Public Gallery Tour | Designing for Change: Chicago Protest Art of the 1960s–70s
2025-01-24 14:00 - 14:50, 2025-01-29 12:00 - 12:50, 2025-01-30 14:00 - 14:50, 2025-01-31 14:00 - 14:50, 2025-02-21 13:00 - 13:50 (America/Chicago) | Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL, 60614, United States
Looking for a good place to start your museum visit? Join a knowledgeable volunteer guide for a tour of our exhibition, Designing for Change: Chicago Protest Art of the 1960s–70s. No matter your historical knowledge, it’s a fantastic opportunity to experience this fascinating exhibit and learn in a group setting.

Public Gallery Tour | City on Fire: Chicago 1871
2025-01-25 11:00 - 11:50, 2025-01-26 13:00 - 13:50 | Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL, 60614, United States
Looking for a good place to start your museum visit? Join a knowledgeable volunteer guide for a tour of our exhibition, City on Fire: Chicago 1871. No matter your historical knowledge, it’s a fantastic opportunity to experience this fascinating exhibit and learn in a group setting.

Public Gallery Tour | Chicago: Crossroads of America
2025-01-25 13:00 - 14:00, 2025-01-28 12:00 - 13:00, 2025-01-29 13:00 - 14:00, 2025-01-31 12:00 - 13:00, 2025-02-18 14:00 - 15:00, 2025-02-19 12:00 - 13:00, 2025-02-20 13:00 - 14:00, 2025-02-27 13:00 - 14:00 | Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL, 60614, United States
Looking for a good place to start your museum visit? Join a knowledgeable volunteer guide for a tour of our permanent exhibition, Chicago: Crossroads of America. No matter your historical knowledge, it’s a fantastic opportunity to experience this fascinating exhibit and learn in a group setting.

The Guild Presents | The Watergate Girl with Jill Wine-Banks
2025-01-26 11:30 - 14:00 | Saddle & Cycle Club, 900 W. Foster Ave., Chicago, IL, 60640, United States
At the crossroads of the Watergate scandal and the women’s movement stood a young lawyer, barely thirty years old and the only woman on the team that prosecuted the highest-ranking White House officials. Called “the mini-skirted lawyer” by the press, she fought to receive the respect accorded her male counterparts―and prevailed.
Over brunch, Jill Wine-Banks takes us inside her trial by fire as a Watergate prosecutor as she discusses her book The Watergate Girl: My Fight for Truth and Justice Against a Criminal President (2020).
$90 per ticket. Dress Code: Please note that the Saddle & Cycle Club requires smart casual or business attire. Denim and jeans are not permitted. Learn more on the club’s website.
Questions? Contact Nell McKeown, development events manager, at mckeown@chicagohistory.org or (312) 799-2112.

Partner Event | Women Shaping Democracy: An Evening with Emily Amick
2025-01-27 18:30 - 20:00 | Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL, 60614, United States

Public Gallery Tour | Dressed in History: A Costume Collection Retrospective
2025-01-29 14:00 - 14:50, 2025-01-30 13:00 - 13:50, 2025-02-18 12:00 - 12:50 | Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL, 60614, United States
Looking for a good place to start your museum visit? Join a knowledgeable volunteer guide for a tour of our exhibition, Dressed in History: A Costume Collection Retrospective. No matter your historical knowledge, it’s a fantastic opportunity to experience this fascinating exhibit and learn in a group setting.

Partner Event | Breaking It Down: A History of Breakdance (Breaking) in Chicago
2025-01-29 17:30 - 20:00 | Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL, 60614, United States
Breaking has always been a staple in Chicago’s hip-hop culture. This panel event presented in partnership with Chicago Dance History Project and NEXUS Performing Arts explores Chicago’s history of breaking and why it’s integral to the city’s culture, ascending from the underground scene to the world’s stage during the 2024 summer Olympics in Paris. Daniel “BRAVEMONK” Haywood will moderate panel talks featuring:

Donnie “Crumbs” Counts
Eddie “Shellz” Shellman
Anthony “YNOT” Denaro
Eric “B-Boy Wicked” Delgado

Topics include: How did Chicago communities influence and enhance breaking? Is breaking a sport or an art form? How did Chicago’s political history impact breaking?
Hear from panelists as they discuss their experience as breakers in the Chicago community as well as breaking’s presence in pop culture and the media. The panel discussion will be followed by an optional dance workshop, led by Donnie “Crumbs” Counts and Anthony “YNOT” Denaro. The optional post-discussion workshop is $15 per person, payable via cash or Zelle at the door.
This event is the first of a three-part series on the history of breaking:
Breaking Barriers: B Girls in Chicago
Thursday, March 6, 5:30–8:30 p.m. (reception, panel discussion, and workshop)
Breaking Ground: Exploring Space for Breaking in Chicago
Tuesday, May 13, 5:30–8:30 PM (reception, panel discussion, and workshop)
Free; RSVP required.

Member Event | Designing for Change Button Workshop with Juarez Hawkins
2025-01-29 18:00 - 19:30 | Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL, 60614, United States
Members are invited to a lecture and button-making workshop led by Chicago-based artist, educator, and curator Juarez Hawkins. Inspired by buttons featured in Designing for Change: Chicago Protest Art of the 1960s–70s, design your own button as you learn more about the role of buttons in the social movements of this period.
Free; RSVP required

Thank you to our Designing for Change sponsors

Terra Foundation for American Art – Lead Sponsor
Designing for Change: Chicago Protest Art of the 1960s–70s is part of Art Design Chicago, a citywide collaboration initiated by the Terra Foundation for American Art that highlights the city’s artistic heritage and creative communities.
Designing for Change: Chicago Protest Art of the 1960s–70s is funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Illinois Office of Tourism – Lead Sponsor

TAWANI Foundation – Presenting Sponsor

National Endowment for the Arts – Presenting Sponsor
Established in part by the Elizabeth Morse Charitable Trust and the Elizabeth Morse Genius Charitable Trust, the Exhibition Innovation Fund has provided additional funding for Designing for Change: Chicago Protest Art of the 1960s–70s.

POSTPONED - Member Event | Sanborn Map Workshop
2025-02-12 18:00 - 19:30 | Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL, 60614, United States
Due to inclement weather on February 12, this event has been postponed. We will reach out to those registered directly.
CHM members are invited to join director of Research and Access Ellen Keith and reference librarian Maggie Cusick of the Abakanowicz Research Center (ARC) on an exploration of the past using CHM’s Sanborn Fire Insurance maps.
Please note that there are limited spots available for this event due to space restrictions in the ARC. We highly encourage that you register only if you are available on the evening of the event.
This event is on-site at the Abakanowicz Research Center, where we require visitors to wear masks. If you do not bring your own mask, one will be provided for you.
Free, RSVP required. Limited spots per workshop.

Commemorative Day | Presidents’ Day
2025-02-17 10:00 - 14:00 | Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL, 60614, United States
This Presidents’ Day, get more civically engaged through family-friendly activities! Write a letter to the new President of the United States to tell them what matters to you. Participate in arts-based activities and create a piece that reflects your social and political interests!
Included with general admission, which is FREE for IL residents on this day.
Schedule
10:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m.
Letters to the President
Write a letter to President Donald J. Trump to let him know how you think he’s doing as president and what you would like to see him do in the future. If there are actions he’s taking that you support, let him know that! If there are things in which you’d like to see him take a different approach, this is a great way to have your voice heard, too. All letters can either be taken home or left with CHM staff to be mailed out together to the White House. Appropriate for all ages, especially 13+
Make-and-Take Campaign Signs and Buttons
Art is a great way to strengthen one’s campaign efforts. Come make your own campaign signs and buttons as if you were running for the Office of the President of the United States of America! Design them in ways that reflect your values, aesthetics, and major topics of interest. Take them home as a souvenir or maybe even start your own future political campaign! Appropriate for all ages preschool and up.
Community Response Activity – “If I Were President . . .”
Leave a public message to other visitors about what sorts of issues you would focus on if you were president. What do you think is important to address as a nation today? How would you go about supporting our local, national, and international communities through presidential action? Appropriate for all ages, especially 13+
We’ll also have special gallery tours of our exhibitions throughout the day and IDEA stations to engage Chicago’s history in hands-on, interactive ways!

Virtual Urban History Seminar | “Selling Ebony Magazine”
2025-02-20 19:00 - 20:15 | Zoom, from anywhere
The Urban History Seminar series feature a scholarly presentation followed by lively discussion. Ann C. Saunders, artist, educator, and creative consultant, formerly an Associate Professor at the School of Art and Design at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, presents “Selling Ebony Magazine: Doris E. Saunders and the Marketing of Black America.”
Chicago Bronzeville librarian and trailblazer Doris E. Saunders was critical to the early financial success of Ebony magazine. Saunders’ untold efforts in marketing research, as early as 1949, on behalf of Chicago-based Ebony “introduced advertisers to an “untapped $16 billion market.” This made Ebony the most significant medium of African American culture and experience, transforming the American media landscape. Public historian Ann C. Saunders shares the process and research used for asserting and proving Saunders’s overlooked critical role.
The Zoom session will open at 6:45 p.m. with the program starting at 7:00 p.m. and concluding by 8:15 p.m. RSVP is required.
This session is free of charge; we would greatly appreciate a donation to the Museum in any amount. A Zoom link will be provided after registration.
The Urban History Seminars have been generously underwritten by the Chicago History Museum since 1983.

Commemorative Day | Black History Month
2025-02-22 10:00 - 14:00 | Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL, 60614, United States
Celebrate Black History Month at CHM as we look at the ways art has been a vehicle for social change in Chicago’s African American community. Enjoy hands-on arts activities, music, and speakers.
Schedule
10:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m. – Printmaking with Purpose with teaching artist Jomo Cheatham
10:00 a.m.–12:00 p.m. – Arts and Crafts for Social Change
12:00–1:00 p.m. – Public Talk | “Final Judgement: The Case of Emmett Till” by Dr. Christopher Benson
LEARN MOREHear from Dr. Christopher Benson as he discusses details from his book A Few Days Full of Trouble: Revelations on the Journey to Justice for My Cousin and Best Friend, Emmett Till, coauthored with Reverend Wheeler Parker Jr. Get an insider’s view of the coauthors’ four-year “ride-along” with the FBI as it closed out the investigation into this 1955 lynching. The murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till sparked the modern Civil Rights Movement, yet so much has been concealed over the years. The case concerned so much more than racial violence, it was about power and how the criminal justice system bent under the pressure of a corrupt system.
1:30–2:30 p.m. – Film Screening | The Murder of Emmett Till (2023)
LEARN MOREIn August 1955, a 14-year-old Black boy allegedly flirted with a white woman in a grocery store in Money, Mississippi. Emmett Till, a teen from Chicago, didn’t understand that he had broken the unwritten laws of the Jim Crow South until three days later, when two white men dragged him from his bed in the dead of night, beat him brutally and then shot him in the head. Although his killers were arrested and charged with murder, they were both acquitted quickly by an all-white, all-male jury. Shortly afterwards, the defendants sold their story, including their tale of how they murdered Till, to a journalist. The murder and the trial horrified the nation and the world. Till’s death was a spark that helped mobilize the civil rights movement. Three months after his body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River, the Montgomery bus boycott began.

Partner Event | Japanese American Day of Remembrance
2025-02-23 14:00 - 16:30 | Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL, 60614, United States
On February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led to the incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry during World War II. Every year, the Japanese American community in Chicago comes together to commemorate EO 9066 as a reminder of the fragility of civil liberties in times of crisis and the importance of protecting the rights and freedoms of all.

With a theme of “Resilience in One Chicago Family,” this year’s Day of Remembrance event features a panel discussion on the tanka poetry of issei (first-generation immigrant) poets Tomiko and Ryokuyō Matsumoto and their book By the Shore of Lake Michigan (UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 2024).

Nancy Matsumoto, editor and granddaughter of Tomiko and Ryokuyō Matsumoto

Mariko Aratani, translator

Kyoko Miyabe, translator

Eri F. Yasuhara, Professor of Japanese, California State University, San Bernardino

Tanka (translated as “short poem”) is one of the oldest forms of Japanese poetry, originating in the seventh century. It consists of five lines with a specific syllable count of 5-7-5-7-7 and can cover a wide range of topics. This made tanka a favored verse form for its ability to capture complex emotions and intimate experiences, offering poets a versatile outlet to express everything from nature and love to historical events and personal reflections.

Discover the power of tanka poetry in overcoming adversity and shaping identity—where words transcend hardship and history finds its voice. Meet and greet the participants at the reception following the program and engage with.

Free to all; advance registration required.

Schedule

2:00 p.m. – Program begins
3:00 p.m. – Reception with panelist meet and greet and booths by sponsors and community organizations
4:00 p.m. – Event concludes

This event is sponsored by the Chicago Japanese American Council,  Chicago Japanese American Historical Society,  Japanese American Citizens League – Chicago Chapter,  Japanese American Service Committee, and  Japanese Mutual Aid Society of Chicago.

This program will feature captioning services through AVA. Captions will be featured live and can be accessed on a smartphone through a QR code.

Public Gallery Touch Tour | Dressed in History: A Costume Collection Retrospective
2025-02-26 13:00 - 14:00 | Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL, 60614, United States
This touch tour will include the opportunity to touch fabric swatches and accessories created to match the pieces on display, which will give tour-goers additional sensory information about select objects in the Dressed in History: A Costume Collection Retrospective exhibition. While this tour can be especially meaningful for visitors who are blind or have low vision, any Museum visitor will enjoy the experience.
If you have a companion with you, please register a ticket for them as well so that we have an accurate attendance count. Tour registration includes Museum admission and begins in the lobby on the first floor.

The Costume Council Presents | Chicago Fashion Icon Maria Pinto
2025-02-27 17:30 - 20:30 | Woman’s Athletic Club, 626 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL, 60611, United States
The Costume Council of the Chicago History Museum invites you to an evening with Chicago’s premier designer, Maria Pinto, in conversation with Maggie Gillette of The Curio. As a fashion futurist, Maria continually seeks new ways to innovate and make fashion more accessible. Listen as they discuss the secret to longevity and creativity in today’s fashion world.
The evening includes a sneak peek of models wearing Maria’s spring collection and iconic pieces, as well as a special presentation by CHM costume collection manager Jessica Pushor.
$100 per ticket.
Schedule
5:30 p.m. – Arrivals, wine, appetizers, meet and greet with Maria
7:00 p.m. – Program begins
8:00 p.m. – Dessert
8:30 p.m. – Last goodbyes

SOLD OUT! Sanborn Map Workshop
2025-02-27 18:00 - 19:30 | Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St., Chicago, IL, 60614, United States
CHM members are invited to join director of Research and Access Ellen Keith and reference librarian Maggie Cusick of the Abakanowicz Research Center (ARC) on an exploration of the past using CHM’s Sanborn Fire Insurance maps.
Please note that there are limited spots available for this event due to space restrictions in the ARC. We highly encourage that you register only if you are available on the evening of the event.
This event is on-site at the Abakanowicz Research Center, where we require visitors to wear masks. If you do not bring your own mask, one will be provided for you.
Free, RSVP required. Limited spots per workshop.
