Chicago Architecture Center
September 29, 2025 – April 19, 2026
The Chicago Archicture Center (CAC) announces a new exhibition, The Disappointed Tourist, comprising 316 paintings of beloved locations that no longer exist, by artist Ellen Harvey. The subjects immortalized in the paintings were supplied by members of the public who sent them to the artist in response to the question, “Is there a place that you would like to visit or revisit which no longer exists?” The UK-born, Brooklyn-based artist paints 18” x 24” artworks to look like old hand-colored postcards in monochrome acrylic with oil glazes on wood panels, evoking themes of nostalgia and love for our built environment.
“We live in a world that often feels as though it is vanishing before our eyes,” said Harvey. “Places we love disappear. Places we have hoped to visit cease to exist. The forces of war, time, ideology, greed and natural disaster are constantly remaking places that we love but cannot control or save. The Disappointed Tourist is inspired by the urge to repair what has been broken. It makes symbolic restitution, literally remaking lost sites, at the same time that it acknowledges the inadequacy of such restitution.”
The Disappointed Tourist has been the subject of considerable press, including in The New Yorker and The Art Newspaper, and was selected by Frieze as one of the five best institutional shows in 2021. An ongoing and evolving project, The Disappointed Tourist comprises submissions from more than 30 countries and has previously traveled to Turner Contemporary (UK, 2021), Museum der Moderne Salzburg (Austria, 2021), LAZNIA Centre for Contemporary Art (Poland, 2023), Butler Gallery (Ireland, 2023), Rowan University Art Gallery & Museum (Glassboro, NJ, 2024), The Dorset Pavilion (Venice, 2024) and The Dorset Pavilion at the Bridport Arts Center U.K.,(2025)
This Spring, Harvey invited the public to submit Chicago places they miss the most. More than a dozen new Chicago-specific works were commissioned for the CAC exhibition, including: Mecca Flats apartment building and Gerri’s Palm Tavern in Bronzeville; the Bertrand Goldberg-designed Prentice Women’s Hospital in Streeterville; the Kungsholm Miniature Grand Opera in River North; The Arcade in Pullman; Zum Deutschen Eck restaurant and Berlin nightclub in Lakeview; the Chicago Federal Building, the Tacoma Building and Burnham and Root’s Masonic Temple downtown; Chicago Stadium on the Near West Side; the Olson Waterfall in Avondale; and The White City in Hyde Park. Each piece includes the name of the site and the date of the site’s destruction.
“Connecting themes of nostalgia, memory and historic preservation, The Disappointed Tourist leaves us with a renewed sense of the value of the spaces we inhabit, and the importance of taking an active role to protect them,” said Eleanor Gorski, CEO and President, Chicago Architecture Center.
For a deeper story, visitors can access the personal accounts behind each painting, or step into booths to hear stories that inspired Harvey’s work — both from those who submitted their long-lost favorite places, and from Harvey herself. At the exhibition, guests can also contribute to the tapestry of beloved spaces that have disappeared by recording their own stories, writing or sketching on a postcard of a place they would love to visit that no longer exists.
The Disappointed Tourist, Ellen Harvey, 2019 – ongoing. Acrylic and oil on 216 wood panels (18 x 24 in each (45.7 x 61 cm). Photographs: Ellen Harvey.
About the Chicago Architecture Center
The Chicago Architecture Center (CAC) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1966, dedicated to inspiring people to discover why design matters. A national leader in architecture and design education, the CAC offers tours, programs, exhibitions and more that are part of a dynamic journey of lifelong learning. Opened to the public in 2018, its riverfront location is in the heart of the city, where Michigan Avenue meets the Chicago River, featuring nearly 10,000 square feet of exhibition space with views of a century of iconic skyscrapers. Through partnerships with schools and youth-serving organizations, the CAC reaches approximately 5,000 K-12 students annually, while teacher workshops provide educators with tools and resources they need to advance STEM curricula in their classrooms. Committed to serving under-represented communities in construction, engineering, and design professions, the CAC offers many of its education programs—and all its programs for teens—at no cost to participants. CAC programs for adults and members include talks with acclaimed authors and practicing architects, in-depth presentations on issues and trends in urbanism, and classes unlocking subjects related to the built environment. Proceeds from programs, tours, and the CAC Design Store, as well as from grants, sponsorships, and donations, support its educational mission.
About Ellen Harvey
Ellen Harvey is a British-born, Brooklyn-based conceptual artist whose work ranges from guerrilla street interventions such as her iconic New York Beautification Project for which she painted miniature landscapes over New York’s graffiti sites to immersive institutional installations and large-scale public artworks. Her work is often painting-based but utilizes a wide variety of media and participatory strategies to explore several recurring themes such as the social and ecological implications of the picturesque, the revolutionary potential of nostalgia, the conflict between advertising and ornament in public space and the relationship between art and tourism. Her work frequently centers the viewer and involves direct participation by the public. Harvey is a graduate of Harvard College, Yale Law School and the Whitney Independent Study Program, and is the recipient of numerous awards including a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, NYSCA grant, a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship and the Wivina Demeester Prize for Commissioned Public Art. She has completed large-scale public artworks for the Miami Beach Convention Center, Metro-North’s Yankee Stadium station, New York’s Queens Plaza subway station, Chicago’s Francisco station, Boston’s South Station, the San Francisco Airport, the Philadelphia International Airport, the Andover Internal Revenue Service Offices and the Flemish National Architect, as well as for other venues. She has exhibited extensively in the U.S. and internationally. Solo museum exhibitions have included the Barnes Foundation (Philadelphia), Groeninge Museum (Belgium), Corcoran Gallery of Art (DC), The Bass (Miami Beach), the Ujazdowski Castle Center for Contemporary Art (Poland), Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (Philadelphia), Whitney Museum at Altria (NY), Turner Contemporary (UK), Museum der Moderne Salzburg (Austria), LAZNIA Centre for Contemporary Art (Poland), Butler Gallery (Ireland) and Rowan University Art Gallery & Museum (NJ). Her work has been included in the Whitney Biennial, the Gwangju Biennial (Korea) and the Prague Biennial and in group exhibitions at the Vienna Secession, MoMA PS1 Contemporary Art Center (NY), Seattle Art Museum (WA), SculptureCenter (NY), Queens Museum (NY), Princeton University Art Museum (NJ), S.M.A.K. (Belgium), Arnolfini (UK), Museum Kurhaus Kleve (Germany), The Contemporary Jewish Museum (San Francisco) and Pinakothek der Moderne (Germany), among others. Her new outdoor installation Winter in the Summer House, is currently on view at Olana State Historic Site in upstate New York. Visit Ellen Harvey’s The Disappointed Tourist project website at disappointedtourist.org.