While some buildings receive more media attention, few are as powerfully effective on so many levels as the new home of Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, opened at the end of 2007. Built in modest scale befitting its place on the historic southern stretch of Michigan Avenue across from Grant Park, this shimmering, multifaceted glass-walled ten-story building commands the attention of a building ten times its size. From a distance, on the east side of the park on the lakefront path, its glass wall, constructed of 726 windows in 556 different shapes, looks like water, a liquid building, in harmony with the flows of Buckingham Fountain. Up close, the building invites visitors into its galleries and libraries in a manner that its more fortress-like predecessor never did. And once inside! The open glass atriums, the dramatic views and that glass wall, now seen from the other side as it bends light in infinite ways, together create one of the city’s great interior spaces. To the architects, Krueck & Sexton Architects, and to the Institute itself, we say mazel tov!
Today in the Culture: March 17, 2021 | EXPO CHGO online lineup | Wiener Circle | Pritzker Architecture Prize ART Art fair online, redux EXPO CHGO ONLINE announced its lineup of eighty-one galleries for its virtual fair, running April 8-12, plus a slate of virtual programming, including solo sets by Jeff Tweedy, Glenn Kotche and Nels Cline of Wilco; a program with Ken Vandermark, Rosa Barba and Chicago Architecture Biennial Artistic Director David Brown and a program led by artist Theaster Gates.…
