The Floating Museum

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The Floating Museum

Floating Museum is an art collective that creates temporary, site-responsive cultural spaces throughout Chicago’s under-served neighborhoods.

Floating Museum is an art collective that creates temporary, site-responsive cultural spaces throughout Chicago’s neighborhoods. Our structures are platforms for engagement between local communities, external institutions, and independent partners. We use socially engaged artworks to activate local archives and histories, and nurture both new and existing networks that push neighbors and institutions alike to rethink the potential of their spaces.

03/19/2026

Congratulations to Deputy Mayor Kenya Merritt on her nomination as Commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.

We had the opportunity to welcome her into our studio yesterday and share more about our work. We’re grateful for the visit and excited for what’s ahead for Chicago.

03/06/2026

Floating Museum is pleased to announce a new print edition: ‘for Mecca’ (2025).

Printed on Hahnemühle paper and presented in an artist’s frame, the work measures 27.5 × 25.5 inches and is released as a limited edition of 10.

This edition helps support the movement of our Floating Monuments series through the city. ‘for Mecca’ is part of this ongoing project: a ghostly, inflatable architecture that travels across Chicago and beyond, serving as a platform for memory, conversation, exhibition, performance, and education.

The work honors the historic Mecca Flats apartment building in Bronzeville, once a vibrant center of Black life, demolished in 1952 in the name of urban renewal. Rather than replicate the structure, for Mecca gathers photographs, writings, and sound to carry its cultural legacy forward, inviting reflection on displacement, resilience, and how monuments might hold memory differently in an ever-changing city.

For inquiries please contact us via DM or email.

12/12/2025

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.

At RAC strategy sessions, residency leaders from the U.S. and abroad are invited to present on their residency models and approaches to artist support. These conversations inform how the residency takes shape in Chicago, and create space for shared learning and exchange.

Grounded locally and informed by global perspectives, the RAC is helping us shape a residency model that honors local histories, nurtures artists across disciplines, and strengthens the networks that sustain creative life across the city.

This work reflects Floating Museum’s ongoing commitment to co-creation, reciprocity, and artistic practice as a shared civic act.

Residency Advisory Committee Organizations:
Englewood Arts Collective · Grow Greater Englewood · SkyART · South Side Community Art Center · SpaceShift · Urban Growers Collective

Guest Organization Presenters include:
Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago) · Guest Artists Space Foundation / G.A.S. (Nigeria) · Cité Internationale des Arts (France) · CEC ArtsLink (New York)

Learn more about the Burroughs Residency Advisory Committee by following the link in our bio.

11/18/2025

Back in CHI and feeling grateful for seeing old friends and making new ones. Generous and generative with oshinowo touring us through one of the sites of her research on informal market economies, on view right now
fan
studio visit
Fela exhibition with
in front of freshly renovated founded by Bisi Silva
studio visit
with
tour
lunching
everywhere

11/10/2025

Installation views from the beautiful brand new Museum of West African Art in Benin City. Included is a historical collection with works spanning 3000 years from across West Africa, as well as ‘Nigeria Imaginary: Homecoming’ curated by that traveled from Venice to MOWAA with a deeply moving installation ‘Monument to the Restitution of the Mind and Soul’ by Yinka Shonibare, along with works by
Kelani Abass, Tunji Adeniyi-Jones, Ndidi D**e, Isaac Emokpae , Modupeola Fadugba, NgoziOmeje Ezema , Onyeka Igwe , Abraham Onoriode Oghobase , Precious Okoyomon and Toyin Ojih Odutola. The pieces were installed on soft red cast walls and floors with gently curving spaces and large windows. Very excited to follow this space of research, memory work, and contemporary art that is brimming with potential.

11/07/2025

“River Assembly” Model, 2017, 12”x36”x24”, balsa wood, paper, plastic, lights, hardware, pedestal, casters

How can we speculate on the future of the Chicago River as a space in flux, drawing on its industrial past while looking to its future as a valuable urban cultural asset?

In 2017 we produced “River Assembly” on a barge with artists and organizations to model one speculative future– a floating platform that drifts through multiple neighborhoods and spills out onto the shores when docked. By rehearsing the river as a shared civic space in flux, the project proposed a more democratic, horizontal, and inclusive mobility.

Participating Artists /

Miguel Aguilar (aka Kane One) / Tiaybe Bledsoe / Marcus Alleyne / Hebru Brantley / Marcus Davis / Asia Delores / Bill Douglas / Louis DeMarco / Kameco Dodd / Marcus Evans / Assaf Evron / Krista Franklin / Maria Gaspar / Tracie D. Hall / Jeff Harris / Adam Hines / Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford / Yashua Klos / Gabriela Ibarra / Kopano (performance) / Faheem Majeed / Christopher Meerdo / Ciera Missick / Cecil McDonald Jr / Jesse McLean / MonAerie (performance) / Derek Moore / Dan Peterman / Cheryl Pope / Pope.L / Fernando Ramirez / Kameelah Janan Rasheed / Cauleen Smith / Sheila Smith / Edra Soto / Lan Tuazon / Maria Villarreal / Roman Villarreal / JGV/WAR (J. Gibran Villalobos & Wil A. Ruggiero) / Amanda Williams / Bernard Williams / avery r. young & De Deacon Board (performance)

Participating Organizations /

Dusable Heritage Association / Dusable Museum of African American History / Graffiti Institute / Hyde Park Art Center/ The Intuit Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art / Project Onward / SkyArt / Southeast Chicago Historical Society / South Side Projections / T.R.A.C.E / West Pullman Park

10/31/2025

In 2021 we were invited to show in the group exhibition ‘Sustainable Societies for the Future’ at the Malmö Konstmuseum organized by Kirse Junge-Stevnsborg and Anne Thomasen in collaboration with EXPO Chicago. The exhibition featuring Nordic and Chicago based artists asked: How can we generate new ideas and actions for a sustainable world?

Inspired by works like Duchamp’s ‘Box in a Valise’ and Calder’s ‘Circus’ we made three sculptures. Each explored an aspect of mobility in a time during the pandemic when normal flows had come to a halt. These sculptures speculate on national borders, a mini exhibition of future works by Chicago based artists, and a hybrid book sculpture aggregating monument silhouettes from around the world.

Valise (Inflate Sign)
2020, vinyl, ink, air blower, cord 96” x 24” x 20”

Valise (Ad Lib Vitrine)
2020, acrylic, wood, paper, ink, case 14.5” x 20.5” x 10.5”, label installation variable
With Rashayla Marie Brown, Zakkiyyah Najeebah Dumas-O’Neal, Chris Pappan (Kanza/Osage, Lakota), Andrea Carlson (Ojibwe), Candace Hunter, Dorian Sylvain, Hương Ngô, Devin T. Mays, Ish*ta Dharap, Aram Han Sifuentes, William Estrada

Valise (Paper Monument)
2020, paper, ink, screw posts, glue, 17” x 11” x 3” and video

10/10/2025

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the “This is a Rehearsal” book release with the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Chicago Humanities.

As artistic directors of the 2023 Biennial, “This is a Rehearsal”, we invited audiences to think of cities as ongoing processes rather than fixed objects. The catalogue extends that conversation— with newly commissioned essays, poems, interviews, and documentation of the work of more than 80 local and global contributors who reimagined how cities function, who shapes them, and how we might respond to overlapping crises. With everything going on in Chicago right now, it feels even more important to figure out how to rehearse together, protect one another, and find solidarity in futures beyond the ones we are handed.

This is a Rehearsal
Edited by Floating Museum
Published by The Chicago Architecture Biennial and MAS Context
Design: Normal (Renata Graw and Lucas Reif)
CAB5 Identity: Studio Helmo
Distributed by The Chicago Architecture Biennial

09/26/2025

The newest project in Floating Works, the TABLES Project, centers the table as both symbol and tool. It’s where gathering, ritual, and exchange live. Led by Chicago-based artist and educator Nathan Miller ( ), the project lifts up the cultural and familial practices that happen around a table: communion, storytelling, nourishment, care. Each week during the program small groups meet to talk about family, food, culture, and love. Those conversations shape the design and construction of wooden tables for participants’ homes. The results are sturdy and meaningful. Everyday furniture that doubles as a touchstone for more intentional gathering.

The tables also anchor a photo-based campaign inviting broader audiences to see the home as a site of sanctuary, education, and connection. Learn more by visiting floatingmuseum.org/FloatingWorks.

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.

Participants:
Demaurus Stevens (.visualss )
Christopher Willis ( )
Linda Kimbrough
Chevveria Stevens ( )

Images Courtesy of Nathan Miller and Damon Boler

09/24/2025

Full page! 📰 Huge thanks to Darcel Rockett for this thoughtful piece on for Mecca ✨ Stay tuned for our next installation as part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial.

09/19/2025

The 6th edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial opens today— congratulations to Florencia Rodriguez ( )and the entire CAB team! We are thrilled to be participants in this edition opening at the Chicago Cultural Center and across the city.

09/17/2025

Congratulations to and Theaster Gates ( )on the Inaugural Welcome and Launch of The Land School. Another magical day in the Grand Crossing neighborhood!

Address

Chicago, IL
60653

Website

http://www.floatingmuseum.org/

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