EXHIBITIONS
Arts + Public Life
2025
About the Artists
portrait of Nathaniel Mary Quinn
portrait of Gregory Huebner
Nathaniel Mary Quinn and Gregory Huebner: The Hand That Guides
October 30 – December 13, 2025
Gallery hours: Thursday-Saturday, 1PM-5PM
This exhibition marks the first joint presentation of Nathaniel Mary Quinn and his former mentor Gregory Huebner, two artists whose practices are bound by the transformative power of guidance, reflection, and human connection.
Renowned for his emotionally charged, collage-like portraits, Quinn presents a new series of paintings on linen created specifically for this occasion. These works meditate on the “guiding hands” that have shaped his life and artistic path—mentors, loved ones, and inner voices—while opening a broader conversation about the universal role of mentorship in shaping creative journeys.
Alongside Quinn’s new work, the exhibition features Huebner’s Ritual series (2015–ongoing), a body of abstract paintings that channel his lifelong exploration of the unseen. Layering color, energy, and gesture, Huebner seeks balance amid chaos, grounding his work in decades of philosophical inquiry and spiritual study.
Together, their works resonate across generations, offering two distinct yet interconnected visions of art as a practice of searching—whether for selfhood, for spirit, or for the possibility of transformation.
This exhibition is curated by Anastasia Karpova Tinari with assistance from Sheridan Tucker Anderson
Nathaniel Mary Quinn (b. 1977) creates hybrid, fractured portraits and figures on paper and linen canvas using black charcoal, gouache, soft pastel, oil pastel, paint stick, and oil paint. His works are replete with art historical references to Cubism, Surrealism, Francis Bacon, and others. Yet, his process is also very personal, drawing from his memories, experiences, traumas, and family history growing up in Chicago’s Robert Taylor Homes. Nathaniel Mary Quinn balances the beautiful with the grotesque, the sinister with the benevolent, capturing the complexity of human emotion in a way that is individual and representative of the human condition.
Nathaniel Mary Quinn has exhibited at galleries and institutions internationally. Recent solo exhibitions include Gagosian, New York and Paris; Almine Rech, London, England; Half Gallery, New York; Luce Gallery, Torino, Italy; M + B Gallery, Los Angeles; Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago; Bunker 259 Gallery, Brooklyn; Pace Gallery, London, England; and the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, Wisconsin. Numerous group exhibitions have featured his work, including at The Bronx Museum of Art, Albertz Benda, New York, Satori Gallery, New York, Susan-Inglett Gallery, New York, and in A Process Series | Here He Come: Black Jesus, curated by Jessamyn Fiore at Rawson Projects, New York. Multiple publications have reviewed his work and studio practice, including the New York Times, The Independent (London), Cultured Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Family Style, AFROPUNK, the Chicago Reader, The Daily News, Huffington Post, and The New Yorker. He is the recipient of the Lorraine Hansberry Artistic, Performance, and Fine Arts Award and a two-time National Arts Club Prize winner. Considerable public institutions, such as the Art Institute of Chicago, the Sheldon Museum of Art, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, carry his work in their permanent collections. Nathaniel Mary Quinn, a native of Chicago, received his BFA from Wabash College and his MFA from New York University. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
Almine Rech Gallery and Gagosian Gallery represent Nathaniel Mary Quinn worldwide.
Gregory Huebner received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Art in 1971 from St. Benedict’s College in Atchison, KS. In 1973, he received his Master of Fine Ars degree from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, IL. He taught at Wabash College, Crawfordsville, IN for 37 years (1974 – 2011) serving as Chair of the Department for 23 of those years and holding the rank of Full Professor of Art since 1990. He serves as Emeritus artist at Wabash College
Gregory has had 34 solo exhibits and has been featured in 93 group and juried exhibitions, receiving several awards for his paintings. His work is represented in 33 public collections and over 90 private collections, including the Indiana State Museum, Indianapolis, IN; Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN; Tarble Art Center, Eastern Illinois University, Charleston, IL; Sheldon Swope Art Museum,
Terre Haute, IN; University Hospital, Indianapolis, IN; Gregory and Appel Insurance, Indianapolis, Lily Foundation Inc, Indianapolis, IN; Lincoln National Life Insurance, Fort Wayne, IN; Deloitte and Touche Corporation, Cleveland, OH, and Dollar General Corporation, Nashville,TN.
Greg currently resides in Indianapolis, IN, with his family where he is the Artist-in-Residence at Nomad Corporation.
PAST EXHIBITIONS
2025
the undercommons, the first solo exhibition by painter Brandon Carlton. Through his distinctive approach to stylized figuration, Carlton explores the complexities of contemporary Black life, using portraiture and spatial composition to evoke intimacy, distance, and presence.
Taking inspiration from The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning & Black Study by Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, the exhibition engages with their concept of the undercommons—a space of "fugitive sociality," where collective life unfolds beyond dominant structures. Carlton’s figures inhabit ambiguous realms—neither entirely confined by structure nor completely unbound by freedom. In these carefully orchestrated spaces, they embody a continual negotiation of identity, asserting agency and evoking the enduring presence of historical memory.
Carlton’s approach draws from the layered surfaces of Alex Katz and David Hockney, as well as Jordan Casteel’s nuanced portrayals of community and everyday encounters. Through gesture, color, and composition, his work reimagines presence, offering new ways of seeing and understanding Black life beyond fixed narratives.
New Work by Brandon Carlton
April 18-August 30, 2025
2024
Remembering Ghosts
2024 Artists-in-Residence Exhibition
November 1- December 14, 2024
Remembering Ghosts, the culminating exhibition for APL’s 2024 Artists-in-Residence cohort, featured work by Ayanah Moor, Candace Hunter, and Johnaé Strong. This exhibition critically examines the intersections of history, memory, and identity as the artists navigate the residual traces of the past within the present. Through diverse media and conceptual lenses, the works presented in this exhibition explore the complexities of historical erasure, resilience, and the spectral influence of collective and personal memory. By engaging the ethereal, Remembering Ghosts asks viewers to consider how past narratives continue to influence modern society. It encourages contemplation on acts of reclamation and memory to reimagine futures.
In partnership with the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture, Arts + Public Life supports individual artists through the Artists-in-Residence program by advancing the opportunities available to underrepresented artists in the Chicago and national arts scenes. The ten-month paid residency program provides space, materials, and stipends, eliminating barriers to participation. During this program, artists have access to rehearsal, performance, and exhibition space at the Arts Incubator in Washington Park and access to the academic and research resources of the University.
Elizabeth Catlett (1915-2012) , Black Girl, 2004, Lithograph, Courtesy of the Samella Lewis Collection
© 2024 Mora-Catlett Family / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY
June 14- August 31, 2024
Of Her Becoming highlights the printmaking, work, and impact of influential artist and activist Elizabeth Catlett (1915–2012) within an important site in Catlett’s career: Chicago’s South Side. Curated by Sheridan Tucker Anderson, the exhibition showcases an array of Catlett’s lithograph and woodcut prints alongside works by contemporary Black women printmakers from the South Side, Angela Davis Fegan, Krista Franklin, and Rebel Betty.
Of Her Becoming sheds new light on the significance of Catlett’s time on Chicago’s South Side, how this period revolutionized her artistic practice, and how her practice still impacts artists and community organizers on the South Side.
Presented at Arts + Public Life’s (APL’s) Arts Incubator Gallery, an important community keystone of APL’s Arts Block, Of Her Becoming engages the neighbors of APL, the youth enrolled in its programs, as well as the local and regional artistic and scholarly communities. This exhibition and related programs offer lessons for today from Catlett’s legacy of advocating, through her artwork, for the well–being and advancement of her communities.
Arts + Public Life is honored to be a part of Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that highlights the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities.
OF HER BECOMING: ELIZABETH CATLETT’S LEGACY IN CHICAGO is funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art. and supported by Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Los Angeles, CA
new work by Marcela Torres
March 15 - May 4, 2024
I Brought You Flowers/Te Traje Flores is a site that considers the cultural resonance of gifting flowers as acts of nurturing within BIPOC communities.
Inspired by Nahua and Mayan codices and contemporary writing that breaks down their logographic terms. Flowers symbolize places and names, the exhibition explores the profound connection between botany, our ancestral heritage, and the act of giving. Central to the exhibit are ceramic pieces cradling flowers, each representing a spectrum of recipients: flowers to ourselves, xochitl to our ancestor, flores to the earth weaving a rich tapestry of interconnectedness and reconciliation.
2023
New works by 2023 Artists-in-Residence:
Jess Atieno, Shani Crowe, and Gloria Talamantes
October 20th- December 8th, 2023
Black is the Color of the Cosmos is the culminating exhibition of the 2023 cohort of the Arts + Public Life (APL) and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture (CSRPC) Artists in Residence program. Produced during a ten-month residency at the Arts Incubator in Washington Park, each artist reflects on themes of iconography, identity, and tactility through, public art, photography, and single-channel video as medium.
In partnership with the Center for the Study of Race, Politics & Culture, Arts + Public Life supports individual artists through the Artists-in-Residence program by advancing the opportunities available to artists who are underrepresented in the Chicago and national arts scenes. The ten-month paid residency program provides space, materials, and stipends, eliminating barriers to participation. During this program, artists have access to rehearsal, performance, and exhibition space at the Arts Incubator in Washington Park and access to the academic and research resources of the University.
You Remember Frank London Brown
Curated by Adrienne Brown, Eve L. Ewing, Korey Williams, Angela Orokoh
June 9th-August 4th, 2023
At Arts + Public Life (301 E Garfield Blvd)
You Remember Frank London Brown explores and celebrates the legacy of Frank London Brown through the movements he shaped, the music he loved, the art he made, and the connections he held with those who loved him.
Supported by the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, in part by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Drawing of Frank London Brown, by Joan Powers, n.d., courtesy of the Vivian G. Harsh Research Collection of Afro-American History and Literature
EXHIBITIONS ARCHIVE
The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born
April 11th-May 15th, 2023
All That Light: A Ten-Year Retrospective of the Artists-in-Residence Program (2012 - 2022)
July 8 - Sept 11, 2022
April 8 - May 27, 2022
Rose Blouin: To Washington Park, with Love
Feb 11 - Mar 19, 2022
