engages with the following questions: How do we make societies more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable with all of the challenges we are facing today regarding climate, social inequality and the world’s growing population? And how can we accumulate change through art that explores collectiveness and social engagement for a better future together?
The second edition, which includes artists presented in the first exhibition in Sweden, is curated by Floating Museum and uses an LED truck as the exhibition platform and moves through the city over a period of three days. The exhibition presents a program that is mobile and investigates urban landscape, social geography and creates juxtapositions and complimentary moments between streetscape and the Nordic and American artist contributions.
The mobile exhibition format builds on using the ‘space of flows’ to stake a curatorial position outside of a static brick and mortar presentation, imagining possibilities for mobility, geography and mapping networks. The gesture also exists in the continuum of artists examining their relationship to institutions, and responds symbiotically to the evolution of museums—ranging from the cabinet of curiosities or Wunderkrammer between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, transitioning to the dense accumulations of time-capsule vitrines in nineteenth century museums, to the complete contrast of the contemporary art space, or as James Putman writes, “the modern art museum with its own, purist display aesthetic, a highly self conscious viewing space which proclaims the institutionalization of art.”[1]
Shifting from the modern art museum and repurposing a format generally used for mobile advertisement, the LED exhibition program visited locations across Chicago ranging from major art institutions, community spaces, a vehicle emission testing site, and historical spaces across the south, west and northsides.
[1] James Putnam, Art and Artifact: The Museum as Medium (New York: Thames and Hudson 2001)
Participating Artists /
Christian Falsnaes (DK) / Max Guy (US) / Minna Henriksson (FI) / Hesselholdt & Mejlvang (DK) / Ingela Ihrman (SE) / Toril Johannessen (NO) & Marjolijn Dijkman (NL) / Cheryl Pope (US) / Wang & Söderström (SE/DK) / Amanda Williams (US) / Michael x Ryan (US).
Curated by the Floating Museum (Faheem Majeed, Andrew Schachman, Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford, and avery r. young, US).
Thank you to the Nordic Culture Fond, Nordic Council of Ministers (Nordic Talks), The Danish Arts Foundation (DK), Danish Arts in Chicago (DK), Mondriaan Foundation (NL), OCA (NO), FRAME (FI), and Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation (US).
Description /
These are the guiding questions of the Burroughs Residency Pilot (The Burroughs), a pilot residency and R&D program. Initiated by the Floating Museum, The Burroughs will foster innovative connections between art, community, architecture, and public institutions.
The Burroughs honors poet, print maker, activist, and advocate Dr. Margaret T. Burroughs. Our aim is to continue with the efforts of Dr. Burroughs’–as well as those of Ida B Wells, Frederick Douglas, Simon Pokagon, F.L. Barnett, and others–to remediate the history of excluding specific constituencies from participating in the kinds of exhibitions that recognized and shaped contributions to American and world culture (e.g.,The World's Columbian Exposition and Century of Progress). The residency headquarters is located at Dr. Burroughs' former home–also the site where Dr. Burroughs founded the DuSable Museum of African American History in 1961–in the heart of Bronzeville.
The Burroughs Residency Pilot is made possible with the generous support of the Terra Foundation For American Art and Wagner Foundation!
Click here to read the full Press Release.
What could a “residency without walls” be?
How might our cultural community be served and strengthened by greater connectivity and resource-sharing between artists, creatives, community organizations, cultural workers, community members, and more?
How could artists and creatives in a residence be served by a highly connected network of cultural resources?
How do responses to these questions change–or remain the same–when explored in the context of our global cultural community?
How might our cultural community be served and strengthened by greater connectivity and resource-sharing between artists, creatives, community organizations, cultural workers, community members, and more?
How could artists and creatives in a residence be served by a highly connected network of cultural resources?
How do responses to these questions change–or remain the same–when explored in the context of our global cultural community?
These are the guiding questions of the Burroughs Residency Pilot (The Burroughs), a pilot residency and R&D program. Initiated by the Floating Museum, The Burroughs will foster innovative connections between art, community, architecture, and public institutions.
The Burroughs honors poet, print maker, activist, and advocate Dr. Margaret T. Burroughs. Our aim is to continue with the efforts of Dr. Burroughs’–as well as those of Ida B Wells, Frederick Douglas, Simon Pokagon, F.L. Barnett, and others–to remediate the history of excluding specific constituencies from participating in the kinds of exhibitions that recognized and shaped contributions to American and world culture (e.g.,The World's Columbian Exposition and Century of Progress). The residency headquarters is located at Dr. Burroughs' former home–also the site where Dr. Burroughs founded the DuSable Museum of African American History in 1961–in the heart of Bronzeville.
The Burroughs Residency Pilot is made possible with the generous support of the Terra Foundation For American Art and Wagner Foundation!
Click here to read the full Press Release.
The Burroughs Residency Advisory Committee (RAC) brings together Chicago-based arts and cultural organizations whose work reflects the spirit of Dr. Margaret T. Burroughs, centering community, creativity, and collective empowerment.
Together, these partners guide the development of the Burroughs Residency, ensuring the program remains grounded in Chicago’s diverse cultural ecosystem. Through shared dialogue and collaboration, the RAC helps shape a residency model that celebrates local histories, nurtures artists across disciplines, and strengthens the networks that sustain Chicago’s creative landscape.
The RAC’s contributions reflect Floating Museum’s ongoing commitment to co-creation, reciprocity, and building structures that make artistic practice a shared civic act.
In partnership with:
Together, these partners guide the development of the Burroughs Residency, ensuring the program remains grounded in Chicago’s diverse cultural ecosystem. Through shared dialogue and collaboration, the RAC helps shape a residency model that celebrates local histories, nurtures artists across disciplines, and strengthens the networks that sustain Chicago’s creative landscape.
The RAC’s contributions reflect Floating Museum’s ongoing commitment to co-creation, reciprocity, and building structures that make artistic practice a shared civic act.
In partnership with:
Englewood Arts Collective uses art projects and place-based engagement to disrupt segregation and invest in communal creativity. We’re committed to shifting narratives about Chicago’s South Side—especially Greater Englewood—with positive representation, meaningful conversations, creative interventions, and community-driven solutions that create tangible ways for people to consider and engage with historically disinvested areas. Creative Placemaking. Collective Power. ︎︎
With creativity at the center of everything we do, SkyART provides free, safe, open spaces where people are empowered and connections are made. Since its inception in 2001, SkyART has grown and expanded tremendously while remaining committed to providing young people with free, high-quality arts programming in a safe, accessible space. That commitment, shaped by an abiding responsiveness to community needs, has guided our growth and has continually positioned SkyART as a trusted center for creativity and community, within and beyond our South and West Side studios in Chicago. ︎︎
Founded in 1940 through the WPA’s Federal Art Project, SSCAC is the nation’s only remaining Black art center of its kind. Located in the heart of Bronzeville, the Center preserves and celebrates Black cultural and artistic legacy through exhibitions, education, and intergenerational programs. For over 85 years, SSCAC has served as a sanctuary and launchpad for Black artists on the South Side and beyond. ︎︎
SpaceShift is a creative hub for collaboration and experimentation. We are a collective of artists, cultural workers, and change makers rethinking the ways in which we work, live, and create. SpaceShift was launched because we believe existing systems, structures, and spaces need to be overhauled and reimagined. We embrace radically transparent processes and open-source collaboration. Our practice centers communities and connects people, ideas, and resources in all things that we conceptualize, design, and create. ︎︎
Urban Growers Collective (UGC) is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization founded under the leadership of Erika Allen in 2017. UGC operates 8 urban farms totaling 11 acres primarily located on the South Side of Chicago; a 30-acre peri-urban farm in Chicago Heights established in 2024, and is a strategic partner in the 9-acre Green Era Campus renewable energy facility and hub for urban agriculture in Auburn Gresham. These farms are production-oriented, growing over 23,000lbs of produce each year available farmers markets, in our Collective Supported Agriculture program, and via our Fresh Moves Mobile Market buses. They also serve as spaces for UGC staff-led education, training, leadership development, healing and creativity. ︎︎
Floating Works is our workforce development initiative that connects art, community, and public life. The program brings together artists, students, trades workers, and public institutions to create pathways for community-driven economic growth.
By leveraging the power of art, our work:
- Builds skills-based training programs in the arts.
- Develops fabrication and conservation infrastructure on Chicago’s South and West Sides.
- Positions art and aesthetics as drivers of vibrancy, resilience, and investment in neighborhoods.
Floating Works models how community, training, and infrastructure can come together to shape our cultural and economic future. This vision takes shape through collaborative projects developed with artists, students, and communities.
Description /
The TABLES Project explores the table as both a symbolic and functional site of gathering, ritual, and exchange. Rather than focusing on the production of dining furniture, the project emphasizes the cultural and familial practices that emerge around the table—moments of communion, storytelling, nourishment, and care.
Launching in 2025, the program convenes a small group each week to reflect on family, food, culture, and love. These conversations inform the design and construction of wooden tables for participants’ homes. The resulting objects are both functional and symbolic: places of daily use as well as touchstones for reimagining how intentional gatherings can strengthen households.
The tables also serve as central elements in a photo-based campaign designed to inspire broader audiences to view the home as a site of sanctuary, education, and connection.
TABLES Project is led by Chicago-based artist and educator Nathan Miller, whose multidisciplinary practice spans photography, writing, woodworking, and public installation.
Participants /
Linda Kimbrough, Chevveria Stevens, Demaurus Stevens, and Christopher Willis
This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council through federal funds provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.
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The TABLES Project explores the table as both a symbolic and functional site of gathering, ritual, and exchange. Rather than focusing on the production of dining furniture, the project emphasizes the cultural and familial practices that emerge around the table—moments of communion, storytelling, nourishment, and care.
Launching in 2025, the program convenes a small group each week to reflect on family, food, culture, and love. These conversations inform the design and construction of wooden tables for participants’ homes. The resulting objects are both functional and symbolic: places of daily use as well as touchstones for reimagining how intentional gatherings can strengthen households.
The tables also serve as central elements in a photo-based campaign designed to inspire broader audiences to view the home as a site of sanctuary, education, and connection.
TABLES Project is led by Chicago-based artist and educator Nathan Miller, whose multidisciplinary practice spans photography, writing, woodworking, and public installation.
Participants /
Linda Kimbrough, Chevveria Stevens, Demaurus Stevens, and Christopher Willis
This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council through federal funds provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Description /
In summer 2024, we launched our first Floating Works Conservation Summer Intensive. Through site visits, readings, and lectures with conservation specialists across the Midwest, five recent graduates and students were introduced to the foundations of arts conservation careers and approaches. Participants gained firsthand experience with conservation techniques, visiting with professional conservators and touring working conservation facilities in the midwest.
The Conservation Intensive was led by artist and educator Andi Crist.
Participants /
Marla Chinbat, Katon Sylvain-Blackburn, Irma Gualpa, Messejah Washington, and Veronica Pruneda
Floating Museum is an arts collective that creates new models exploring relationships between art, community, architecture, and public institutions. Using site-responsive art, design, and programming we explore the potential in these relationships, considering the infrastructure, history, and aesthetics of a space. Floating Museum is co-directed by avery r. young, Andrew Schachman, Faheem Majeed and Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford.
Best known as a poet, songwriter, and performer, multi-disciplinary artist avery r. young is also an award-winning teaching artist who mentors youths in the crafts of creative writing and theater. He has been an Arts and Public Life Artist-In-Residence at the University of Chicago and has written curriculum for Columbia College Chicago, Young Leeds Authors, True Star Magazine, and Chicago Public Schools Art Integration Department. Young’s poems and essays on HIV awareness, misogyny, race records, and art integration have been published in The BreakBeat Poets, The Golden Shovel Anthology: New Poems Honoring Gwendolyn Brooks, AIMPrint, and other anthologies.
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avery@floatingmuseum.org
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avery@floatingmuseum.org
Andrew Schachman designs environments, infrastructures, and installations. He is the executive co-director of two organizations that are experimental spaces for delivering arts and culture within existing metropolitan networks: Floating Museum and Fieldwork Collaborative Projects. Trained as an architect, he designed and managed projects for the offices of Zaha Hadid, Perkins and Will, Carol Ross Barney, and Doug Garofalo. His projects have received numerous awards including the Distinguished Building Award from the American Institute of Architects and the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation Award for Architectural Excellence in Community Design. Principal of Studio Andrew Schachman, he recently completed the design for the Palais de Tokyo’s exhibition, “Singing Stones,” in the roundhouse of the DuSable Museum of African American History. Andrew is a Lecturer in Urban Design at the University of Chicago.
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andrew@floatingmuseum.org
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andrew@floatingmuseum.org
Faheem Majeed is an artist, educator, curator, and community facilitator. He blends his unique experience as an artist, non-profit administrator, and curator to create works that focus on institutional critique and exhibitions that leverage collaboration to engage his immediate, and the broader community, in meaningful dialogue. As part of his studio practice, he transforms materials such as particle board, scrap metal and wood, discarded signs, and billboard remnants, breathing new life into these often overlooked and devalued materials. As its former executive director (2007-2011), Chicago’s South Side Community Art Center serves as Majeed’s primary muse. Majeed also serves as a co-director and founder of Floating Museum.
Majeed is a recipient of the Field and Macarthur Foundation’s Leaders for a New Chicago Award (2020), Joyce Foundation Award (2020), the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant (2015), and the Harpo Foundation Awardee (2016). Majeed’s work has been exhibited in numerous institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, Malmö Konstmuseum, SMFA at Tufts, The High Line, and the Hyde Park Art Center. Majeed received his BFA from Howard University and his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). He is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at the UIC.
︎ faheem@floatingmuseum.org
Majeed is a recipient of the Field and Macarthur Foundation’s Leaders for a New Chicago Award (2020), Joyce Foundation Award (2020), the Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant (2015), and the Harpo Foundation Awardee (2016). Majeed’s work has been exhibited in numerous institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Art Institute of Chicago, Malmö Konstmuseum, SMFA at Tufts, The High Line, and the Hyde Park Art Center. Majeed received his BFA from Howard University and his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). He is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at the UIC.
︎ faheem@floatingmuseum.org
Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford is a visual artist and assistant professor of sculpture at Indiana University Northwest. He is also a co-director and co-founder of the collective Floating Museum. His work has been shown at the Art Institute of Chicago, Malmö Konstmuseum, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, American Academy of Arts and Letters, The UCSD Art Gallery, and The Hyde Park Art Center, among other spaces.
He has held fellowships at the Sculpture Space, the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, the Brown Foundation Program at the Dora Maar House, and the Skowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting. His work has been supported by grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Harpo Foundation, the Propeller Fund, the Chauncey and Marion Deering McCormick Foundation, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, and a Fulbright Fellowship in Sicily. Reviews of his work have been included in outlets like Sculpture Magazine, Hyperallergic, Artforum, and the Chicago Tribune.
︎ jeremiah@floatingmuseum.org
He has held fellowships at the Sculpture Space, the MacDowell Colony, Vermont Studio Center, the Brown Foundation Program at the Dora Maar House, and the Skowhegan School of Sculpture and Painting. His work has been supported by grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Harpo Foundation, the Propeller Fund, the Chauncey and Marion Deering McCormick Foundation, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, and a Fulbright Fellowship in Sicily. Reviews of his work have been included in outlets like Sculpture Magazine, Hyperallergic, Artforum, and the Chicago Tribune.
︎ jeremiah@floatingmuseum.org
Bianca Marks
Eric Perez
Gail Ana Gomez
Paola Ferrario
Bianca Marks is an arts and culture impresario who supports the development and realization of complex artistic projects, working at the nexus of artists, institutions, and cultural infrastructure. Her work focuses on translating ideas into action through coordination, partnership-building, and sustained attention to process.
Described as “the engine that makes art move in Chicago,” Bianca unifies artists, organizations, and partners across planning, communications, and execution - aligning creative vision with the relationships, resources, and logistics required to bring ambitious work into the world. Her approach is grounded in care and a deep respect for the labor that sustains collective cultural work.
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bianca@floatingmuseum.org
.Described as “the engine that makes art move in Chicago,” Bianca unifies artists, organizations, and partners across planning, communications, and execution - aligning creative vision with the relationships, resources, and logistics required to bring ambitious work into the world. Her approach is grounded in care and a deep respect for the labor that sustains collective cultural work.
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bianca@floatingmuseum.org
Eric Perez is an artist and educator in the city of Chicago. Primarily a photographer, his work focuses on his experience of being a Marine during his two deployments as part of the Global War on Terror. As Project Manager for Floating Museum, he deploys his skills in photography and videography to document Floating Museum’s projects. He also leads a team in the deployment of two inflatable monuments throughout the city of Chicago.
Perez earned his Associates in Art at Triton College in 2016 and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) with a Bachelors in Fine Art in 2019. Upon graduating, he was selected to take part in Chicago Artist Coalition's Launch Residency (2019). He was selected to be a National Endowment for the Humanities Veteran Fellow (2022) with the emerging Veterans Art Movement. In 2023, he was awarded the annual David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Arts Foundation award and residency at the Hyde Park Art Center. Perez's work has been shown in UIC's 2019 BFA thesis show, Triton College Art Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago, Gallery400, and the Hyde Park Art Center.
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eric@floatingmuseum.org
Perez earned his Associates in Art at Triton College in 2016 and graduated summa cum laude from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) with a Bachelors in Fine Art in 2019. Upon graduating, he was selected to take part in Chicago Artist Coalition's Launch Residency (2019). He was selected to be a National Endowment for the Humanities Veteran Fellow (2022) with the emerging Veterans Art Movement. In 2023, he was awarded the annual David C. and Sarajean Ruttenberg Arts Foundation award and residency at the Hyde Park Art Center. Perez's work has been shown in UIC's 2019 BFA thesis show, Triton College Art Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago, Gallery400, and the Hyde Park Art Center.
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eric@floatingmuseum.org
Gail Ana Gomez is an arts administrator who has been working with museums and arts organizations as an editor and project manager for the last fifteen years. She has overseen numerous museum exhibitions, publications, and artist commissions, from locally focused historical projects like The Time is Now! Art Worlds of Chicago's South Side 1960–1980 (2018), to publications with a global reach like Imaginable World's: Art, Crisis, and Global Futures (2022).Her research interests include language justice and inclusive language practices in museums and accessible design for exhibitions and publications. She holds an M.A. in Museum and Exhibition Studies from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), and bachelor's degrees in studio art and art history from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington (UNCW).
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gail@floatingmuseum.org
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gail@floatingmuseum.org
Paola Ferrario is a community builder and strategist who transforms ideas into sustainable change. With experience spanning community development, urban planning, and resource mobilization, her work bridges gaps between people, organizations, and visions. Paola’s participation in four America's Competitiveness Exchange cohorts and her Mashav scholarship reflect her commitment to innovation and collaboration.
Rooted in her belief in inclusivity and sustainability, she creates opportunities for meaningful engagement that empower communities to thrive.
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paola@floatingmuseum.org
Rooted in her belief in inclusivity and sustainability, she creates opportunities for meaningful engagement that empower communities to thrive.
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paola@floatingmuseum.org
Ashwaty Chennat
Ashwaty Chennat is an artist, programmer, facilitator, and administrator with a decade of experience developing platforms for performance, cultural exchange, and community-driven programming. She has collaborated with organizations including Mandala Arts, SpaceShift Collective, and the Chicago Park District, and has supported numerous artists in the realization of their independent projects. Their work is grounded in cultural exchange, social histories, and the contemporary creative expressions of diasporic communities. A highlight of their practice was establishing and directing the Mandala Makers Festival for four years in Chicago’s “Little South Asia.”
Ashwaty’s thoughtful, collaborative leadership and commitment to supporting artists and their practices led them to their current role as Floating Museum’s Burroughs Residency Manager.
Ashwaty’s thoughtful, collaborative leadership and commitment to supporting artists and their practices led them to their current role as Floating Museum’s Burroughs Residency Manager.
Floating Family
Chris Pappan
Monica Rickert-Bolter
Kushala Vora
Chris Pappan is an enrolled member of the Kaw Nation and honors his Osage and Lakota heritage. His cited artistic influences are the Lowbrow art movement, Heavy Metal and Juxtapoz magazines, and taps into the American cultural roots of 1970s underground comics, punk, and hot rod cultures. His art literally reflects the dominant culture’s distorted perceptions of Native peoples and is based on the Plains Native art tradition known as Ledger Art. A graduate of the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and a nationally recognized painter and ledger artist, Chris’ work is in numerous museums such as the National Museum of the American Indian, Washington D.C.; the Tia collection in Santa Fe NM and the Speed Museum of Art in Louisville KY among many other important collections both nationally and internationally. He is represented by Blue Rain Gallery in Santa Fe NM.
Chris is currently a board member and co-founder of the Center for Native Futures, a Native American gallery and studio space in Chicago’s Loop. He lives and works in Chicago with his wife Debra Yepa-Pappan, and their daughter Ji Hae.
︎chrispappan.com
︎centerfornativefutures.org
Chris is currently a board member and co-founder of the Center for Native Futures, a Native American gallery and studio space in Chicago’s Loop. He lives and works in Chicago with his wife Debra Yepa-Pappan, and their daughter Ji Hae.
︎chrispappan.com
︎centerfornativefutures.org
Monica Rickert-Bolter is a Chicago-based visual artist of Potawatomi and Black heritage. Her artwork uses traditional mediums, such as charcoal and pastels, graphic design, and digital coloring to create expressive characters and tell diverse stories. After her undergrad, Monica became involved with Native nonprofits, combining her love of art and education to develop youth programs and resources, including illustrating children’s books.
Monica is a co-founder and the Director of Operations at the Center for Native Futures, a Native fine arts gallery that opened in September 2023. Her artwork has been featured in exhibitions at The National Museum of the American Indian, The Field Museum, the University of North Carolina Stone Center, The Watershed Art & Ecology, the National Public Housing Museum, and the Center for Native Futures. Her upcoming collaborative projects include a public art piece with the Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights and an Afro-Indigenous Futurist graphic novel with her brother Joel Rickert.
︎monicarickertbolter.com
Monica is a co-founder and the Director of Operations at the Center for Native Futures, a Native fine arts gallery that opened in September 2023. Her artwork has been featured in exhibitions at The National Museum of the American Indian, The Field Museum, the University of North Carolina Stone Center, The Watershed Art & Ecology, the National Public Housing Museum, and the Center for Native Futures. Her upcoming collaborative projects include a public art piece with the Beacon Hill Black Alliance for Human Rights and an Afro-Indigenous Futurist graphic novel with her brother Joel Rickert.
︎monicarickertbolter.com
Kushala Vora is a dreamer, community organizer and an interdisciplinary artist working in sculpture and drawing. In and through her practice she focuses on loosening the exertion of power on oneself, another and the landscape that we reside with.
Kushala is currently a Jackman Goldwasser Resident at The Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago and is one of Chicago’s Newcity 2023 Breakout Artists. She has been a resident at Skowhegan School of Painting and Drawing, Anderson Ranch Art Center, Chicago Artist Coalition, Søndre Green Farm Norway and ACRE Residency. Her work has been exhibited at Museum of Fine Arts, Nagoya, Japan; Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit; Mana Contemporary, Chicago; Harvard University, Cambridge; Chicago Artist Coalition, National Indo-American Museum among other places. Kushala received a MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She hold a post-graduate diploma in Modern and Contemporary Indian Art History and Curatorial Studies from Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai, India and a BFA from Tufts University/ SMFA, Boston. She is the co-founder of Atmo - a reading + praxis forum.
︎kushalavora.com
Kushala is currently a Jackman Goldwasser Resident at The Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago and is one of Chicago’s Newcity 2023 Breakout Artists. She has been a resident at Skowhegan School of Painting and Drawing, Anderson Ranch Art Center, Chicago Artist Coalition, Søndre Green Farm Norway and ACRE Residency. Her work has been exhibited at Museum of Fine Arts, Nagoya, Japan; Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit; Mana Contemporary, Chicago; Harvard University, Cambridge; Chicago Artist Coalition, National Indo-American Museum among other places. Kushala received a MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She hold a post-graduate diploma in Modern and Contemporary Indian Art History and Curatorial Studies from Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai, India and a BFA from Tufts University/ SMFA, Boston. She is the co-founder of Atmo - a reading + praxis forum.
︎kushalavora.com
For general inquiries: info@floatingmuseum.org
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Aug 19, 2025
The Architect’s Newspaper
Floating Museum’s for Mecca conjures the ghosts of lost architectures in Bronzeville, Chicago
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Aug 15, 2025
Chicago Reader
Resurrecting the Chicago Renaissance
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Aug 15, 2025
Architect Magazine
Air Apparent: Traveling Exhibit Inflates Chicago’s Lost Landmarks
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Aug 12, 2025
Colossal
An Inflatable Building Recreates the Iconic Mecca Flats at the Heart of Chicago’s Black Renaissance
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Aug 9, 2025
Chicago Tribune
Floating Museum lets public walk through history with latest inflatable, ‘for Mecca’
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Aug 8, 2025
NBC5 Chicago
Floating museum honors history of Mecca Flats
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Aug 7, 2025
Chicago Sun-Times
A new exhibit revives Mecca Flats, one of Bronzeville's most intriguing places
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Aug 5, 2025
Block Club Chicago
Floating Museum‘s ‘for Mecca’ Honors Historic Bronzeville Housing Complex
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Aug 5, 2025
CBS News Chicago
Chicago’s Floating Museum aims to bring art, history to public spaces
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Jul 15, 2025
WBEZ Reset with Sasha-Ann Simons
Remembering Bronzeville’s Mecca Flats
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Jul 11, 2025
Illinois Tech Magazine
‘for Mecca’ Floating Monument Program Comes to Illinois Tech to Highlight Historic Mecca Flats
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Jul 11, 2025
NewCity Design
Drifting Memory: Floating Museum’s Inflatable Monument Resurrects Mecca Flats
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Oct 4, 2024
Chicago Gallery News
Floating Museum Announces The Burroughs Residency Pilot
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Mar 8, 2024
Philanthropy News Digest
Mellon Foundation awards $3.3 million in arts and humanities grants
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Feb 10, 2024
Brooklyn Rail
Chicago Architecture Biennial 5: This is a Rehearsal
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Feb 1, 2024
Interior Design
10 Questions With… Artist and Poet, Avery R. Young
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Jan 23, 2024
Abitare
Learning from Chicago
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Jan 8, 2024
Thomas S. Kenan Institute For The Arts
The Floating Museum
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Dec 21, 2023
PIN-UP
Monuments, Materials, and Vacant Lots of Promises
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Dec 9, 2023
Bloomberg
The Chicago Architecture Biennial Is Stuck in a Loop
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Dec 4, 2023
dwell
Charcoal, Mushrooms, and More Become Building Parts for a South Chicago Artist Residency
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Nov 28, 2023
New York Times
At the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Artists Run Free
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Nov 28, 2023
Chicago Tribune
Chicago Architecture Biennial returns with ‘This is a Rehearsal’ and the Cultural Center shines
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Nov 28, 2023
Chicago Reader
Discover Chicago’s layered history
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Nov 28, 2023
Terremoto
Before The Architecture There Was The Land This is A Rehearsal: Chicago Architecture Biennial 5
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Nov 20, 2023
Galerie
The 8 Best Exhibitions at the Chicago Architecture Biennale 2023
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Nov 20, 2023
Architectural Record
The Fifth Edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial Envisions the City as a Sprawling Work in Progress
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Nov 17, 2023
The Architectural Review
Dress rehearsal: Chicago Architecture Biennial 2023
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Nov 14, 2023
designboom
architectural innovations occupy thompson center atrium during chicago biennial
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Nov 10, 2023
Dezeen
Ruth De Jong draws upon Nope set design for Chicago Architecture Biennial
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Nov 9, 2023
Wallpaper*
Chicago Architecture Biennial 2023 launches diverse survey of the built environment
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Nov 9, 2023
The Architect’s Newspaper
This is a Rehearsal, the Chicago Architecture Biennial’s fifth iteration, curated by Floating Museum, embodies the “beauty and horror” of our global moment
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Nov 1, 2023
Chicago Sun-Times
Opening Wednesday, Chicago Architecture Biennial provides an alternate view of city
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Nov 1, 2023
WBBM Newsradio
Chicago Architecture Biennial highlights design-forward approach to global issues
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Oct 9, 2023
NewCity Design
Dry Run: Why Feda Wardak is Building a Waterless Water Tower in Englewood
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Oct 2, 2023
Architectural Record
With a Full Opening Still Ahead, the Chicago Architecture Biennial’s Fifth Edition Commences at Select Sites
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Sep 22, 2023
Axios
Thompson Center transformed for Chicago Architecture Biennial
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Sep 21, 2023
NewCity Design
Hallucination About the World: How Floating Museum Curates an Architectural Biennial
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Sep 21, 2023
NewCity Design
Rehearsal Time: The Chicago Architecture Biennial 2023
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Sep 20, 2023
Chicago Reader
Biennial as experimentation
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Sep 19, 2023
WBBM-AM
Radio Transcript
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Sep 19, 2023
Chicago Gallery News
Beyond the Dazzle: Inspiration, Admiration and Lessons in Chicago’s Architecture This Fall
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Sep 13, 2023
NewCity Design
Can’t-Miss Design Events (Fall Arts Preview 2023)
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Apr 24, 2023
Chicago Sun-Times
avery r. young named first-ever Chicago Poet Laureate
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Mar 30, 2023
CBS News
Traveling monument seeks to teach hidden story of Kitihawa DuSable
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Oct 3, 2022
Vocalo
A LION FOR EVERY HOUSE: INTERROGATING HOW ART EXISTS IN SPACE
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Sep 20, 2022
ArchDaily
Chicago Architecture Biennial Announces Floating Museum Collective as Artistic Directors of CAB 5
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Sep 15, 2022
The Architect’s Newspaper
Floating Museum tapped as artistic team for This is a Rehearsal, the fifth edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial
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Sep 9, 2022
NewCity Art
Emergent Institutions: The Floating Museum’s “A Lion for Every House” Makes New Connections
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Aug 7, 2022
Hyperallergic
If They Won’t Come to the Museum, Then the Museum Must Go to Them
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Jan 26, 2022
Chicago Sun-Times
A new restaurant, studio space and neighborhood store receive city grants
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Mar 2, 2021
Chicago Tribune
MCA reopens with show featuring Chicago artists: MSI and Chicago History Museum to follow reopening
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Sep 20, 2019
Block Club Chicago
Watch ‘The Voice’ Alum Meagan McNeal Wow CTA Green Line Riders With An Impromptu House Performance
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Aug 29, 2019
NewCity Art
Art 50: Chicago’s Visual Vanguard 2019
“Inspired by the DuSable Museum of African American History, the Floating Museum was conceived as a way to bring art and cultural activities to multiple Chicago neighborhoods. “Cultural Transit Assembly,” their current project, is a public art activation of the CTA’s Green Line, and involves park programming and a train car modified into a gallery.”
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Aug 28, 2019
WBEZ95.1CHICAGO
Inflatable Sculpture Travels Along CTA Green Line
“Every Wednesday this summer, Founders has been moving to a different park along the CTA Green Line train tracks. Hulsebos-Spofford said the group chose that route because its tracks — which span the West and South Sides and downtown — travels through “a lot of neighborhoods where important cultural work is happening.”
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Aug 20, 2019
Chicago Defender
Chicago’s Floating Museum launches latest public art initiative:Cultural Transit Assembly
“From Austin to Englewood, free public art exhibitions and gigantic inflatable sculpture activate CTA Green Line ‘L’ neighborhoods; plus, music and poetry performances to pop up on artist-designed ‘L’ train cars”
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Aug 20, 2019
Chicago Gallery News
Chicago’s Floating Museum launches latest public art initiative: Cultural Transit Assembly
“The robust roster of Cultural Transit Assembly programming – all free and open to the public – includes a series of Chicago artist exhibitions in Austin Town Hall Park and Garfield Park and a gigantic inflatable sculpture paying tribute to the City’s founders, which will be stationed next to the Green Line in a new location every Wednesday.”
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Aug 16, 2019
Chicago Tribune
Wonder what that four-faced object is outside your Green Line 'L' window? The Floating Museum’s latest art initiative
“The arts collective that explores relationships between art, community, architecture, and public institutions is activating the city again and this time over 50 artists came together to make the city’s oldest "L" line a “moving cultural destination" by creating surprise art encounters for the public.”
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Aug 16, 2019
Curbed Chicago
A 25-foot inflatable sculpture will pop-up along the Green Line
“A pop-up art museum has created a 25-foot inflatable sculpture it plans to bring through different neighborhoods along the Green Line. That’s not all—the public art initiative will also transform two L train cars into moving art galleries with lunchtime poetry and music.”
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Aug 2, 2019
Artsy
EXPO CHICAGO 2019 Announces Core Programs
“Founders Inflatable (2019) by the Floating Museum, a mobile monument whose form is a mix of interpretations of items from the collections of the DuSable Museum of African American History, the Field Museum of Natural History, as well as interpretations of various historical figures (located at Navy Pier).“
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Dec 18, 2018
Chicago Tribune
Best visual art of 2018, from spaces big and small.
“The Floating Museum collective, meanwhile, moved their enormous foam bust of Jean Baptiste Pointe Du Sable onto a spit of overgrown land at the mouth of the Chicago River, advocating for a planned but as-yet-unbuilt commemorative park to Chicago’s first non-indigenous settler, a handsome and educated black man rendered in sickly yellow, waiting incongruously amid the greenery.”
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Dec 25, 2017
Chicago Tribune
The Roundhouse is a stunner, and the art show is good, too.
“...circle around the Floating Museum’s “Echo Location,” a ring of steel shelves that displays a show within the show. It’s all about reflection: a video by Florian Pugnaire and David Raffini bounces off plexiglass sheets that angle above horizontal monitors; 3-D printed copies of busts from the collection of the DuSable Museum of African American History begin with precision but progress through doubling and tripling; more traditional models of architectural elements of the Roundhouse enshrine the surroundings. The Floating Museum — a collective made up of Schachman, Avery R. Young, Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford and Faheem Majeed — proposes an idea of museums for today: adaptive, communal, open, temporary. It’s a bold gesture to make from inside “Singing Stones,” which marks the first and for now the only public use that has been made of the Roundhouse since the Park District turned it into a storage facility in the 1930s.”
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July 28 2017
Chicago Magazine
Floating Museum Carries Culture Across Neighborhood Boundaries
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May 10, 2017
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May 10, 2017
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Upcoming Events/
2026
14-16 Feb10am - 5pm / Washington Park / The Roundhouse at the DuSable Black History Museum / Participation in Chicago Architecture Biennial 6: SHIFT / for Mecca Floating Monument
Past Events/
2025
29 Apr4:30pm - 7pm / Springfield, IL / Illinois Arts Council 60th Anniversary Celebration / Partnership with Illinois Arts Council and the Illinois Governor’s Mansion / The Garden Inflatable Monument
7 Jun
1pm - 5pm / Pendleton Park / Grand Boulevard / 12th Annual Party4Peace / Partnership with Hadiya’s Promise / The Garden Inflatable Monument
19 Jun
9am - 3pm / North Lawndale / Juneteenth Parade / Partnership with Lawndale Pop-Up Spot / Founders Inflatable Monument
21 Jun
10am - 4pm / Lincoln Park / Civic Saturday / Partnership with Chicago History Museum / Founders Inflatable Monument
27 Jun
11am - 5pm / Grand Crossing Park / Partnership with the Grand Crossing Park Fieldhouse / Founders Inflatable Monument
11am - 5pm / Grand Crossing Park / Partnership with the Grand Crossing Park Fieldhouse / The Garden Inflatable Monument
9 Aug
12pm - 6pm / Bronzeville / S. R. Crown Hall (IIT) / Mecca in Memory / Partnership with Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture & Office of Community Affairs / for Mecca Inflatable Monument
23 Aug
10am - 6pm / DuSable Harbor / DuSable Annual Commemoration in conjunction with the DuSable Heritage Association / Founders Inflatable Monument
13 Sep
12pm - 9pm / Englewood / Englewood Music Festival / Partnership with Englewood Arts Collective / Founders Inflatable Monument
20 Sep
10:30am - 2:30pm / Humboldt Park Fieldhouse / PBS Kids: Explore Your City / Partnership with WTTW / Sticks + Tape Collaborative Construction
4 Oct
3:30pm - 4:30pm / Bronzeville / Kaplan Institute at Illinois Tech / Partnership with Chicago Architecture Biennial and Chicago Humanities Festival / This is a Rehearsal: Catalogue Launch and Conversaton and Founders Inflatable Monument
Free to Register
11 Oct
9:00am - 2:00pm / Bronzeville / Blanc Art Gallery / Partnership with Chicago Architecture Biennial / The Garden Inflatable Monument
2024
21 Sep - 11 Feb 2024This is a Rehearsal / Chicago Architectural Biennial 5
18 May
10am - 5pm / Bronzeville / Partnership with Chicago Humanities Festival / The Garden Inflatable Monument
23 May
4:30pm - 5:30pm / Denmark / University of Copenhagen / Partnership with Museum Why? / Keynote: “Dream” makes a giddy sound
29 May
6:30pm - 8pm / Chinatown / Partnership with Chinese American Museum of Chicago / Unfurling Memories: A Conversation on Preserving Histories
8 Jun
11am - 3pm / Pilsen / Partnership with National Museum of Mexican Art / Festival Del Niño / The Garden Inflatable Monument
15 Jun
10am - 4pm / Garfield Park / Partnership with West Side Cultural Arts Council / Juneteenth Freedom Day Celebration / The Garden Inflatable Monument
27 Jul
9am - 4:30pm / South Chicago / Partnership with Urban Growers Collective / The Garden Inflatable Monument
7 Aug
4pm - 7pm / West Ridge / Partnership with SpaceShift and DCASE / Chicago SummerDance in the Parks / The Garden Inflatable Monument
21 Aug
10am - 6pm / Garfield Park / Partnership with SkyArt / The Garden Inflatable Monument
24 Aug
10am - 6pm / DuSable Harbor / DuSable Annual Commemoration in conjunction with the DuSable Heritage Association / Founders Inflatable Monument
28 Sep
11am - 6pm / Seattle, WA / Partnership with Wa Na Wari / Walk the Block Festival / Founders Inflatable Monument
2023
13-16 Apr11am - 7pm / Navy Pier / Partnership with EXPO Chicago / The Garden Inflatable Monument
24 Apr
8am - 9pm / Governor’s Mansion Lawn / Springfield, IL / Partnership with OneState and Arts Alliance Illinois / Founders Inflatable Monument
24 Jun
10am - 2pm / Englewood / Partnership with Grow Greater Englewood / The Garden Inflatable Monument
25 Jun
12pm - 5pm / Lawndale / Partnership with Lawndale Pop-Up Spot / Sundays on the Boulevard: Growth & Abundance / The Garden Inflatable Monument
8 Jul
12pm - 7pm / Western Springs / Partnership with Allison Quinn Peters / Ravinia in Ridgewood / The Garden Inflatable Monument
22 Jul
1pm - 4pm / Hyde Park / Partnership with Hyde Park Art Center / Center Days / The Garden Inflatable Monument
29-30 Jul
12pm - 8pm / Oakwood Beach / Partnership with Silver Room Sound System Block Party / The Garden Inflatable Monument
16 Aug
6pm - 8:30pm / Lawndale / Partnership with Stone Temple Baptist Church and Community Food Navigator / Design in Urban Agriculture Showcase / The Garden Inflatable Monument
19 Aug
10am - 6pm / DuSable Harbor / DuSable Annual Commemoration in conjunction with the DuSable Park Coalition / Founders Inflatable Monument
12am - 4pm / South Works / Partnership with Urban Growers Collective / The Garden Inflatable Monument
29 Aug
6:30pm - 8pm / Prairie District / Partnership with Glessner House / Breaking Bread: Richard Nickel
21 Sep - 11 Feb 2024
This is a Rehearsal / Chicago Architectural Biennial 5
4 Nov
2pm - 5pm / Devon Ave & Artesian / Partnership with SpaceShift / Shamiana: Grow & Gather / The Garden Inflatable Monument
2022
14 May1pm – 2:30pm / Chicago Athletic Association / Partnership with Chicago Humanities Festival / Chicago’s Public Art with the Floating Museum / Performance and Conversation
11 Jun - 17 Oct
Art Institute Chicago / A Lion for Every House / Exhibit Information
11 Jun
11am – 2pm / Art Institute Chicago / A Lion for Every House: Opening Reception
16-17 Jul
12pm – 8pm / Oakwood Beach / Partnership with Silver Room Sound System Block Party / Founders Inflatable Monument
20 Aug
11am – 1:30pm / DuSable Harbor / DuSable Annual Commemoration in conjunction with the DuSable Park Coalition / Founders Inflatable Monument
9 Sep
2pm – 3:30pm / Art Institute Chicago / Slow Looking: A Lion for Every House / Gallery Conversation
11 Sep
11am – 7pm / South Shore Cultural Center / Partnership with Chicago Humanities Festival / Cooler by the Lake: South Shore Arts Party / Collective Construction with Sticks and Tape +
12-16 Sep
11am – 9pm / Lake Forest / Partnership with Lake Forest College/ Founders Inflatable Monument
5 Nov
10am – 5pm / Graham Foundation / Chicago Design Summit: The Future Real Conditional
Founders Inflatable / Park Locations and Schedule
2021
19 Jun10am – 7pm / Washington Park, Dusable Park Front Lawn / Juneteenth Celebration / Founders Inflatable
25 Jun
10am – 7pm / Douglass Park / Partnership with T.R.A.C.E. Youth summer programs / Founders Inflatable
09 Jul
10am – 7pm / Garfield Park / Partnership with the Garfield Park Advisory Council / Founders Inflatable
16 Jul
10am – 7pm / Douglass Park / Partnership with T.R.A.C.E. Youth summer programs / Founders Inflatable
23 Jul
10am – 7pm / Garfield Park / Partnership with the Garfield Park Advisory Council / Founders Inflatable
31 Jul
10am – 7pm / Douglass Park / Partnership with T.R.A.C.E. Youth summer programs / Founders Inflatable
06 Aug
10am – 7pm / Garfield Park / Partnership with the Garfield Park Advisory Council / Founders Inflatable
20 Aug
10am – 7pm / DuSable Harbor / DuSable Annual Commemoration in conjunction with the DuSable Park Coalition/ Founders Inflatable
21 Aug*
10am – 7pm / DuSable Harbor / DuSable Annual Commemoration in conjunction with the DuSable Park Coalition/ Founders Inflatable and *Live Performances at 6pm
Floating Museum presents TRANSLATOR featuring Starla Thompson (Potawatomi and Chumash) and Lional ‘Brother El’ Freeman.
27 Aug
10am – 7pm / Douglass Park / Partnership with T.R.A.C.E. Youth summer programs / Founders Inflatable
28 Aug
12pm – 4pm / North Lawndale / Partnership with Lawndale Pop-Up Spot / Founders Inflatable
10 Sep
10am – 5pm / Hyde Park / Partnership with Museum of Science and Industry / Founders Inflatable
11 Sep
10am – 5pm / Hyde Park / Partnership with Museum of Science and Industry / Founders Inflatable
18 Sep
12pm – 4pm / SkyArt / 20th Anniversary of SkyArt / Founders Inflatable / Collective Construction with Sticks and Tape
25 Sep
10am – 7pm / Midway Plaisance / in partnership with Hyde Park Jazz Festival / Founders Inflatable
26 Sep
10am – 7pm / Midway Plaisance / in partnership with Hyde Park Jazz Festival / Founders Inflatable
2019
July 24th 2019 – Austin Town Hall
5610 W Lake St, 11am - 6.30pm
July 27th 2019 – Poetry Foundation Block Party (Nat’l Museum of Mexican Art)
1852 W 19th St, 12pm - 4pm
July 31st 2019 – Garfield Park Conservatory
300 N Central Park Ave, 11am - 6.30pm
August 2nd 2019 - Re-Imagining Belonging Cook Out
Englewood Line W 58th St & S Halsted St, 12-6pm
August 7th 2019 – Hadiya Pendelton Park
4345 S Calumet Ave, 11am - 6.30pm
August 11th – Boxville Market Day Boxville
332 E. 51st, 12pm - 4pm
August 14th 2019 – Harding Park
4912 S. Calumet Ave. 11am - 6.30pm
August 21st 2019 – Garfield Park (Next to Conservatory, Central Park Green Line Station)
300 N Central Park Ave, 11am - 6.30pm
832 W 63rd St, 5 pm to 7.30pm
August 28th 2019 – Hadiya Pendleton Park
4345 S Calumet Ave, 11am - 6.30pm
September 4th 2019 – Harding Park
4912 S. Calumet Ave. 11am - 6.30pm
September 11th 2019 – Garfield Park (Next to Conservatory, Central Park Green Line Station)
300 N Central Park Ave, 11am - 6.30pm
September 16th, 17th – Hadiya Pendleton Park
4345 S Calumet Ave, 11am - 6.30pm
September 19th, 20th, 21st 2019 – EXPO Chicago
Navy Pier 600 E Grand Ave, Chicago, 11 am to 7pm
2018
July 13 - Cultural Transit Assembly Launch Party
August 26 - Reassembly of Photo in Grant Park with Move Me Soul
August 24 - Fieldwork Collaborative at the MCA, Move Me Soul
2017
September - Echo Location, in part with Singing Stones, curated by the Palais de Tokyo’s Katell Jaffrès
August 18 - Founder, in part with River Assembly project
2016
September - Calumet Park Assembly, done in collaboration with the Chicago Park District, the Southeast Chicago Historical Society, SkyArt, Consulate General of France in Chicago, and the Arts Pallette.
About Floating Museum:
Floating Museum is an innovative arts collective dedicated to exploring the intricate connections between art, community, architecture, and public institutions. Through site-responsive art, design, and programming, we strive to unearth the vast potential within these relationships while taking into consideration the infrastructure, history, and aesthetics of the spaces we engage with. Our mission is to inspire creativity, foster inclusivity, and promote cultural engagement in our ever-evolving urban landscapes.
Floating Museum is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We encourage applications from individuals of all backgrounds and experiences.
For more information on the current opportunities at Floating Museum, please click on the position titles below:
Floating Museum is an innovative arts collective dedicated to exploring the intricate connections between art, community, architecture, and public institutions. Through site-responsive art, design, and programming, we strive to unearth the vast potential within these relationships while taking into consideration the infrastructure, history, and aesthetics of the spaces we engage with. Our mission is to inspire creativity, foster inclusivity, and promote cultural engagement in our ever-evolving urban landscapes.
Floating Museum is an equal opportunity employer. We are committed to fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. We encourage applications from individuals of all backgrounds and experiences.
For more information on the current opportunities at Floating Museum, please click on the position titles below:
Join us!
Your financial support, together with others, is critical to our ability to keep creating programs and platforms that nurture our amazing city.
To make a donation, please email development@floatingmuseum.org or click on the link below:
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Checks can be mailed to /
Floating Museum
949 E 75th St
Chicago, IL 60619
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Floating Museum is deeply grateful for the generosity of our community. We extend our sincerest thanks to our current supporters!
Champions /
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Stephanie Field Harris Charitable Fund, a donor advised fund of The Chicago Community Foundation
Visionaries /
Chicago Community Foundation at the recommendation of Builders Initiative
Chauncey and Marion D McCormick Family Foundation
Cook County Justice Advisory Council
Field Foundation of Illinois
Funding Good Chaos
Searle Funds at The Chicago Community Trust
Terra Foundation for American Art
The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation
Wagner Foundation
Advocates /
Ruth Foundation for the Arts
Partners /
Arts Work Fund
Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation
Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts
Poetry Foundation
University of Illinois at Chicago
Friends /
Illinois Arts Council
Valerie Carberry
Sundeep Mullangi and Trissa Babrowski
Supporters /
The Renaissance Society
Nancy Lerner and David Frej
Michael B. Gray
We also extend our thanks to our anonymous donors.
Thank you!