TO LAGOS WITH LOVE — NORMAN TEAGUE TAPPED TO CURATE DESIGN WEEK LAGOS 2026
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When Chicago designer Norman Teague arrives in Lagos this October he carries the weight of a legendary history — and the creative fire to match. Not a stranger, but a creative heir.
Teague, founder and principal of Norman Teague Design Studios, has been named curator of Design Week Lagos 2026 — Africa’s leading platform for design, innovation, manufacturing, and creative industry development. Running October 18–25 at the iconic National Theatre in Lagos, Nigeria, the exhibition theme is Making a New Africa: From Material to Market, and Teague will steward two of its central pavilions.
The National Design & Innovation Pavilion offers a focused exploration of contemporary design practices emerging from Nigeria, spotlighting the country’s expanding capacity in design, production, and creative manufacturing. The Diaspora Design Exchange Pavilion, meanwhile, presents designers whose practices are shaped by global experience while remaining rooted in African identity, culture, and material exploration — a curatorial frame that maps directly onto Teague’s own body of work.
Based in Chicago, Teague leads a contemporary design/build studio specializing in space, furniture design fabrication, creative consulting, art and objects, and custom millwork. A graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he co-founded blkHaUS studios and has served as lead craftsman and co-founder of the Design Apprenticeship Program at the University of Chicago’s Arts Incubator. His practice is grounded in community — in the belief that design can carry narrative, deliver function, and belong to the people it serves.
But Lagos carries a particular resonance for the Chicago creative community, and Teague knows it.
Nearly five decades ago, another Chicago visionary left his mark on that same city. Jeff Donaldson, co-founder of AfriCOBRA — the African Commune of Bad Relevant Artists — led the American delegation to the Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture, known as FESTAC ’77, in Lagos, Nigeria, in 1977. Thousands of artists, writers, musicians, activists, and scholars from Africa and the Black diaspora assembled in Lagos for what unfolded as a complex, glorious, and ambitious culmination of a half-century of pan-Africanist cultural and political gathering. AfriCOBRA’s participation in FESTAC established the trans-African legacy of the movement, and the evolution of AfriCOBRA reverberated in the artistic communities of Washington, D.C., New York, and Lagos.
That history lives in the walls Teague is walking into. FESTAC ’77 was held at the National Theatre in Lagos — the same venue where Design Week Lagos 2026 will take place. Chicago’s street credibility within Lagos was forged in that fire. And if there was ever a moment demanding that a Chicago designer bring everything — vision, rigor, and cultural intention — this is it.
Go big or go home? There’s no doubt Teague is ready for the challenge.
ROBERT PAIGE NAMED DESIGN VISIONARY BY SMITHSONIAN (Photo in Drive and use head shot with groups hot from cooper hewitt
Chicago artist and designer Robert Earl Paige has been named a 2026 Design Visionary honoree by the prestigious Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum as part of the National Design Awards, one of the highest recognitions in American design. The honor celebrates Paige’s decades-long influence on textile design, fine art, and the broader visual culture of Black creative expression.
Born in Chicago in 1933, Paige built a career that bridged commercial design and fine art with remarkable fluidity. Trained at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Paige became nationally known for his bold use of color, abstraction, and pattern. His textiles appeared in major department stores and interiors across the country during the 1960s and 1970s, helping redefine American modern design through a distinctly Black artistic lens. Beyond textiles, his practice expanded into collage, sculpture, painting, and large-scale installation work.
The Cooper Hewitt recognition places Paige among an elite lineage of American designers and cultural innovators whose work has shaped contemporary visual culture. According to coverage of the May 19 National Design Awards Gala in New York, Paige’s honor stood alongside recognitions for leaders in architecture, digital design, fashion, and landscape architecture.
For Chicago’s arts community, the award also serves as overdue national acknowledgment of a pioneering creative whose impact has often transcended traditional categories. Paige’s work has long challenged the separation between “fine art” and “design,” proving that pattern, craft, and everyday objects can carry deep cultural and artistic significance.
His recognition by Cooper Hewitt underscores the enduring influence of Black designers on American aesthetics and affirms Robert Earl Paige’s legacy as one of Chicago’s most important living artists.
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