Ground Floor 2026

Ground Floor, an ongoing biennial exhibition since 2010, brings together work by Chicago's most promising emerging talent whose work demands to be seen and supported. The exhibition offers a single destination to discover 20 artists who have recently graduated (in 2025 and 2026) from one of Chicago's five outstanding MFA programs, Northwestern University, The University of Chicago, The University of Illinois at Chicago, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Columbia College. Ground Floor presents art made in the past couple of years in hopes of investigating and articulating conceptual and stylistic trends coming out of Chicago art schools right now. Ground Floor —so named because it provides a crucial platform for young artists and expands the entire lower level of the Art Center, gives exhibiting artists a major public venue in which to display their works at a critical juncture in their careers, helping to build, support, and ensure a strong and vibrant community of artists in Chicago. The 2026 Ground Floor exhibition marks the ninth iteration of this biennial exhibition at the Art Center.