This publication examines the development and reception of Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40 (TCC), a citywide project in Chicago that included the work of 29 artists installed at 19 venues throughout the city. The volume commemorates the widely discussed exhibition, which sought to underscore art’s power to catalyze change and to unleash the imagination on pressing social challenges, including environmental justice, public health crises, economic inequality and others.

Art in Pursuit of Common Cause seeks to document the ideas, roadblocks, rewards and questions that were raised during the planning, exhibitions and aftermath of the citywide exhibition. An attempt has been made to include content rarely seen in the traditional exhibition catalog, to analyze and amplify the voices of actual visitors and to place the project’s learnings in the context of the shifting ground of museum practice.