Special Exhibits

Special Exhibits

Main Gallery

Mov Gïele | My Voice

Artwork by Per Elof Nilsson Ricklund

Friday, Jan. 16 – Sunday, April 12
Exhibit opening will be Friday, Jan. 16, 6 p.m. - 8 p.m.
Gallery walk will be on Saturday, Jan. 17, 11 a.m.

This exhibit showcases the vibrant and dynamic work of Sámi artist Per Elof Nilsson Ricklund. With roots in the Sámi cultural landscape and a gaze turned toward philosophy, archaeology, and art history, he creates works that carry both memory and movement. His paintings emerge at the intersection between the silence of nature and the noise of civilization, where art becomes a way to understand both the world around us and the inner world.

More information

My Future Heritage

Artwork by Sofia Hagström Møller

Friday, April 17 – Sunday, Aug. 7
Gallery Walk in July

In My Future Heritage, textile artist Sofia Hagström Møller explores weaving as a carrier of memory, tradition, and transformation. Rooted in Scandinavian textile heritage and shaped by transatlantic exchange, the exhibition brings together earlier works and a new series created specifically for this presentation.

Working within long-standing traditions of Scandinavian weaving, Hagström Møller draws on personal lineage and historical research, reinterpreting patterns inherited from her grandmother through contemporary tools and digital processes. Her work bridges generations, geographies, and modes of making, highlighting weaving as both a cultural archive and a living practice.

Presented at the Swedish American Museum in Chicago, My Future Heritage reflects the shared roots of Scandinavian and American textile traditions and invites viewers to consider how cultural heritage is continually shaped—carried forward through care, adaptation, and imagination.

My Future Heritage — shared traditions, woven toward hope. This project was developed with generous support from the Danish Arts Foundation, Danish Nationalbankens jubilæums fond, Knud Højgaards Fond, Tage Vangaard og Hustru Fond.

 

 

Raoul Wallenberg Gallery

Metamorphosis

Photographs by Edith-Marie Appleton  

Friday, Feb. 20, 2026 – Sunday, May 10, 2026

Born in 1919 in Evanston, Illinois, Edith-Marie Appleton was the youngest of the three children of Albert Ivar and Lillian Charlotte Appleton, both of Swedish decent. Albert Ivar Appleton founded the prosperous Appleton Electric Company in 1903. She worked alongside her two brothers at the family’s prosperous Appleton Electric Company (founded in 1903), contributing as an artist and collaborator on company catalogues. Edith earned an arts degree from Smith College in 1941 and served as a registered nurse at Evanston Hospital during World War II. Her thorough philanthropic involvement and support of the arts was sustained by an underlying personal creativity and commitment to the arts, showcased in this exhibit through portions of her personal photograph collection.

In addition to photography, Edith-Marie played the role of poet and musician in her personal life. Above all, she was known by those closest to her as a restless, creative, and introspective spirit. These photographs, generously donated to the Swedish American Museum by Edith’s son, Albert Ivar Goodman, provide a rare and special look into the private lives of the Appleton family, and into Edith’s world in particular. Including natural landscapes, candid portraits, and more, these images, paired with some of Edith’s poetic musings, give us a glimpse into her reality.

The Hellstrom's of Melrose Street c. 1915

Installation Art by Thomas Hellstrom  

Friday, May 15, 2026 – Sunday, Oct. 4, 2026
Exhibit Opening with Thomas Hellstrom on Friday May 15, 6 p.m. - 8 p.m.

Opening May 15, 2026 in the Wallenberg Gallery the Swedish American Museum presents "The Hellstrom's of Melrose Street c. 1915," an immersive installation by fourth-generation Swedish-American artist Thomas Hellstrom that brings his family’s Swedish-American story on Chicago’s North Side to life. Drawing from his Great Aunt Delores Olsen’s meticulously annotated photo albums, the exhibition features candid, often humorous photographs—including early “selfies”—of Delores, her brother Harlow Hellstrom, and their father Victor, who emigrated from Stockholm in the 1890s.

Delores's handwritten, annotated photographs are the installation's starting point, which pairs a video presentation—an homage to the early movie-houses in Andersonville that Delores and Harlow frequented—with original Victorian furnishings and family heirlooms depicted in the photographs. The installation invites visitors into the everyday world of a young Swedish American family in the early 20th century, enriching the Museum’s mission by connecting historic Swedish experiences with the neighborhood as it exists today.
 
 
 

Mormors Café

River Rat

Artwork by Joel Berman 

Exhibit Opening with the artist on Saturday, March 28, 5 p.m. - 8 p.m.

Joel's work is rooted in the process of Urban Sketching—a discipline of drawing on-site, in the moment, to capture what he sees and immediately process. The series Water is born out of his ritual on the Chicago River. As a self-proclaimed "River Rat," Joel's subject is kinetic, chaotic, and constantly shifting.
This exhibition showcases some sketches drawn directly from my kayak, a practice he calls "sketchyaking." The instability of drawing from the water forces immediate decision-making and rapid lines, stripping the urban scene down to its essential architectural and emotional elements. These sketches are conceptual tools, quickly translating the chaotic relationship between the natural world (water, sky, movement) and human infrastructure (bridges, piers, bulkheads, high-rises). The high-contrast, fast lines highlight the underlying skeleton of the city while accepting the unpredictable nature of the medium. The work is yin and yang: a structured architectural hand as a foil to the spontaneous energy of the water.

Joel Berman is the Principal Architect and founder of Berman Architecture, a national design firm rooted right here in Andersonville. While his professional practice designs everything from complex retail franchise prototypes (including restaurants and bars) to adaptive reuse projects, his personal artistic pursuit is driven by capturing the immediate environment on site through rapid, expressive sketching.
A self-proclaimed “River Rat,” Joel lives on the Chicago River, which serves as a constant muse and backdrop for his artwork. He actively explores this unique urban ecosystem through kayaking, rowing crew with the Chicago Rowing Foundation, and dragon boat racing with the Greater Chicagoland Dragon Boat Club. His deep engagement with the river’s life and evolving landscape directly informs the lines and shadows of his creative work. Joel volunteers for the Swedish American Museum during Midsommarfest, and donates art for auction for their annual gala. Most mornings Joel walks across Clark street from his office for coffee and cardamom from Mormor's cafe.
Joel champions freehand sketching as an essential tool for conceptual design, embracing its speed and intimacy to translate ideas quickly and clearly. He has spent years sharing this passion as a frequent educator for professional associations across Canada (including the Royal Architect's Institute of Canada and the Ontario and Alberta Associations of Architects). Joel also instructs at Urban Sketchers Chicago and Urban Sketcher Nagpur (India). His teaching legacy includes instructing dozens of primary school teachers for the Chicago Architecture Foundation – National Endowment of the Humanities Landmark Series on how to foster visual literacy in their students.
His sketches, drawn with a keen architectural eye, aim to show the immediate, emotional truth found in the world around us.
 
 

Andersonville Through the Ages

 

Sponsored by the Lind Family and Created in Collaboration with the DePaul History 391 Class of Spring 2020

In The Lind Room on the Museum's second floor, the Andersonville Through the Ages exhibit showcases how Andersonville became and remained an area rich in Swedish heritage. It illustrates how Andersonville has evolved over the years to incorporate contemporary tastes and hold new community celebrations, all the while holding onto its Swedish character.     

       

 

Traveling Exhibit: Available for Loan

An Ocean Apart: Swedish Immigrant Letters

By the Swedish American Museum

Sponsored by the Swedish Council of America

More than one million Swedes left their homeland between 1850 and 1930. Though they left their home country behind for opportunities abroad, many continued to keep close ties to their family and friends back in Sweden. Often these ties took the form of personal letters written to and from Sweden between parents, children, friends, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles all separated by an ocean, but still able to share their lives with one another. Few historical texts are as interesting and compelling as personal letters. They offer an insight into the lives of early 20th century Swedish immigrants and reveal how they shared many of the same kinds of hopes, interests and even humor that we have today. The letters also give us a look into the past from personal and individual points of view. 

These personal accounts detail the lives of those on both sides of immigration including those who left and those who remained in Sweden. Many of the letters in collection of the Swedish American Museum were written to the immigrants here in the U.S. from friends and family back in Sweden. The letters are a peek into the lives of their writers and receivers from how the crops were doing that year to news about marriages, births and—of course—who else was beginning to feel the pull of “America Fever.” This exhibition contains a selection of stories pulled from the hundreds of letters in the collection of the Swedish American Museum. Discover the world of Swedish immigrants to the United States Midwest, as told by those who lived it.

Exhibition Materials:
•    5 retractable banners 
•    34” (W) x 7’ (L)

If you are interested, please contact Sarah Hawkinson, Curator, at shawkinson@samac.org

 

 

Please note that at times we use exhibit spaces for events during Museum hours and viewing can be limited.

All of our exhibits are wheelchair accessible.

Sponsors of our Temporary Exhibits:

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