Tickets: $20

The tour is hosted by Chicago Public Art Group, and led by Jeff Huebner and Bernard Williams.  Presented as part of Art Design Chicago, an initiative of the Terra Foundation for American Art celebrating Chicago’s art and design history, the tour is in partnership with Hyde Park Art Center’s show, Bill Walker: Urban Griot, curated by Juarez Hawkins.

The bus tour will last approximately 3 hours and will start and conclude at the CPAG Studio. The bus will leave promptly at 10:00 AM.

We will travel first to the Hyde Park Art Center to view the exhibit Bill Walker: Urban Griot, for an introduction to how Walker illustrated the social ills and street life he witnessed in Chicago.

The South Side of Chicago boasts more vintage African-American outdoor and community murals from the 1970s and 80s than other city in the nation; many have been restored in recent years. Our tour will examine significant works from this period of the contemporary mural movement, focusing on projects inspired by the example of pioneering Chicago muralist William Walker (1927-2011), initiator of the epochal 1967 artist-collective mural, Wall of Respect.

We’ll view about two dozen socially conscious street murals and community art sites. Reflecting the African-American experience, these murals depict themes of hope, heritage, pride, power, protest, and action, and form a largely unsung part of the city’s cultural legacy. The tour will provide participants an opportunity to engage with work by nationally renowned muralists such as Walker, Mitchell Caton, Calvin Jones, Justine DeVan, Siddha Webber, Bernard Williams, and Marcus Akinlana.