New Light : Contemporary Experiments in Stained Glass

Just across the street from Chicago’s iconic Tiffany Dome, The Design Museum of Chicago’s atrium gallery presents New Light: Contemporary Experiments in Stained Glass, a group exhibition highlighting five artists rewriting the city’s stained glass tradition.

Stepping out from quieting cathedrals and architectural wonders, stained glass enters the everyday, cementing itself as a dynamic and enduring element of Chicago’s visual landscape. Retaining its historic devotion to light and color but playing with material and motif, these works propose contemporary directions for the historic craft. The art form finds a new home in soft linens, in skateparks, in graphic compositions and in subversive iconography. Like the dead casting the past aside in Dylan Koca’s Shedding, stained glass is unrestrained– free to dance, to play, and to revel in its own potential.

Featuring work by Shama Kipfer-Tessler, Flannery Thompson, Meg Lumbar, Ben Houtkamp, and Dylan Koca

Curated by Georgia Norton de Matos