The Art Design Chicago exhibition African American Designers in Chicago: Art, Commerce, and the Politics of Race, on view at the Chicago Cultural Center from October 27, 2018 to March 3, 2019, explores how African American designers in Chicago worked across different media and practices to define a role for African Americans in the design professions. Featuring work from a wide range of practices including cartooning, sign painting, illustration, graphic design, exhibit design and product design, the exhibition is the first ever to demonstrate how African American designers remade the image of the black consumer and the work of the black artist in a major hub of American advertising/consumer culture.

The exhibition’s curator Daniel Schulman, Director of Visual Arts at the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, leads this conversation on the themes and topics emerging from the exhibition and their impact on current scholarship on the intersecting fields of design and commercial history in Chicago.