In celebration of its 150th academic year, the School of the Art Institute is pulling out the big guns. This fall’s alumni exhibition, “Civilization and Its Discontents,” curated by SAIC faculty members and brothers Scott Reeder and Tyson Reeder, features work by notable graduates from the past 30 years, including Jeff Koons, Tony Tasset, Rashid Johnson, Rebecca Morris, Chris Ware, Amanda Ross-Ho, Angel Otero, Tony Lewis, Anya Davidson, Aspen Mays, Carrie Schneider, Zak Prekop, Golden Age, and many others. The curators chose artists who have not only made names for themselves outside Chicago but who have also in some way “changed the conversation within their discipline”—artists “defined less by a shared regional aesthetic than by an iconoclastic, maverick approach to their medium.” A sesquicentennial comes around once in a lifetime; this show is not to be missed.
Reception Fri 9/18, 6-9 PM. Through 10/24, Sullivan Galleries, 33 S. State, 312-629-6635 saic.edu/sullivangalleries, free.