Text-based artwork by Tony Cokes from the installation On Boredom

Art Institute of ChicagoGrant Park / Loop

Tony Cokes: On Boredom

Now showing3 October 2026 – 14 March 2027$32

Cokes's first outdoor presentation in Chicago fills the Bluhm Family Terrace with a two-part installation: a billboard viewable from Millennium Park and a freestanding sign, both set to music.

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On now All of November 2026

Stand in Millennium Park, look up at the Modern Wing, and the terrace windows read "Let yourself be free." The line is from Aretha Franklin's 1968 recording of "Think", and it was in Chicago, at the Regal Theater in Bronzeville in 1964, that DJ Pervis Spann first called her the Queen of Soul.

Upstairs on the Bluhm Family Terrace, on the Modern Wing's third level, you walk out to the second part: a freestanding sign carrying two sentences by the English theorist Mark Fisher, "We don't have the freedom to be bored anymore" and "There's a set of forces that want us to be permanently anxious." A soundtrack Cokes chose for Chicago and the theme of freedom plays on the terrace during museum hours. It stays outdoors until 14 March, so the freedom to be bored comes with a wind off the lake.

It is small: two texts and a playlist. The terrace half comes with museum admission; the billboard is free from the park.

Look for

The billboard on the terrace windows
Look up from Millennium Park or from across the street to see the Modern Wing's terrace windows spelling out "Let yourself be free", a line from Aretha Franklin's "Think".
The Mark Fisher sign
Out on the terrace, a freestanding sign sets Fisher's "We don't have the freedom to be bored anymore" beside "There's a set of forces that want us to be permanently anxious".
The terrace soundtrack
Songs Cokes picked to fit Chicago and the theme of freedom play on the terrace whenever the museum is open.