Free events MCA Chicago.
Where: Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Avenue
The Museum of Contemporary Art is always free on Tuesdays for Illinois residents with ID.
Every Tuesday (except holidays), on Illinois Resident free day the museum offers special talks and events.
Check the calendar here.
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About the Museum
In 1964, a group of collectors, art dealers, artists, art critics, and architects united to create a contemporary art museum.
The institution’s founders originally conceived of the museum as a Kunsthalle, or a noncollecting “art hall” that organized and hosted temporary exhibitions of new and experimental artists.
Since opening in 1967, at 237 East Ontario Street the museum has featured the work of emerging artists, experimentation and many-faceted art expressions.
The museum also offers lectures, symposia, roundtables, films and performances to enhance exhibits.
During the 1970s the the museum hosted exhibitions of Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol. The museum from a non-collecting “art hall” to a collecting museum.
The permanent collection was established in 1974. Due to this the MCA needed a larger building and purchased an adjacent townhouse to facilitate an expansion.
Due to continued growth in 1990 the museum signed a 99-year lease on the site of the Illinois National Guard’s Chicago Avenue Armory t Mies Van De Rohe Drive. In 1992 it demolished the Armory.
In 1996, the current museum building designed by Berlin architect Josef Paul Kleihues opened.
In 2011, MCA changed it’s appoach to exhibitions, dedicating specific galleries to themes using it’s permanent collection for shows, as well as up and coming artist solo shows, and new exhibition series.
