(Featured Image: Untitled 325, Mixed media on wood panel, 30 x 24×1.5)
ARC Gallery
1463 West Chicago Avenue, Chicago, IL 60642
info@arcgallery.org | www.arcgallery.org
Ancestral Futures
Curated by Donté K. Hayes
Opening Reception: Friday, February 6, 2026 | 5:00–8:00 PM
Exhibition Dates: February 5–27, 2026
Hours: Thurs–Fri 2:00–6:00 PM | Sat–Sun 12:00–4:00 PM
Ancestral Futures is a juried exhibition curated by artist and ceramicist Donté K. Hayes that asks: What does it mean to be a good future ancestor? The exhibition explores how today’s personal, cultural, social, and environmental actions become legacies for those who follow.
Bringing together works that reflect on ancestral wisdom, cultural memory, resilience, and care, the exhibition examines intergenerational connection, intentional living, healing, and environmental stewardship. Rather than envisioning utopia, Ancestral Futures centers cultural and familial knowledge as vital inheritances—stories, traditions, histories, and lessons that guide growth, responsibility, and self-improvement in the present. Through the act of creation, artists transform these inheritances into artifacts, monuments or markers to possible future selves and future community. In this way, the works in Ancestral Futures embodies an ongoing dialogue between past, present, and future. Through this exhibition, we shine a light on the ethics of long-term thinking—what The Good Ancestor author Roman Krznaric calls “deep-time humility.”
Untitled 252
Mixed media on wood panel with rust
36x12x2