A Tale of Today: Yinka Shonibare CBE, is the inaugural show in a new series of contemporary art exhibitions at the Driehaus Museum which aim to explore the contrasts and connections between the Gilded Age and the present.
The exhibition is built around four sculptural installations and two photography series, that will be installed throughout the Museum’s 'home', the Nickerson Mansion—renowned as Gilded Age Chicago’s 'Marble Palace'. The installation will, in part, engage with the mansion’s own history, to better highlight the different questions about class, race, and status that are so integral to the exhibited works.
“Yinka Shonibare is an artist who draws on history, politics, and fashion to explore and critique our understanding of the past with equal doses of humour, irony, and theatrics,” — Richard P. Townsend, the Museum’s director. “Our hope with this exhibition, and its companion programs, is to engage audiences in thinking about the past through a new frame of reference—one that is also relevant to understanding the challenges our society faces today".