Aquí en Chicago

In 2019, students from Instituto Justice and Leadership Academy in Pilsen made protest signs aimed at this museum, whose flagship Chicago gallery left Latino Chicago out. Six years later, those signs are on display in the show they demanded.

You walk onto the second floor past murals by co-designer Cecilia Beaven and into more than 170 years of Latino/a/e Chicago, told mostly through everyday things: a paletero's cart, a bedazzled quinceañera gown, a Day of the Dead display. The red cooler of Claudio Vélez, the tamale guy, is here too, and for once you're seeing it sober. Oral history snippets, some in Indigenous languages, run through the rooms, and every label is in English and Spanish.

No critic has reviewed it; exhibition advisor Ester Trujillo called it "a love letter to Latine Chicago." Entry is included with museum admission. It closes November 8, with a closing program from noon to 4pm that day.