A nationally recognized and widely respected exhibition space grounded in its collegiate setting, Gallery 400 exhibits and fosters discussion about work by students and professors at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The gallery's unique, frequently can't-miss shows come from its unique position as a center for intellectual exchange between professional artists and UIC students. Curators field proposals for 6-7 yearly shows along with shorter stays of more experimental, collaborative work in the "At the Edge" series.

Gallery 400 carved out a a scruffy storefront space on Harrison Avenue in 1983 and transferred to its brighter and more polished Peoria Street space in 2006. Gallery directors have curated, taught, and published at a wealth of local and national institutions. UIC art students serve as gallery assistants. The work they present is solidly contemporary, frequently interdisciplinary, innovative, and challenging, consistently responding to and reframing social and political concerns in engaging ways. Most provocatively, the 1991 "Louder" exhibit thematically linked early '90s work celebrating arrested development, and a 2006 residency brought the "Death by Design" duo to conceive and film customized horror movie-style death scenes. The gallery's contribution to the city's 2007 Festival of Maps broke boundaries, imagining new lands and giving form and direction to radical social commentary.

First and foremost, Gallery 400 is a space for artists, students and community partners to discuss and produce new work. Their artist residency program brings emerging and mid-career professionals to the West Loop to create new projects and engage College of Architecture and the Arts students in a laboratory of ideas. The Voices Lecture Series introduces aspiring professionals to working artists, designers and administrators.

Centerstage Reviewer: Justin Sondak