Jeff Carter: The Singer Pavilion Project

About this exhibition

Hyde Park Art Center, the renowned non-profit hub for contemporary art located on Chicago’s vibrant South Side, is proud to announce Jeff Carter: The Singer Pavilion Project, on view June 6 – September 20, 2026. Exploring the historic and architectural significance of the Singer Pavilion—the only building remaining of the former Michael Reese Hospital and Medical Center in Bronzeville, the exhibition prompts critical reflection on the Modernist promise of social progress, and considers how architectural ideals are compromised by histories of institutional failure, abandonment, and inequality. Since 2020, Carter has developed an extensive body of work exploring the site, history, and significance of the Singer Pavilion, a structure he refers to as a “Modernist ruin.” The exhibition presents eleven artworks, including sculptures, digital images, sound works and installations. Several artworks in the exhibition are made using materials extracted from the abandoned site: a waiting room chair, vinyl records, and native plants that have reclaimed the neglected landscape. The excavated materials were transformed into sculptures and conjure both the life in and around the building during its active years as a psychiatric institute (1948-2009) and the building’s dereliction following the hospital’s closure in 2009. A series of ‘zines developed in collaboration with artists with connections to the hospital and the surrounding Bronzeville community will be included. Founded in 1881, Michael Reese Hospital was a major research and teaching hospital, and one of the oldest and largest hospitals in Chicago, providing care to all people regardless of religion, nationality, or race. Its architecture, whose designers included Walter Gropius, the founder of the Bauhaus School, is considered by preservationists to hold historic value. ABOUT THE ARTIST Jeff Carter (1967, he/his) is a multimedia artist living and working in Chicago. He earned his BFA at the University of Colorado, Boulder and his MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. His practice includes sculpture, kinetics, sound, installation, and digital media. Jeff has exhibited his work in Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Renaissance Society, the Illinois Institute of Technology, and the Hyde Park Art Center. His work has been shown internationally at the Hayward Gallery, London, the Kunsthalle Hamburg, Germany, the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan, the IKEA Museum, Sweden, and the Lewis Glucksman Gallery, University College Cork, Ireland. His solo shows include the Chicago Cultural Center and the DePaul Art Museum, Chicago, Spencer Brownstone Gallery, New York, and Galeria Valle Orti, Valencia, Spain. A previous project about the demolished Michael Reese Hospital campus, The Common Citizenship of Forms (2011), was reviewed in Art In America and profiled in the 7th edition of Bauhaus Magazine. He is a Professor in The Art School at DePaul University. ABOUT THE HYDE PARK ART CENTER Hyde Park Art Center, at 5020 South Cornell Avenue on Chicago’s vibrant South Side, is a hub for contemporary arts in Chicago, serving as a gathering, production, and exhibition space for artists and the broader community to cultivate ideas, impact social change, and connect with new networks. Since its inception in 1939, Hyde Park Art Center has grown from a small collective of artists to establishing a strong legacy of risk-taking and experimentation, emerging as a unique Chicago arts institution with social impact. Today, the Art Center offers a diverse suite of programs for artists and art lovers of all backgrounds, ages, and stages in their careers including: contemporary art exhibitions in six galleries; an open-access community-based school with 2,000 annual enrollments; weekly arts education to 1,000 elementary school students in public schools; weekly and summer teen programs for 100 teen artists; professional-advancement programs for artists; a local and international artist residency; and public programs that connect residents with Chicago art and artists. The Art Center’s Oakman Clinton School + Studio is the nation’s first fully contribute-what-you-can visual art school for all ages. The Art Center functions as an amplifier for creative voices of today and tomorrow, providing the space to cultivate new work and connections. For more information, visit www.hydeparkart.org.

via Chicago Gallery News