Artist Maria Gaspar grew up in Little Village, a Mexican-American neighborhood on Chicago's West Side. La Villita is home to El Milagro Tortilleria, a spectacular Mexican Independence Day Parade and the Cook County Jail, one of the largest lockups in the United States.

The Graham Foundation occupies a stately mansion on the Gold Coast. Rooms that used to be richly wallpapered and filled with fine furnishings now house spare displays devoted to architecture. Since it isn't always immediately apparent what these shows might have to do with architecture, it...

This has been a year of bittersweet goodbyes, as some of the brightest curators in Chicago have left for Toronto, Philadelphia, Kassel, Germany, and beyond. 2015 will fill those Lucite platform shoes with who-knows-who, but in the meantime, here's what we do know:

Wangechi Mutu is squatting on the forest floor, gorging on a three-tiered chocolate cake with bare, bejeweled hands. Chunks of dough lodge in long, curly acrylic nails, dark frosting smears across a flowing white dress and Plexiglas platform heels dig firmly into the soft earth.

What does art want?

"Amy Vogel: A Paraperspective," currently on view at the Cleve Carney Art Gallery of the College of DuPage, is an odd duck of a show. Not that there are any ducks on display, outré or otherwise. Copulating monkeys, glittery swans and chickens, cool rabbit girls and lots of dead...

"Human exceptionalism has got to go," artist Jenny Kendler tells me. "Yes, we have great skills, but so does every other species on the planet." Witness the mantis shrimp, one of the artist's current favorite animals, with claws that can shatter aquarium glass and boil water. Sixteen color...

What to see this fall? Play it close to home with shows about Chicago, motherhood, composting, American history, demons and failure, or go far out and explore the entire galaxy. Here's how: