Columbia Spotlight: Upcoming Events

Brendan Fernandes, an internationally recognized Canadian artist working at the intersection of dance and visual arts, will give a lecture at Columbia College Chicago on December 4. Photo by Michael Salisbury from "The Many Identities of Brendan Fernandes," published in Nuvo magazine.

A range of performances and experiences showcasing student and faculty artists from diverse backgrounds and disciplines.

Learn more about our performance spaces at www.colum.edu/spotlight

Ongoing Events

Dawit L. Petros: Prospetto a Mare
On display until December 20
Museum of Contemporary Photography (MoCP), 600 S. Michigan Ave.
Admission: Free
The Balbo Monument, a gift from Benito Mussolini to commemorate Italo Balbo’s 1933 flight, stands between Soldier Field and Lake Michigan. “Prospetto a Mare” by Eritrea-born artist Dawit L. Petros investigates Italian colonialism’s influence on visual culture and memory, focusing on Chicago’s hidden colonial ties and the propaganda used in Italy’s colonial projects. Curated by Karen Irvine, this exhibition is part of Art Design Chicago, funded by the Terra Foundation for American Art and The Andy Warhol Foundation. Petros, an associate professor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, has exhibited internationally, including at Tate Modern and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

Paul D'Amato's Midway
On display until January 4
Chicago Cultural Center, Chicago Rooms, 78 E. Washington St., 2nd Floor North
Admission: Free
Photographer and School of Visual Arts faculty member Paul D’Amato captures life in the neighborhoods surrounding Chicago's Midway Airport—communities marked by strip malls, motels, and constant airplane noise. For over a decade, D’Amato has documented these often-overlooked places, portraying lives caught between city and suburb, survival and success. A professor at Columbia College Chicago, his work is featured in major collections, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and MoMA.

Columbia College Chicago x Patagonia Worn Wear Showcase
On display until January 6
Columbia College Chicago, 618 S. Michigan Ave. And Patagonia x Worn Wear, 1115 W. Fulton Market
Admission: Free
Experience the future of fashion at Columbia’s School of Fashion student showcase in partnership with Patagonia. For the Worn Wear Competition, Columbia fashion students will create new products from Patagonia Worn Wear merchandise and showcase their designs in the 618 S. Michigan windows on November 1. The public is invited to view these innovative designs and vote for their favorite on social media. Then the winning designs will be on display at Patagonia x Worn Wear through January 6.

Cecilia Beaven: Flickering Cocoon
On display through June 1
Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Avenue
Admission: Free
In “Flickering Cocoon,” artist and Columbia faculty member Cecilia Beaven creates a vibrant sanctuary where spirituality and physicality intertwine. Influenced by her Mexican heritage, her work explores life, death, and transformation with neon-hued imagery of animals, plants, and female forms, playfully embracing the cycle of life. Blending traditional illustration with modern murals, textiles, and sculpture, Beaven brings Mesoamerican myths to life and reinterprets Cipactli, a mythical crocodile, as a powerful symbol of creation.

December 2024

ShopColumbia’s 16th Annual Holiday Market
December 2–20, 2024 | Monday–Thursday, 10 a.m.–4 p.m.
ShopColumbia, 619 S. Wabash Ave.
Discover unique, handcrafted gifts at ShopColumbia’s Annual Holiday Market, featuring original works by Columbia College Chicago artists. Find affordable items priced between $10 and $40, perfect for spreading joy and supporting local artists this season.

Brendan Fernandes - ART NOW! Lecture
December 4, 6–7:30 p.m.
Columbia College Chicago Film Row Cinema, 1104 S. Wabash Ave.
Admission: Free with RSVP
Brendan Fernandes is an internationally recognized Canadian artist whose work bridges dance and visual arts. Exploring themes of race, queer culture, migration, and protest, his projects take on hybrid forms—part ballet, part queer dance party, and part political protest—always rooted in collaboration and fostering solidarity.

The Power of Persistence
December 5, 6 p.m.
Columbia College Chicago Student Center, 754 South Wabash Ave.
Admission: TBA
Join Columbia College Chicago for The Power of Persistence, an immersive experience designed, curated, and driven by students. As a guest, you will be guided through exhibitions, performances, and interactive stations giving you a behind-the-scenes look at how Columbia prepares students for careers in creative industries. The Power of Persistence has one purpose: to raise funds for Persistence Scholarships, ensuring students have the financial backing needed to graduate college.

PAMOJA: Repertory Performance Works
December 12-13, 7:30 p.m.
The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, 1306 S. Michigan Ave.
Admission: $15 public, free for Columbia students
PAMOJA - Swahili for “together” - features works set on the kinesthetically fluid students of the Dance Center by alumni, faculty, and visiting artists. Featuring work by Bevara Anderson, Rachel Damon, Allen Desterhaft & Kelsa “K-Soul” Rieger-Haywood, Darrell Jones, Camila Rivero Pooley, Kia Smith, and a special performance by Central West Regional Senior Center during Friday’s matinee.

24-Hour Play Festival
December 13, 8 p.m.
Columbia College Chicago Getz Theatre Center, Courtyard Theatre, 72 E. 11th St.
Admission: Free
Columbia College Chicago presents the 24-Hour Play Festival, a unique theatrical event where students write, rehearse, and stage original short plays within a single day. The festival highlights the collaborative efforts of emerging playwrights, directors, and actors, showcasing their creativity and adaptability on stage.

January 2025

MARAÑA’S Organismo
January 23-25, 7:30 p.m.; January 25, 4 p.m.
The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, 1306 S. Michigan Ave.
Purchase tickets through the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival box office
An immersion into an organism created from wool, sounds, colors, and textures combined with circus acrobatics, dance, rhythms, and music. Presented in partnership with the Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival.

February 2025

Jonathan McReynolds Residency Concert
February 28, 7 p.m.
Columbia College Chicago Music Center Concert Hall, 1014 S. Michigan Ave.
Admission: $20 public; $5 Columbia College Chicago students
Chicago-born Christian music artist McReynolds is known for his soulful voice and inspirational lyrics. He's collaborated with artists like Stevie Wonder and Justin Bieber and is a faculty member at Columbia College Chicago.

Musical Theatre Dance Cabaret
February 20-21, 7:30 p.m.
The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, 1306 S. Michigan Ave.
Admission: Free
Dive into the newly created School of Theatre and Dance with student choreographers and performers from both Theatre and Dance bringing their original interpretations of classic musical theatre dance numbers.

March 2025

You on the Moors Now
March 5-7, 7:30 p.m.; March 8, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.; March 12, 7:30 p.m., March 13, 7:30 p.m. (ASL-interpreted performance) March 14, 7:30 p.m.; March 15, 2 p.m.
Columbia College Chicago Getz Theatre Center, Sheldon Patinkin Theatre, 72 E. 11th St.
Admission: TBA
Four literary heroines of the nineteenth century set conventionalism ablaze when they turn down marriage proposals from their equally famous gentlemen callers. What results is a confluence of love, anger, grief, and bloodshed, as the ensemble struggles to reconcile romantic ideologies of the past with their modern ideas of courtship. Everything you’ve learned about love from the pages of Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and Little Women is turned upside down in this grand theatrical battle royale.

Efroymson Creative Writing Reading Series: Alumni Reading featuring Lor Clincy and Jeff Hoffmann
March 12, 5:30-7 p.m. and online
Admission: Free
Columbia College Chicago Conaway Center, 1104 S. Wabash, first floor
Lor Clincy is a Chicago-based poet and Columbia College Chicago MFA candidate who explores deep, personal experiences in her work, often addressing grief, loss, and the complexities of identity as a Black woman. Her poetry reflects on her upbringing and African American experiences, requiring readers to engage with perspectives outside the norm. Jeff Hoffmann’s debut novel “Other People’s Children” was published by Simon & Schuster in 2021. His second novel, “Like It Never Happened,” is set to be released in March 2024. He has received the Madison Review’s Chris O’Malley Prize in Fiction and was a finalist for the Missouri Review’s Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s Prize.

April 2025

Body/Matter
April 5, 6-8 p.m. | On display until May 5
International Museum of Surgical Science, 1524 N. Lake Shore Drive
Admission: Free
This exhibition includes twelve wearable artworks by Columbia students that consider the body as an object and subject of medical inquiry. Drawing upon research conducted in the International Museum of Surgical Science archives, the designers explore concepts of bodily normalcy, fashion as prosthetic, and surgical voyeurism, among others. While cloth is the ‘matter’ of fashion design, flesh is the ‘matter’ of surgical science. Together, cloth and flesh function as the fragile barrier between the self and society; and these works ask us to contemplate where one ends and the other begins. Curated by Lauren Downing Peters.

Alium Release Party
April 17, 3:30 p.m.
Admission: Free
Columbia College Chicago Conaway Center, 1104 S. Wabash, first floor
“Allium, A Journal of Poetry & Prose” is a multi-genre print and online journal published by Columbia College Chicago’s School of Communication and Culture. Three issues are published yearly: two digital issues in the Fall and Summer and one print issue in the Spring. This event will feature Columbia faculty member, writer, and poet Lisa Fishman, plus contributors from the Spring 2025 issue.

May 2025

RENT
May 1, 7:30 p.m.; May 2, 7:30 p.m.; May 3, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.; May 7, 7:30 p.m.; May 8, 7:30 p.m. (ASL-interpreted performance) May 9, 7:30 p.m.; May 10, 2 p.m.
Columbia College Chicago Getz Theatre Center, Courtyard Theatre, 72 E. 11th St.
Admission: TBA
“RENT” follows a year in the life of a group of impoverished young artists and musicians struggling to survive and create in New York's Lower East Side, under the shadow of HIV/AIDS.

News