Chaka Khan fires up the MCA ArtEdge gala

The dynamic Queen of Funk, Chaka Khan, ramped up the excitement factor during her performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art’s ArtEdge gala on June 10. The fundraiser celebrated the ten-year anniversary of this iconic event and allowed the 410 attendees first access to the opening of the Gary Simmons: Public Enemy exhibition. (Now through October 1, details below).

Co-chaired by MCS Trustees Sara Albrecht and Nathaniel Robinson, the evening featured a lavish cocktail reception and passed hors d’oeuvres inside a large tent in the John Kern Terrace Garden. Here, elaborate décor by HMR Designs (Jason Williquette and William Heffernan) and Frost Chicago (Jeffrey Foster), was a study in black and white.

The Low Down Brass Band led guests into the museum where a dinner buffet was presented in the lobby. Eye-popping décor featured colorful, over-sized flowers hanging from the ceiling with the flower motif covering bars and tabletops. Live performances by local artists lasted throughout the night with the finale performance by 10-time Grammy Award-winner Chaka Khan back in the tent.

Pritzker Director Madeleine Grynsztejn and Board Chair Cari Sacks thanked guests and sponsors for supporting the MCA’s collaborative efforts to provide a platform for living artists in pursuit of a creative and diverse future. The event raised over $1.7 million.

About Gary Simmons: Public Enemy exhibition

This exhibition is a 60+ piece survey of artist Gary Simmons’s work, that opened on June 13, 2023. The presentation, organized by James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator René Morales, Assistant Curator Jadine Collingwood, and Curatorial Associate Jack Schneider, is the most comprehensive look at Simmons’s work to date. Simmons’s artwork exposes the hidden histories that permeate U.S. visual culture, drawing from a host of popular genres including sports, cinema, television, music, architecture, and art. In this timely exhibition, audiences will gain a holistic understanding of the role played by these and other cultural outlets in shaping social understandings of race and collective memory. (MCAChicago.org)