Atrium Project: Celeste Rapone

Four women sit together, their oversized limbs so entwined you can't tell whose leg belongs to whom, their faces "gazing out in plaintive resignation" at something that never arrives. Anyone who has watched Bus Tracker count down to a bus that never comes will know the look.

That's the whole show: one painting, Sideline (After Ben Shahn) (2025), 72 by 90 inches, in the Kovler Atrium, the museum's two-storey entrance, so you meet it on the way in. Celeste Rapone, a Chicago painter born in 1985, reworks Men on a Bench (1940) by Ben Shahn, who painted working and immigrant life in the Depression, and puts four women where his men sat. She flattens space and figures and keeps the colours muted.

No critic has reviewed it yet, so treat it as a stop rather than a destination. It's included in admission ($22, $19 for Chicago residents, free for 18 and under), and on Tuesdays the museum stays open to 9pm, free for Illinois residents from 5pm.