Nathaniel Mary Quinn

A Love Letter to My Mother

Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Erica with the Pearl Earring (detail), 2015, Black charcoal, gouache, soft pastel, oil pastel, oil paint, paint stick, and silver oil pastel on Coventry Vellum Paper, 25 1/2 x 25 1/2 inches (64.8 x 64.6 cm). Collection of Rhona Hoffman. © Nathaniel Mary Quinn. Courtesy the artist and Gagosian.

May 21–August 23, 2026
Special Exhibits Gallery, 2nd Floor
Free

In Nathaniel Mary Quinn’s first solo museum show in Chicago, visitors are invited to consider humanity in all of its complexity by processing our lived experiences through a lens of artistic innovation.

Alongside the artist’s works on canvas and paper, Nathaniel Mary Quinn: A Love Letter to My Mother includes a Robert Taylor Homes living room designed from memory to conjure the artist’s family apartment circa 1984.

Anchored by the recreated living room, the exhibition explores Quinn’s formative years growing up in public housing, which he describes as “my first studio.” There, with his mother’s encouragement, he covered the walls of their family apartment with his childhood sketches. To create fresh canvases for her son, she would wash away the drawings, and Quinn would begin anew.

Today, in his collage-like composite portraits, integrated with his “paint-drawing” technique, and derived from both personal and found sources, Quinn probes the relationship between visual memory and perception, exploring the rainbow-like spectrum of humanity. While Quinn’s practice is diverse in its exploration of various subject matter, tender remembrances of his mother’s death and his separation from his family remain a compositional touchstone in his works that feature richly complex portraits of people met throughout his life, including powerful Black women and community members bent on survival. Fragments of images drawn from online sources, fashion magazines, seventeenth-century portraiture, and photographs come together to form hybrid faces and figures that evoke the intimacy and intensity of a face-to-face encounter.

About the artist

Nathaniel Mary Quinn was born in 1977 in Chicago, Illinois, and lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Quinn received an MFA from New York University in 2002 and was awarded an honorary doctorate by Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana, in 2023. Quinn’s work can be found in major institutional collections, including the Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Art Institute of Chicago; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Museo Jumex, Mexico City; and Centre Pompidou, Paris, amongst others. Quinn’s practice operates within a world of visual metaphor, in which he mobilizes identifiable forms and features to reveal aspects of character and the human essence.

Photo: Kyle Dorosz
Courtesy the artist and Gagosian

Select works

Nathaniel Mary Quinn, *Erica with the Pearl Earring*, 2015, Black charcoal, gouache, soft pastel, oil pastel, oil paint, paint stick, and silver oil pastel on Coventry Vellum Paper, 25 1/2 x 25 1/2 inches (64.8 x 64.6 cm). Collection of Rhona Hoffman. © Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Courtesy the artist and Gagosian.

Nathaniel Mary Quinn, *Charles: Re-visited*, 2015, Black charcoal, gouache, soft pastel, oil pastel, and paint stick on Coventry Vellum Paper, 50 x 38 inches (127 x 96.5 cm). Collection of Helyn Goldenberg and Michael Alper. © Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Photo: RCH, Courtesy the artist and Gagosian.

Nathaniel Mary Quinn, *Ahhhhh*, 2017, Black charcoal, gouache, soft pastel, oil pastel, and acrylic gold powder on Coventry Vellum paper, 17 3/4 x 20 1/4 inches (45.1 x 51.4 cm). Booth School of Art Collection, The University of Chicago. © Nathaniel Mary Quinn, Courtesy the artist and Gagosian.

Related event

Neighborhood Picnic and Opening:
A Love Letter to the Community
Thursday, May 21, 2026
5–8 pm

Join Nathaniel Mary Quinn for an artist talk and neighborhood party to celebrate the opening of his new exhibition at the National Public Housing Museum. Enjoy fried chicken, cornbread, and greens—the artist’s favorite childhood family meal growing up in Robert Taylor Homes—plus music, games, and more during this community block party. The afternoon also features a conversation between the artist and Robert Smith III.

FREE, open to all. Food and refreshments included—please register in advance so we can plan accordingly!

Support

Lead support for Nathaniel Mary Quinn: A Love Letter to My Mother and related programming is provided by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Additional support is provided by the National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, and Gagosian.