New Inflatable Monument by Floating Museum, for Mecca, Debuts this August in Bronzeville, Chicago
Extending the Floating Monuments series, for Mecca will drift and activate sites across Chicago, the Midwest, and beyond
CHICAGO, IL — Floating Museum is excited to present for Mecca, the latest installment of the Floating Monuments series, which revives and re-activates the social history of Chicago throughout the city’s neighborhoods, by erecting inflatable monuments to specific sites of forgotten historical and cultural value to the city. The ephemeral structures at the center of the series travel throughout the city, hosting a variety of cross-disciplinary programs. Floating Monuments: for Mecca will be on view by Illinois Tech College of Architecture’s Crown Hall on August 8 – 9, 2025 and will travel across a series of Chicago Park District sites through Summer 2026.
Like other monuments in this series, for Mecca is an apparition that conjures traces of the recent past. Taking the form of a ghostly architecture, this monument drifts from place to place – collapsing time – as a platform for conversations, exhibitions, performances, stories, education, collaborations, and research. for Mecca seeks to transform loss into a tactile, accessible artifact that engages local histories with clarity and urgency.
The monument will be installed on the former site of Mecca Flats, commemorating a pivotal yet erased landmark in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood. Originally built as a hotel for the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, the U-shaped, 92-unit Romanesque Revival building with a courtyard at its center, was converted into an apartment complex shortly after the Expo. Desegregated in 1911, it went on to become a hub for the Chicago Black Renaissance along with the rest of the neighborhood, which birthed luminaries such as musicians Louis Armstrong, Nat “King” Cole, Sam Cook, Dinah Washington, Mahalia Jackson, Sun Ra, Muddy Waters, Herbie Hancock, choreographer Katherine Dunham, writers Richard Wright, Ida B. Wells, and Gwendolyn Brooks (the latter famously authored the poem In the Mecca). In 1952, Mecca Flats was demolished to make way for the Mies van der Rohe-designed S.R. Crown Hall at the Illinois Institute of Technology, which now houses Illinois Tech’s College of Architecture.
Both a celebration and a reckoning — this work is a communal act of remembrance against a history of systemic displacement and urban erasure. The project animates questions of memory, visibility, and cultural survival through a monument that is intentionally impermanent, transportable, and vivid. By appearing at various Chicago Park District sites, for Mecca aims to conjure the ghosts of lost architecture and communities, inviting the public to reflect on what and whom we choose to memorialize.
In tribute to Bronzeville’s literary heritage, Center for BLK Verse will stage readings and performances within the structure by African-American text and language artists, whose practices center around experimenting with forms of public speech with the collective mission to create unbounded forms of Black Poetics. In for Mecca, the Center for BLK Verse will manifest as a digital library, transient stage, and residencies for artists, highlighting the voices of queer, disabled, female-identifying, and trans people within the African diaspora of Chicago.
„Contributing to this work provides us, the archives team, with a unique opportunity not only to educate all who will come into contact with this powerful project but also ensures that the community of people, their experiences and the history of the Mecca Flats will be actualized through the use of historically rich materials and real-time activations. Our goal centers on the combination of fusing primary sourced materials to create a spirited-narrative that will describe the past, draw deep connections to current society and to inform our collective future. for Mecca offers the challenge to transcend how we inform art formation once coupled with archival practice,” said Skyla S. Hearn, for Mecca Lead Archivist.
As part of its ongoing programming, for Mecca will also host the premiere of after Mecca, an animated short film by Stephen Flemister based on the aforementioned Gwendolyn Brooks poem. The film’s musical score is by Caitlin Edwards and poetic score will feature Chicago lyricists Jamila Woods, Roy Kinsey, and Emily Hooper Lansana. The moving imagery and verse aim to conjure the spirit of Mecca Flats and preserve its legacy.
“This project reflects our ongoing practice of collecting, recording, plotting, and conjuring important traces of Chicago’s history into easily retrieved, tangible artifacts,” said Floating Museum’s co-directors avery r. young, Andrew Schachman, Faheem Majeed, and Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford in a joint statement. “For Mecca represents our collective interest in Bronzeville’s complex history. We can no longer view nostalgic images of Mies van der Rohe—enjoying a cigar in the emptiness of S.R. Crown Hall—without also imagining Mecca Flats, collapsed under his feet, and recalling the slow strategic displacement of the African American community signified by the presence of its absence.”
For Mecca extends and complements other drifting sculptures in Floating Museum’s Floating Monuments series, each of which translate deep historical research into encounters that augment public history: Founders (2019) and The Garden (2022). While these past iterations dealt with people and horticulture, this monument acknowledges the role of architecture in shaping public memory. As a hybrid of sculpture, architecture, and performance, Floating Monuments: for Mecca challenges the ideal of the static, heroic monument. Instead, it proposes a living model—one that acknowledges the trauma of disinvestment while honoring the cultural legacies built in spite of it.
PROGRAM OVERVIEW
Saturday, August 9: Re-memory | 12:00–6:00 PM
A day of reflection and storytelling through guided tours, artist talks, and cultural presentations/panels. Programming will include:
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A curator-led walkthrough of the for Mecca inflatable monument and exhibition
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Screening of after Mecca
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Conversations with the research team and animated film collaborators
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Reception
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PARTNERSHIPS
Floating Museum is honored to partner with Mellon Foundation, The Terra Foundation for American Art, Graham Foundation, and Poetry Foundation.The Terra Foundation for American Art supports individuals, organizations, and communities to advance expansive understandings of American art. Established in 1978 and headquartered in Chicago, with an office in Paris, its grant program, collection, and initiatives are committed to fostering cross-cultural dialogues on American art locally, nationally, and internationally. for Mecca is part of Art Design Chicago, an initiative exploring and elevating Chicago’s rich art and design histories and diverse creative communities.
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ABOUT FLOATING MUSEUM
Floating Museum is an interdisciplinary collective of artists and educators that seeks to create new models for exploring relationships between art, community, architecture, and public institutions. Through the use of site-responsive art, design, and programming, their projects are deeply rooted within the local histories of Chicago, Illinois.