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.

The 2026 Ground Floor exhibition marks the ninth iteration of this biennial exhibition at the Art Center. The exhibition features: Lamia Abukhadra, Gabby Banks, Claire Burke Dain, Ricardo De Lima, Emma Difani, naakita f.k., Aidan Anne Frierson, Laveen Gammie, Laurel Hauge, Liang He, Xingyu Huang, Susan Jablonski, Nanako Kono, Isaiah Lee, Faye Yingfei Liang, Mauricio López F., Te Palandjian, Breanna Nannette Robinson, Renee Royale, Kiana Shahnia, and Judson Womack.

August 9 – November 1, 2026
Gallery 1, Gallery 2, Cleave E. Carney Gallery, and Jackman Goldwasser Catwalk Gallery
Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S Cornell Ave