2026 Projection Calendar

2026 Content Calendar Overview

April 9 – May 31            8:30-9:00pm
June 4 – Sep 6                 9:00-9:30pm
Sept 10 – Dec 27             7:30-8:00pm

*4 nights per week, ½ hour per night Thursdays through Sundays

April 9 – April 26.  Luis Urculo, who lives and works between Madrid and Mexico City, brings his video work to the Art on the Mart platform in collaboration with Spanish Architect Iker Gil, founder of MAS Studio and MAS Context. Urculo’s video takes the tools, procedures and formats within architecture as his subject matter to investigate spatial concepts like gravity, weight and empty volumes. His architectural approach will resonate with the platform’s surface geometry and grid. https://luisurculo.com/filter/video

April 30 – May 17. School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) Synthesis is a newly commissioned program created by SAIC graduate and undergraduate students, who have paired up to produce 14 original works. Organized around the theme of “Synthesis,” the project challenges students to consider the monumental scale and architectural specificity of THE MART, exploring how visual projection and sound can converge seamlessly within its façade and surrounding urban environment. Each student pair—one leading the visual component and the other the audio composition—brings distinct expertise in materials, technologies, and collaborative methodologies. Together, they develop integrated works that treat light and sound not as parallel elements, but as interdependent systems shaped by the site. Synthesis was developed under the guidance of Jan Tichy and Austen Brown, both Tichy and Brown are faculty members in SAIC’s Department of Art & Technology/Sound Practices.

May 21 – May 31. Columbia College’s Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP) + Chicago Public Schools (CPS)
Led by faculty member Colleen Plumb, the MoCP worked with 95 high school students from Prosser Career Academy and South Shore College Prep. After learning about her practice as an artist and environmental activist working with trees, the students participated in educational tree walks led by Tom Ebeling from Openlands. The students then took part in artmaking workshops with Colleen, creating camera-less cyanotype prints using tree specimens they collected. The video animates the students’ cyanotypes alongside Colleen’s interjections on tree root systems to convey the importance and beauty of Chicago’s urban tree canopy. You see learn more about whole program here and about the Museum: https://www.mocp.org/

Chicago Public Schools Our next iteration of this popular partnership with Chicago Public School students has expanded to include work not only from high school seniors but also from younger students with their teachers’ collaboration. We again plan to display an equitable range of works from across CPS districts. https://www.cps.edu/sites/cpsarts/student-programs/art-on-themart/

June 4 – June 14.                    Pride + HDR
The Pride projection, on view annually, turns THE MART façade into a rainbow of colors and images to celebrate June, International Pride month. 

HDR is contributing a new work created especially to align with NeoCon. The renowned architectural firm will offer their response to THE MART’s 1930’s Art Deco façade, bringing a new layer of meaning to the landmark building and will advance how we perceive and think about light, design and the built environment. https://www.hdrinc.com/services/architecture

June 18 – June 28.                  Pride + HDR

July 2 – July 5. Independence Day + HDR
The Independence Day projection, on view annually, turns THE MART façade into a patriotic, red, white and blue celebratory canvas.

July 9 – Aug. 2. Trazos (Traces). Wills Glasspiegel and Alan Medina
Trazos (Traces) is a forthcoming projection by Chicago artists and filmmakers Alan Medina and Wills Glasspiegel. The projection expands upon the living history of public art in Pilsen, a neighborhood on the near southwest side of Chicago. Trazos amplifies and animates the murals, dances, and sounds of life in this historically Mexican-American neighborhood. Accompanying Trazos’ release in the summer of 2026, Medina and Glasspiegel will also share a series of short oral histories related to public art and its protagonists in Pilsen since the 1960s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wills_Glasspiegel and Alan Medina, founder of Pilsen’s https://i-n-g-a.com/pages/about

Aug. 6 – Aug. 9.                        Trazos + Billiken
Billiken, Glasspiegel’s earlier work for THE MART produced with Shkunna Stewart, joins Trazos for a short pop-up run to coincide with Chicago’s annual southside Bud Billiken Parade, founded by the Chicago Defender. Billiken combines animation and live footage to showcase the excitement of this celebration of Black dance and community legacy in a new media and downtown context. https://www.budbillikenparade.org/

Aug. 13 – Sept. 6.                    Trazos (Traces)

Sept. 10 – Nov. 15. University of Illinois/Argonne National Lab + The Adler Planetarium’s Astrographics
The University of Illinois, Chicago’s Data Visualization Lab, under the direction of Daria Tsoupikova, has partnered with Argonne National Lab to create a new projection that displays the latest in aesthetic concepts applied to the collection and analysis of scientific data. https://udv.lab.uic.edu/

The Adler Planetarium’s Astrographics explores the ways in which humans conceptualize and visualize the universe, and how that has changed over time. The piece consisted of four movements (Earth, Other Worlds, Stars, and Beyond) that step out to progressively deeper and more speculative realms. Each of these movements feature scientific visualizations produced by The Adler Planetarium’s Space Visualization Group, woven together with imagery from the world’s telescopes and works on paper from The Adler’s collections. The projection was accompanied by music from Sun Ra archives, curated by the Experimental Sound Studio. The piece premiered in 2020 and honored the progress that has occurred in the 90 years since The Adler Planetarium was founded on May 1930, becoming the first planetarium in the Americas. Adler site.

Nov. 19 – Nov. 27. The Joffrey Ballet’s Nutcracker allows visitors along Chicago’s Riverwalk to experience scenes from the holiday classic set to Tchaikovsky’s famous score. Representing the innovation, ingenuity, and hope of Chicago, the production features the work of Tony Award-winning choreographer Christopher Wheeldon. https://joffrey.org/performances-and-tickets/25-26-season/the-nutcracker-3/