Graffiti News

A new Richard Hunt mural, three stories tall, now honors the late Chicago sculptor on a wall in the city's Hyde Park neighborhood. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, which reported the work on Oct. 10, 2026, Chicago artist Chris Devins painted it, and it was installed early the previous week at 1515-19 E. 54th St.

Where is the Richard Hunt mural, and who painted it?

The mural sits at 1515-19 E. 54th St. in Hyde Park. The Sun-Times notes that the site is close to several of Hunt's sculptures and less than a mile from the Obama Presidential Center, where one of his last works, "Book Bird," is installed. The artist, Chris Devins, is known for portraits of African American Chicagoans, among them the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks.

Who was Richard Hunt?

Richard Hunt was a sculptor who spent his whole life in Chicago and became the first African American artist to have a solo retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He was born on the city's South Side in 1935. Over his career he made more than 160 public works around the world, 35 of them outdoor sculptures in the Chicago area. One of those is "The Light of Truth: Ida B. Wells National Monument" in Bronzeville. Hunt died in December 2023.

How did the mural come about?

The mural began with a promise. Michelle Duster, an author and public historian, is the great-granddaughter of Ida B. Wells and worked alongside Hunt for more than ten years while he made the Wells monument. In 2021 she raised the idea of an honorary street name and a mural with him. "I was like, 'He needs to be honored,'" Duster told the Sun-Times.

Hunt liked the idea, but he died before the mural was finished. Duster said she was crushed that he never saw it, and that his death only hardened her resolve. "I made a promise to him that I was going to get this done," she said.

What followed was years of fundraising and a search for the right wall. Duster wanted a place tied to Hunt's life and work, and she looked at Woodlawn, Englewood and Hyde Park. The 54th Street wall won out because of Hunt's links to the area, including his affiliation with the University of Chicago and his work near the Obama Presidential Center.

A portrait drawn from Hunt's own studio

The image on the wall comes from photographs Devins took of Hunt himself. Duster introduced the two in 2023, and Devins spent several days photographing Hunt's vast studio. The Sun-Times describes a space full of steel plates, hammers, anvils and car bumpers, plus a crane strong enough to move pieces weighing thousands of pounds. Devins compared it to "walking into a Picasso studio or a French salon of some artists."

For Devins, that access mattered. His earlier "Bronzeville Legends" project portrayed people who had already died, so he had to work from existing photographs. "With him being still alive, I was able to catch him," he said.

Duster remembers Hunt as soft-spoken, modest and warm, "the exact opposite of a diva," despite everything he achieved. She recalled him talking with the audience at a 2023 screening of a documentary about his work, a few months before he died, and called that exchange one of "love and appreciation." Devins hopes the mural will introduce more people to the man behind the sculptures. "Richard Hunt was a literal treasure to the city of Chicago," he said. "We were lucky to have him."

Why portrait murals work as public memory

A portrait mural keeps a person in a neighborhood's daily line of sight. A museum piece waits for visitors; a face on a building wall greets people on their way to work or school. Hunt's sculptures already stand in public spaces across Chicago, and this mural adds the face of the man who made them to a street near several of those works.

The way this wall was made is also worth noting. The organizers picked a neighborhood with real ties to the subject, raised the money over several years, and the artist met the subject in person to gather his own source images. That kind of slow, community-led preparation is what turns a painted wall into part of a neighborhood's shared story.

Visiting the mural in Hyde Park

The address is 1515-19 E. 54th St. Because the mural is three stories high, the full image reads best from the opposite sidewalk. The painting is on the outside of a building, so view and photograph it from the public sidewalk and stay off private property.

The mural also makes a good starting point for a walk. According to the Sun-Times, several of Hunt's sculptures are nearby, and the Obama Presidential Center, home to "Book Bird," is less than a mile away. In Bronzeville, the Ida B. Wells monument shows the project that first brought Hunt and Duster together.

If you visit, you can share your photos on the Wallscape feed and look for other Chicago murals on the Wallscape map.

Source: Chicago Sun-Times, "New Hyde Park mural honors late Chicago sculptor Richard Hunt" (Oct. 10, 2026)