Connect with Chicago arts and artists while growing your practice!
The Art Center’s unique model creates a pathway for artists to progress in their artistic practices and careers. By developing programming that fills critical gaps in traditional models for artist growth and development, the Art Center provides a variety of access points and means of support for artists working at all levels.
Professional Pathways
Professional Pathways develop the skills, experience, and network of artists at diverse stages of their careers, and are a means for artists to advance their practices outside of traditional and often cost-prohibitive MFA programs. Together, this suite of programs offers an inclusive and accessible ecology to support artists at every phase of their development. All Professional Pathways are Open Arts, the Art Center’s contribute-what-you-can tuition model.
- Bridge Program – A ten-week seminar-style course designed to help artists push their practices to the next level
- Center Program – A six-month course in which artists develop new work, receive feedback from professionals in the field, and work toward an exhibition to be held in the Art Center’s main gallery
Professional Pathways is supported by the Kanter Family Foundation.
Not Just Another Pretty Face
Not Just Another Pretty Face allows the Art Center to play matchmaker for artists and potential art buyers, facilitating a fun, accessible commissioning process that builds lasting relationships between artists and patrons, creates a new base of support for artists, and invests in the vitality of Chicago’s cultural community.
Frequently Asked Questions
The Art Center welcomes submissions of artists’ work and curatorial proposals for group exhibitions. Submissions are reviewed by the Exhibitions Committee, which consists of artists and art professionals, as well as the Art Center’s Director of Exhibitions and Executive Director quarterly.
Each year, the Art Center unveils 20 exhibitions, presenting at least one of each of the following:
- a solo show of an ambitious new project by an emerging Chicago artist,
- a new project undertaken by one of our resident artists
- an exhibition from an emerging Chicago curator whose work transgresses or questions traditional curatorial conventions
- work curated by a Chicago artist experimenting with curating as a means of informing their artwork but NOT including their own work in their curated show
- new work that is conceptually distinctive or unique in use of materials by Chicago artists who are in an experimental stage of their practice
- an exhibition showcasing work by the Art Center’s own teaching artist faculty exploring a new concept, and/or by established artists who have discovered new techniques in our studio art classes
- work by established, midcareer Chicago artists on the verge of breaking through to the next level of their careers
- group shows highlighting new artists who have come up through our Education programs, like The Center Program and Art Shop; and
- submissions that fulfill one of the above criteria.
Please keep in mind that the Art Center plans its exhibitions program three seasons in advance.
Unfortunately, we are unable to accept submissions at this time. We will begin to accept exhibition proposals again Spring, 2023.
We sure do!
For Center Program, we offer:
- HPAC-funded Diversity scholarship for an artist of color
- HPAC-funded Teaching Artist Scholarship for a Hyde Park Art Center Teaching Artist
- Ground Floor Scholarship for artists who have been included in past or present Ground Floor exhibitions at HPAC
- Luminarts Fellowship to support two artists from their network
- Marwen Fellowship to support an alum from the organization’s history. All of these opportunities are primarily merit-based, assessed on clarity of statement, potential impact on the artist/practice, as well as potential overall contribution to the larger program and network of Center Program artists.
Additionally, some past Center Program artists received funding through the Community Arts Assistance Program offered by the City of Chicago. Click here to learn more about the Community Arts Assistance Program. Other Center Program artists have also secured financial support from Illinois Arts Council, linked here.
For Bridge Program, accepted participants can apply for assistance through our Financial Aid Program. Please submit your application below:
Unfortunately, we’re not art appraisers. Commercial galleries tend to set the prices of contemporary artworks, so your best bet is to do a web search to discover which Chicago galleries sell work like yours, and to approach them directly about appraising your artwork.
