The Floating Museum

Congratulations to Deputy Mayor Kenya Merritt on her nomination as Commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.

We had the opportunity to welcome her into our studio yesterday and share more about our work. We’re grateful for the visit and excited for what’s ahead for Chicago.

Floating Museum is pleased to announce a new print edition: ‘for Mecca’ (2025).

Printed on Hahnemühle paper and presented in an artist’s frame, the work measures 27.5 × 25.5 inches and is released as a limited edition of 10.

This edition helps support the movement of our Floating Monuments series through the city. ‘for Mecca’ is part of this ongoing project: a ghostly, inflatable architecture that travels across Chicago and beyond, serving as a platform for memory, conversation, exhibition, performance, and education.

The work honors the historic Mecca Flats apartment building in Bronzeville, once a vibrant center of Black life, demolished in 1952 in the name of urban renewal. Rather than replicate the structure, for Mecca gathers photographs, writings, and sound to carry its cultural legacy forward, inviting reflection on displacement, resilience, and how monuments might hold memory differently in an ever-changing city.

For inquiries please contact us via DM or email.

Thank you to everyone who joined us for the “This is a Rehearsal” book release with the Chicago Architecture Biennial and Chicago Humanities.  

As artistic directors of the 2023 Biennial, “This is a Rehearsal”, we invited audiences to think of cities as ongoing processes rather than fixed objects. The catalogue extends that conversation— with newly commissioned essays, poems, interviews, and documentation of the work of more than 80 local and global contributors who reimagined how cities function, who shapes them, and how we might respond to overlapping crises.  With everything going on in Chicago right now, it feels even more important to figure out how to rehearse together, protect one another, and find solidarity in futures beyond the ones we are handed.     

This is a Rehearsal 
Edited by Floating Museum
Published by The Chicago Architecture Biennial and MAS Context
Design: Normal (Renata Graw and Lucas Reif)
CAB5 Identity: Studio Helmo
Distributed by The Chicago Architecture Biennial

Full page! 📰 Huge thanks to Darcel Rockett for this thoughtful piece on for Mecca ✨ Stay tuned for our next installation as part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial.