21c Museum Hotel Chicago’s Pop Stars! Art Exhibition

21c Museum Hotel Chicago invites guests to plan family travel to visit its new exhibition, Pop Stars! Popular Culture and Contemporary Art. Set to open March 21, the multimedia exhibition highlights the intersection of celebrity, commerce, technology and the media with works from artists including Nick Cave, Titus Kaphar, Hank Willis Thomas and Kehinde Wiley.

The exhibit spans all 10,000-plus square feet of the property’s gallery space. It features more than 90 works in different mediums from 55 artists from around the world.

© 21c Museum Hotel Chicago

“Superheroes and celebrities, totems and toys: the imagery of manufactured fantasy is reframed in the visual language of historical iconography,” said Alice Gray Stites, museum director and chief curator, 21c Museum Hotel Chicago. “With unprecedented access to an audience of one’s own, we find affirmation onscreen, and venerate fame as a final destination. As the real and the virtual increasingly collide, boundaries between art and media further blur, inspiring new mythologies realized in new materials: stars of stage, screen, and sport are re-envisioned, offering insight into how desire shapes identity. References to religious iconography are integrated into a spectrum of artworks that illustrate the persistent, powerful impact of technology on who we are and what we want.”

Pop Stars! Popular Culture and Contemporary Art’s opening reception will be held March 24 at 6 p.m., with remarks from Stites at 6:30 p.m. Entrance to the exhibit is free to the public and will be on view through February 2023.