21C CHICAGO MUSEUM HOTEL

The Art of Now

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A reset in cultural engagement, 21c Chicago's museum hotel offers extraordinary art from world-renowned contemporary artists, free and open to the public 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Let curiosity take the lead and discover a beautifully curated experience with every stay.

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Current Exhibitions

OFF-SPRING

Chief Curator Alice Gray Stites brings OFF-SPRING: New Generations to 21c Chicago. This thematic group exhibition of 100 multi-media artworks by 60 artists from across the globe highlighting how religious, cultural, familial, and personal rituals shape who we are and how and where we live, love, and learn.

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Weems, Kjartansson, Ellsworth |OFF-SPRING
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Site Specific Installations

Holding Rhythm by Colleen Plumb

Colleen Plumb’s newest video, Holding Rhythm, 2022 is the first commission made for Elevate: Rm 921. This site-specific video projection is viewable after dusk from the windows of 21c Chicago guests with interior-facing rooms. The video will be on view through September 2023.

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8HRS by Kiki McGrath

8HRS is a video documenting a performance in the former laundry room of the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land in Washington, DC. The artist repeatedly ironed family linens that have passed through the hands of five generations of women: a meditation on the relationship of domestic and spiritual labor, and a feminist inquiry into ritual, gender, and power.

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Dynasty
Podcasts Residency

Dynasty Podcasts’ interview series features conversations with Chicago’s creativeclass, including artists, industry,entrepreneurs, and creators from the city’s creativeindustries, including music, film, tech, fashion, higher edu, social media, and more. Interviews broadcast online every Sunday night at 9 pm CT, before publishing the following week as an audio podcast. More about the residency here.

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Horsepower 2023

Natalie Clare is a Chicago-based painter who practices her craft as (sub)urban warrior, creating murals in public and private spaces in cities across the U.S. Describing the inspiration behind the work she painted at 21c Chicago, the artist says: “Horsepower is a mural depicting horses in a slightly abstracted way. Horses are powerful animals at the peak of athleticism and strength in the animal kingdom. The animal/human connection is very strong and nature also produces endorphins, as does physical activity. The crossover is cerebral and meant to brighten the space and bring that same feeling that interacting with nature and animals does in an urban environment removed from those things.” Learn more here.

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Rachel Page Artist in Residence

Officially, Rachel is an international performer, educator, and consultant based in Chicago, Illinois, but when you ask her, she will tell you she’s a musician and a people person. Rachel firmly believes that voice lessons are life lessons, and regardless of origin and skillset, music connects us all.  Learn more here

Current Exhibition

Wallworks by Nick Cave and Bob Faust

As a way to bring the energy and impetus of Nick Cave’s artwork outside of traditional museum walls, Cave, in collaboration with his design partner Bob Faust, have created nine unique patterns that pair in various ways to result in sixteen floors of Wallworks, installed in the elevator lobbies on floors 2-17.

FEATURED ARTISTS
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Natalie Clare

(sub)urban warrior is an artist working out of the burbs who has an urban vibe to her work. She is influenced greatly by street art as well as by fine art, and she blends the two genres together, paying homage to each of them in her own way. Her creations have been described as “National Geographic meets Disney,” a description she is glad to embrace. She uses her fine-art background and skill set to create her own set of characters, combining different animal and human anatomies together into new creatures she calls beasties. These beasties are nomadic and ancient beings who navigate cities, mountains, and plains, sharing wisdom and spreading beauty.

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Colleen Plumb

Colleen Plumb makes photographs, videos, and installations that look at the complex and contradictory relationships people have with the natural world. Holding Rhythm, 2022 is the first commission made for Elevate: Rm 921 and interlaces scenes of animals in captivity with serene moments in nature.

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Tanya Lunina

In her ongoing series, Rhythm of the Lake, photographer Tanya Lunina directs her camera at Lake Michigan in Chicago. Solitude within the open space and the various moods of the lake draw Lunina to the expanse of this body of water. Her frequent visits to the lakefront reveal a personal interpretation of a place in the city where the built environment meets the natural landscape. Learn more here

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Bob Faust

Bob Faust is the principal and creative director for Faust, a cultural branding and communications studio operating at the intersection of art and design that results in absorptive visual experiences based in Chicago. 

Photo by Sandro

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Nick Cave

Nick Cave is an artist, educator and foremost a messenger, working between the visual and performing arts through a wide range of mediums including sculpture, installation, video, sound and performance.

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Kelly Kristin Jones

Kelly Kristin Jones’s photo-based interventions and counter monuments unsettle well-worn imperial attributes to consider alternative vocabularies. Drawing on various sites, Rib of Disaster explores ways that white women subconsciously uphold the aesthetics of white dominance and spatialize their supremacy.