CHICAGO, Illinois August 7, 2026 — Chicago-born artist Rashid Johnson is coming home this fall. Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers, a major survey covering nearly 30 years of his practice, opens November 7 at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, marking his third solo exhibition with the institution.
It’s a significant homecoming for the exhibition. After debuting at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and traveling to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth through early October, the show takes over the MCA’s Griffin Galleries. The presentation brings together more than 70 works spanning photography, video, sculpture, and large-scale installations.
Johnson, born in Chicago in 1977, first showed at the MCA in 2002 as part of its 12 x 12 series for emerging artists. A decade later, the museum presented his mid-career retrospective, A Message to Our Folks. In the years since, his work has entered the permanent collections of the Guggenheim, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, among others.
The exhibition charts a journey from his time as an art history student to becoming one of the foremost interpreters of Black popular, literary and intellectual culture. Among the early highlights for gallery visitors will be iconic photographs from The New Negro Escapist Social and Athletic Club, black-soap and wax Cosmic Slop shelf reliefs, spray-painted text works, as well as his acclaimed Anxious Men and Broken Men series. United, these works investigate fundamental problems of human resilience and fragility in responding to systemic social trauma.
Organized by Naomi Beckwith (Deputy Director and Chief Curator at the Guggenheim) and Andrea Karnes (Chief Curator at the Modern), the Chicago installation is overseen locally by MCA Assistant Curator Jack Schneider and Curatorial Assistant Korina Hernandez. An accompanying catalog features essays from the lead curators along with contributions from scholars Nana Adusei-Poku, Hendrik Folkerts, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Kevin Quashie, and Odili Donald Odita.
The survey lands alongside a robust 2026 schedule at the MCA. The museum’s upcoming lineup includes Dancing the Revolution—an exploration of visual and political histories in reggaetón and dancehall—as well as solo exhibitions highlighting Chicago artist Mike Cloud, the late sculptor Kenzi Shiokava, and a performance project titled Slow Dance.
For Chicago’s art community, a survey of this scale highlights how Johnson’s global reputation remains anchored in his hometown. Over the past decade, he has staged major solo shows at the Aspen Art Museum, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, and Moscow’s Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. Returning to the institution where he launched his first institutional show brings his career full circle.
A Poem for Deep Thinkers remains on view until April 25, 2027 providing Chicago audiences nearly six months to experience the survey. The MCA will announce further details about ticketing and members-only preview events leading up to the November opening.
