My Art, My City

on the project

One thing that I really love to do when family and friends visit Chicago is play tour guide. I've been known to give a two-hour-plus walking tour of the city's architecture, to the enjoyment, then exhaustion, of visitors. So I was delighted when Art21 reached out to me about their #MyArtMyCity campaign and offered to let me take over their Instagram account for the final three days of August. As Art21 Curator Jonathan Munar describes it on the Art21 blog, “The goal of the project is explore the relationship between art and place, as seen through the eyes of artists and art admirers from around the world.”

I decided to take this concept and run with it, starting with Chicago's architecture (after all, nothing shapes a city so much as its architecture) and treating the whole takeover as a chance for short-form criticism and essays, something the visually focused platform does nicely, but which often gets lost in the selfies and photos of food—if you were looking for those you'll be extremely disappointed. See the whole takeover on Art21’s Instagram account.