On Saturday, December 14th, 2019 UIMA hosts its annual Gala of the Arts Fundraiser featuring acclaimed jazz musicians Orbert Davis and members of the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic.

Since January 2018, Davis and his ensemble have collaborated with musicians from Chicago’s Chinese, Greek, Mexican, South African and West African immigrant communities, bringing attention to the talents and contributions of immigrants to America and Chicago in particular. These collaborations have resulted in a series of neighborhood performances and World Premiere performances in Millennium Park in the summers of 2018 and 2019.

Inspired by this collaborative process, “The Immigrant Story” will feature Davis and his group alongside Ivan Shmilo, a virtuoso player of the bandura. The performance will not only entertain but also deeply engage you in the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (UIMA)’s mission to preserve and promote the shared expression of the Ukrainian tradition with jazz and as a uniquely American experience.

Our fundraiser is hosting Lidia Lykhach as the keynote speaker. One of Ukraine’s leading art experts, she is the editor and owner of “Rodovid,” a top art book publisher. Lykhach is the recipient of this year’s UIMA Recognition Award.

We welcome everyone to join us in celebrating “The Immigrant Story.” Cocktail hour starts at 6 pm and Dinner is served at 7 pm. Please visit here for tickets.

Revived Soldiers Ukraine presents violinist Oleksandr Bozhyk with a charitable concert to support medical expenses for the Ukrainian wounded soldiers. Revived Soldiers Ukraine (RSU) is a non-profit organization dedicated to providing aid to the people of Ukraine so that they may fulfill fundamental rights.

November 1, 2019
7:30 pm
2320 W. Chicago Ave

Tickets available here

UIMA will be open 10-5pm October 19th and 20th for Open House Chicago!

300+ sites in some 38 diverse neighborhoods will be open from 9am to 5pm each day. Check listings for individual site hours and details, and plan your schedule here

Opening Reception October 11, 2019, 6-9pm
On display until December 8, 2019

Forgotten Forms is a collaborative exhibition between members of the Chicago Cultural Alliance, the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts & Culture (NMPRAC), and the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (UIMA).

Investigating seemingly everyday objects to reveal a much greater story about neighborhood identity, placemaking and city life, the exhibition highlights the work of two emerging artists, both of whom explore structural elements of urban landscapes. Edra Soto revisits Puerto Rico’s vernacular architecture through her GRAFT installations and architectural interventions, and Yhelena Hall touches on the history of Chicago and explores a marginal state of detritus becoming artifacts through her series Polished Remnants.

Yhelena Hall was born in Ukraine and studied painting and graphics at the Kharkiv State Art College when she became fascinated by iconography and folk art. In 2003-2007, she had her graphic series exhibited in solo and group shows in galleries of Kyiv, Ukraine. In 2007, Yhelena was awarded Fulbright Scholarship to obtain her MFA degree at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Concentrating in Sculpture, she developed a number of nature-based performances and process-driven sculptures, some of which were exhibited in the Samuel Dorsky Museum in New Paltz and the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York City. After her graduation in 2009, she participated in several art residencies throughout the Eastern Europe. In 2011, she received Rinat Akhmetov’s Foundation Grant to execute her piece focusing on the consumer identity and Ukrainian entertainment industry. Currently, based in Chicago, Yhelena continues working with sculptural media utilizing a broad range of materials with mechanical and electric elements.

Edra Soto was born in Puerto Rico and is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist, educator, curator, and co-director of the outdoor project space THE FRANKLIN. She is invested in creating and providing visual and educational models propelled by empathy and generosity. Her recent projects are motivated by civic and social actions focus on fostering relationships with a wide range of communities. Most recently, Soto was awarded the Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship and DCASE for Individual Artist Grant from the City of Chicago. Soto has attended residency programs at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (ME), Beta-Local (PR), and Ragdale Foundation (IL), amongst others. She is a lecturer for the Contemporary Practices Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she holds an MFA, and a bachelor’s degree from Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico.

Indulge your senses of sight, sound, taste, and smell in a multi-sensory artistic extravaganza!

“Pictures At An Exhibition” is a multi-sensory performance art piece designed by Jeff Yang, creator of theIn The Realm Of Sensesproject that combines different modalities of art into coherent works that incorporate elements of sight, sound, taste, and smell. Originally written by famous Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky in 1874 for solo piano based on paintings of Viktor Hartmann, this piece was orchestrated by Maurice Ravel in 1922 to be a staple in the orchestral repertoire. In this new version, the music has been reduced for two players and eight instruments, with Jeff Yang on violin, viola, cello, four baroque recorders, and Lyudmila Lakisovaon piano. 

The music of Mussorgsky will be paired with animated video of lithographs based on the lost paintings by Hartmann, scents designed by master French perfumer Christophe Laudamiel, and sweet creations and libations by some of Chicago's top culinary destinations Band of Bohemia, Mango Pickle, Hewn Bakery, Chocolat Uzma, and Maplewood Brewery. This performance will entice your senses in a completely new and exhilarating ways never experienced before.

The first half of the program will feature rarely heard pieces by famous Ukrainian-born composers, Sergei Borkiewiecz, Sergei Prokofiev, and Myroslav Skoryk. Also being displayed are five original lithographs by John Gaudette based on the lost paintings of Viktor Hartmann of which this piece was based on. 

Tickets: $35 Book Yours Here

At the Door: $40

Sponsor Members and higher- free

September 28, 2019, 2-4pm
This event takes place during West Town Art Walk. UIMA will be open from 10am-8pm.

View “Blue Collar” and hear from artists Anthony Adcock and Cleveland Dean. Exhibition catalogue will also be released.

Opening Reception: 6-9pm, August 9th, 2019
On display from August 9th-October 6th, 2019

Blue Collar is an exhibition that has its roots in construction both physically and theoretically. Labor lends to an appreciation of the result of the task at hand. It is a dedication. The act of “putting in work” results in something being built to further our progression. That “work” translates not only into the physical task but also influence, investigation, perspective and trust in understanding. The works of both Cleveland Dean and Anthony Adcock envelop themselves in history, a dedication to mastery and a result that reflects not only aesthetic enjoyment but deep contemplation.

Blue Collar will feature new works from both artists’ catalogues inclusive of painting, sculptures and installations. The works of Cleveland and Anthony have a symbiotic relation to each other in how both artists explore the outward perceptions of the same unconventional materials yet explore the presentation of such in vastly different ways.

July 28, 1-3pm
Please join us for a gallery talk featuring Michael K. Paxton and Robert Cohen, M.D where art and science will come together to explore the nature of black lung disease.

Michael K. Paxton’s many awards include a grant from the Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Inc., New York; Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Visual Art Award and two Professional Development Grants; Fellowships with both Air le Parc, Project and Research Center, Pampelonne, France and Jentel Artist Residency Program, Banner, Wyoming; a Marshall University Alumni Award of Distinction; five Professional Development Grants from Columbia College, Chicago and the documentary film “Work at Hand, Michael K. Paxton” Official Selection of the 17thAnnual Great Lakes International Film Festival. Major one-person exhibitions include Miami University Museum of Art, Oxford, Ohio; Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL; Linda Matney Gallery, Williamsburg, VA.; Heuser Art Center, Bradley University, Peoria, IL, Linda Warren Projects, Chicago, IL; Laura Mesaros Gallery, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV. He has been published in New American Paintings; featured artist/educator in issue 8 of Line Work; been the subject of both radio and television features on NPR, Chicago and WVPBS and selected and published in Art and Soul, highlighting fifty of the most noted West Virginians in the Arts. 

He is an adjunct faculty member of Columbia College, Chicago since 2005 and has BA in Art from Marshall University, 1975 and an MFA in Drawing and Painting from The University of Georgia, 1979.

Dr. Robert Cohen is Professor of Medicine and Director of the Occupational Lung Disease Program at Northwestern University. He is also Clinical Professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Illinois School of Public Health. 

His major research interests are occupational lung disease, particularly mineral dust exposed workers. He has served as a consultant to several agencies of the United States government in areas of mining related health issues including the Respiratory Health Division of the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, MSHA, the Division of Coal Mine Workers Compensation of the US DOL. He is the principal investigator on the Black Lung Center of Excellence as well as the Black Lung Clinics Program funded by the Office of Rural Health Policy of the Health Resources and Services Administration. He also serves as the medical director for the National Coalition of Black Lung and Respiratory Disease, the organization of federally funded black lung clinics. He has served on several government oversight committees including the Mine Safety Research Advisory Committee and the US National Academies of Science and Institute of Medicine committee to review Personal Protective Technologies. 

He has worked extensively internationally in the area of medical surveillance for coal mine dust and silica exposed workers. He has worked on projects in Ukraine, Colombia, Argentina, and most recently has been working with Queensland State Government agencies to review and improve their coal mine workers health scheme. 

Raw Reckoning

Opening Reception: 6-9pm, June 7th, 2019
On display from June 7th-August 4th, 2019

Raw Reckoning is veteran Chicago artist Michael K. Paxton’s one-person exhibition of large-scale paintings and works on paper that derive their structure from the study of slide sections of the effect of black lung disease on coalminers. Paxton, a sixth generation West Virginian creates pillar size fields of chalk, charcoal, gesso and acrylic on raw canvas that embrace this ongoing devastation from coal in an effort to point to a place and people not heard from often in contemporary art. Through a well ingrained working process of size and materials, the open-ended approach of how each painting is developed produces a colorful and awkward work of aggressive mark making that refuses to stand still. Pushing hard against expectations an otherness surrounds his work as he looks for the exact point where his bone deep Appalachian heritage can carve out a place for a heart’s desire to speak of something important, personal and yet as common as dirt. 

Michael K. Paxton many awards include a grant from the Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Inc., New York; Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Visual Art Award and two Professional Development Grants; Fellowships with both Air le Parc, Project and Research Center, Pampelonne, France and Jentel Artist Residency Program, Banner, Wyoming; a Marshall University Alumni Award of Distinction; five Professional Development Grants from Columbia College, Chicago and the documentary film “Work at Hand, Michael K. Paxton” Official Selection of the 17thAnnual Great Lakes International Film Festival. Major one-person exhibitions include Miami University Museum of Art, Oxford, Ohio; Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago, IL; Linda Matney Gallery, Williamsburg, VA.; Heuser Art Center, Bradley University, Peoria, IL, Linda Warren Projects, Chicago, IL; Laura Mesaros Gallery, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV. He has been published in New American Paintings; featured artist/educator in issue 8 of Line Work; been the subject of both radio and television features on NPR, Chicago and WVPBS and selected and published in Art and Soul, highlighting fifty of the most noted West Virginians in the Arts. 

He is an adjunct faculty member of Columbia College, Chicago since 2005 and has BA in Art from Marshall University, 1975 and an MFA in Drawing and Painting from The University of Georgia, 1979.

Sunday, April 14th, 2pm
Tickets: $20, available here

Is Russia implementing a "Boa Constrictor Strategy" by crushing Ukraine to achieve domination in the northern Black Sea, including control of dozens of gas platforms previously operated by Kyiv?   What could be the future U.S. policy in response to Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine? The conflict in the Kerch Strait was not just about Ukraine but about the defense of Western values. How can  U.S. and the West support Ukraine? Come to hear Glen Howard's  very compelling presentation: Ukraine’s Maritime Security Priorities.

Glen Howard is the President of the Jamestown Foundation, one of the world’s leading research and analysis organizations on Eurasia. Based in Washington, D.C., Mr. Howard has overseen the research and analysis activities of Jamestown for the past 16 years and extensively dealt with Russia and Eurasia in his capacity as Jamestown President, working with the regional leaders and national strategists across Eurasia from the Baltic to Central Asia.

Third Stream: Ukrainian Folk Songs meet Jazz and Latin American Music Styles

Saturday, April 13, 7 pm

Tickets $20. Purchase your tickets HERE

What happens when some of Chicago’s best musicians come together and infuse Jazz with Classical elements, Latin American rhythms and Ukrainian folk melodies? You guessed it: AN UNFORGETTABLE, ONE OF A KIND CONCERT!

UIMA continues to cultivate a reputation as an essential venue for local artistic collaboration and experimentation. We are delighted to welcome Leanro Varady (piano), Ernie Adams (drums) and Kevyn Miller (bass) to our stage for a Third Stream Jazz Concert. 

Leandro López Várady, pianist and composer, was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. After graduating from the Catholic University of Argentina, Leandro has performed around the world, including Poland, Cuba and Bulgaria as pianist of the Orbert Davis’ Chicago Jazz Philharmonic; as well as the Symphony Center, Harris Theater, Millennium Park, Auditorium Theater, Chicago Jazz Festival, Taste of Chicago, and the Jazz&Pop Festival in Buenos Aires. 

Ernie Adams has toured, recorded and performed with some of the biggest names in music, including such stars as Joe Williams, Nancy Wilson, Al Jarreau, Dianne Reeves, and Stanley Turrentine to name a few. With over 100 recordings, numerous television, radio and movie soundtracks, Ernie is also a Drum/Jazz Professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago and a Ravinia Jazz Mentor. 

Kevyn Miller is currently completing his Bachelor of Music in Jazz Studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago where he studies upright and electric bass with Larry Kohut. While completing his studies, Kevyn has had the opportunity to work with such great artists as Jon Faddis, Mike Stern, Rufus Reid, and Tom Garling. Additionally, he has performed at Symphony Center, for the ILMEA Conference and Midwest Band Clinic, and live on WGN and ABC news. Upon completing his degree, Kevyn plans to continue to work as a freelance musician, teaching private lessons and performing throughout the Chicago area.

Sunday, April 7, 2pm

Join photographer Brendan Hoffman for a gallery talk. Hoffman has been photographing the war, and civilian life surrounding it, since its early days in April 2014, one of very few photographers to have continually worked on both sides. His portrayal emphasizes the incongruous absurdity inherent in armed conflict, the shock of the unimaginable juxtaposed with the utterly mundane. If anything is clear, it is that war is real, and it can happen anywhere.

Opening Reception: 6-9pm, April 5th, 2019

Since protests in Kyiv drove President Viktor Yanukovych from power in February 2014, eastern Ukraine has been convulsed by a separatist insurgency that evolved into a full-fledged war centered in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk, an industrial region known as the Donbass.

After some four years, the war grinds on, stuck in an uneasy stalemate while delivering a steady stream of death and injury. For civilians living near the line of contact or within non-government-controlled areas, conflict is like the weather, an uncontrollable fact of life that shapes one’s day-to-day existence. Everyone continues their business as best they can with a practiced sense of normalcy.

For soldiers, enthusiasm for the cause, whether fueled by propaganda or patriotism, is tempered by the toil and terror of survival.

I’ve been photographing the war, and civilian life surrounding it, since its early days in April 2014, one of very few photographers to have continually worked on both sides. My portrayal emphasizes the incongruous absurdity inherent in armed conflict, the shock of the unimaginable juxtaposed with the utterly mundane. If anything is clear, it is that war is real, and it can happen anywhere.

--Brendan Hoffman

Saturday, March 30, 7pm
Tickets: $20

For the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, Lubomyr Krushelnytsky is the true pioneer of Music Programming at UIMA today. For over a decade he chaired the Music Committee and took an active role in the expansion of the Institute as a member of the Board of Directors. Throughout the years of his dedicated service to our institution, he has tirelessly sought and brought unique musical talents to the stage at UIMA. Today Mr. Krushelnycky’s legacy lives on in the vibrant musical program that UIMA offers to the public. Two celebrated Ukrainian musicians and Lubko’s close friends Mykola Suk on piano and Oleh Krysa on violin, who have performed at UIMA and on stages all over the world, will return to UIMA to perform as a gift of love to Lubko’s memory. The program will include compositions by Beethoven, Bach and Skoryk. Join us for an exquisite performance in memory of an outstanding man, with the mind of an engineer and the heart of a musical enthusiast, a lyrical soul who wholeheartedly chose UIMA as the venue for fruition of his true passions. 

Please join guest curators Robin Dluzen and Mary Lou Zelazny for a walk-through of the exhibition, "The New UnNatural," as well as a performance of new work by exhibiting artist Julie Potratz.

Saturday March 23 at 2pm

Sunday, February 24th, 1pm

Tickets: $20
$25 at the door

Pianist Marianna Humetska, Co-Founder, Artistic Director, and Soloist of the "Discovering Paderewski" International Music Festival in Ukraine/Poland, is a winner of numerous prizes and diplomas in international competitions, among which include the Tchaikovsky Competition for Young Musicians and Diaghilev Competition in Moscow, “Virtuosos of the Year 2000” Competition in St. Petersburg, Dvarionas Competition in Vilnius, and the Honens Competition in Calgary. In 2014 Marianna Humetska was awarded with the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of Poland by Polish president Bronislaw Komorowski after she performed Ignacy Jan Paderewski’s Polish Fantasy for Piano and Orchestra on Paderewski’s own piano at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw.

Born in Lviv, Ukraine, Ms. Humetska holds a Diploma with Honours from the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, an Artist Diploma from the Glenn Gould School of Music in Toronto, and a Masters Degree from the Lviv Music Academy.

Chopin by Candlelight– an exquisite program of solo piano compositions by one of the greatest musical geniuses of all time – “poet of the piano” – Frederic Chopin. The compositions are based on Chopin’s most extraordinary music written in the last years of his life, such as Sonata #3,  Polonaise-Fantaisie and late Waltzes – where expressive possibilities of his art unfold in his favoured forms with a complexity and emotional depth. The program is also completed with a selection of exclusive arrangements of Chopin’s Songs, originally written for Voice and Piano, done by another 19th century piano genius – Franz Liszt.

Chopin by Candlelight selection is created to satisfy most demanding tastes of music connoisseurs. It is ideal for the intimate environment reminding musical salon, where close listening reveals considerable nuance and subtlety.

M.Humetska (from music notes to Chopin by Candlelight program selections) 

Opening Reception: 2 – 4 pm on Saturday, February 2
On display until April 7

Chicago Cultural Center
Michigan Avenue Galleries
78 E Washington St
Chicago, IL 60602

Forgotten Forms is a collaborative exhibition between members of the Chicago Cultural Alliance, the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts & Culture (NMPRAC), and the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (UIMA), that investigates our relationship with everyday objects in context of neighborhood identity and our responsibility to creating and recreating it.

NMPRAC and UIMA will investigate seemingly everyday objects to reveal a much greater story about neighborhood identity, placemaking, and city life with the exhibition Forgotten Forms. The exhibition will highlight two emerging artists, Edra Soto and Yhelena Hall.

Yhelena Hall was born in Ukraine and studied painting and graphics at the Kharkiv State Art College when she became fascinated by iconography and folk art. In 2003-2007, she had her graphic series exhibited in solo and group shows in galleries of Kyiv, Ukraine. In 2007, Yhelena was awarded Fulbright Scholarship to obtain her MFA degree at the State University of New York at New Paltz. Concentrating in Sculpture, she developed a number of nature-based performances and process-driven sculptures, some of which were exhibited in the Samuel Dorsky Museum in New Paltz and the Ukrainian Institute of America in New York City. After her graduation in 2009, she participated in several art residencies throughout the Eastern Europe. In 2011, she received Rinat Akhmetov’s Foundation Grant to execute her piece focusing on the consumer identity and Ukrainian entertainment industry. Currently, based in Chicago, Yhelena continues working with sculptural media utilizing a broad range of materials with mechanical and electric elements.

Edra Soto was born in Puerto Rico and is a Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist, educator, curator, and co-director of the outdoor project space THE FRANKLIN. She is invested in creating and providing visual and educational models propelled by empathy and generosity. Her recent projects are motivated by civic and social actions focus on fostering relationships with a wide range of communities. Most recently, Soto was awarded the Efroymson Contemporary Arts Fellowship and DCASE for Individual Artist Grant from the City of Chicago. Soto has attended residency programs at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture (ME), Beta-Local (PR), and Ragdale Foundation (IL), amongst others. She is a lecturer for the Contemporary Practices Department at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she holds an MFA, and a bachelor’s degree from Escuela de Artes Plásticas de Puerto Rico.

Opening reception: February 1, 2019, 6—9pm

In “The New UnNatural,” seven female artists examine the modern grotesque. The genre of the “grotesque” is ancient, with examples from every culture and period. Ranging from the fanciful to the hideous, hybridized figurative forms have been used by artists around the world as satire, commentary, ornamentation and ritual. For the artists in “The New UnNatural,” Laurie Hogin, Amanda Elizabeth Joseph, Renluka Maharaj, Julie Potratz, Chloe Seibert, Maria Tomasula and Mary Lou Zelazny, the attraction to rough or deformed amalgamations is both personal and political. 

In embracing the unsettling, the absurd and the repulsive, the artists in this exhibition eschew the notion of the “beautiful,” not as a feminist critique of “beauty” or its representation in art; rather, the grotesque offers a means of coping with the rising anxieties and overstimulation of our times: a callous of sorts to strengthen one’s ability to withstand inescapable bombardment of stimuli. 

So too does the grotesque provide a vehicle for power and self-assertion, especially in the hands of women. Through the violent, technicolor chimeras of Hogin’s paintings; Joseph’s hyperreal, emphatically flawed female bodies; Maharaj’s sensual, macabre rituals; Potratz’s exaggerated, uncanny costumed performances; Seibert’s ghastly, crudely wrought faces; Tomasula’s viscous still-lifes; and the mongrel, Frankenstein-ed figures of Zelazny’s works, each artist projects a vision of the unexpectedly terrifying that reveals a visceral female sensibility.

Saturday, January 26, 2019, 1:00pm

Please join us for a discussion with artists Barbara Cooper, Shona Macdonald, and Yoonshin Park.