Sandro Miller will make portraits for vaccinated teens at Instituto Health Sciences Career Academy on October 26 from 11am-5pm. “The Face Forward Project gives vaccinated teens (12-18) a chance to get their personalized portraits made. These one-of-a-kind portraits embody the optimism and ambition of Chicago teens who’ve chosen to protect themselves and those around them by getting the vaccine. The City of Chicago hopes The Face Forward Project will be a great reminder for Chicago to keep looking ahead, because our future is optimistic and safe when our children are vaccinated.” Sign up here.
Times Notes Docents
Art Institute “officials decided that one area in need of an overhaul was its sixty-year-old program of volunteer educators, known as docents, who greet school groups and lead tours,” writes Robin Pogrebin at the New York Times. “The board overseeing the program sent a letter to the museum’s eighty-two active docents—most of whom were white older women—informing the volunteers that their program was being ended. The letter said that the museum would phase in… paid educators and volunteers ‘in a way that allows community members of all income levels to participate, responds to issues of class and income equity, and does not require financial flexibility to participate.’ The move has erupted into the latest cultural flash point as museums around the country wrestle with making their staffs, boards and programming more diverse… James Rondeau, the Institute’s director, said that the docents program had long been viewed as logistically unsustainable, and that the Institute had stopped adding new volunteers twelve years ago. He said that the recent vitriol had taken a severe toll on the institution and its staff. ‘Clearly we were not prepared for this to become a discussion of identity politics.'”
Sun-Times Asks, How White The Art Institute Palette?
“Restoring an ancient Greek urn takes time and focus; so does repairing an old museum. If one thing is truer now than ever, you cannot compartmentalize,” writes Neil Steinberg in the Sun-Times on the aftermath of the recent mass dismissal of volunteer docents. “Today’s private email is tomorrow’s meme. Giving the backhand to the upper-crust white ladies of a certain age who give tours in September sends a shudder through the upper-crust white ladies of a certain age who write checks in October. One assumes the second group is still welcome at the Art Institute of Chicago… The day before Stein wrote her letter, the Art Institute closed its Bisa Butler show, an exquisite exhibit of bold, colorful quilts celebrating Black individuality. The crowd when I visited was young, diverse and appreciative, and it struck me at the time that this might be the way out of the white bread corner the Art Institute has painted itself into. By offering engaging fare that a broader section of the city actually wants to see.”
DESIGN
Construction Permit Issued For Revised 1000M Tower
A revised construction permit has been issued for 1000 South Michigan Avenue, the site of a seventy-three-story residential tower known as “1000M” and being developed by Time Equities and JK Equities, reports YIMBY Chicago. “The building itself was designed by the late Helmut Jahn, which upon completion will be his tallest addition to the city.”
Michael Kutza Selling Old Town Condo After Fifty-Seven Years
Posted by Chicago International Film Festival founder Michael Kutza on Facebook, quoting a Crain’s article from the week before this year’s edition of CIFF: “Kutza, who launched the film festival from this two-bedroom home in 1964 when the event ‘was a one-man show,’ is putting it on the market next week. The asking price for the two-bedroom, 1,350-square-foot home is $499,000… Kutza first moved into the unit in, he believes, 1964 as a renter fresh out of college, when the building was the Eugenie Lane apartments. When it converted to condos sometime in the 1980s or 1990s, Kutza bought the unit… ‘I was always traveling six months a year to go to film festivals, so it’s more like I’ve lived here 30 years,’ Kutza said. Now seventy-nine and the festival’s emeritus CEO, he said he plans to downsize into a one-bedroom space, probably in Old Town, and travel more.”
Southport Lanes No Longer Listed For Lease
From Southport Corridor: Who’s taking the space of the now-demolished Southport Lanes? The site rumors Boka Restaurant Group.
DINING & DRINKING
Black-Owned Wine Companies Expand In Chicago
A look at Michael Lavelle Wines at Chicago, as well as three other Black wine interests in the city, including McBride Sisters Collection, Wade Cellars and Love Cork Screw: “Seven years ago, Chicago native Chrishon Lampley used her sales and marketing background to launch this label, focused on ‘approachable, easy small-batch wines’ made with Midwest grapes. Since then, she’s sold almost one million bottles.”
She’s Been Selling Tacos In Bronzeville For Nearly Forty Years
“Bronzeville has changed a lot since Roidell Sanders was a teenager. But one thing has remained the same—every summer weekend, he could find Maria Salamanca selling carne asada tacos at a neighborhood park,” writes Stephanie Casanova at the Trib. “Every summer weekend for about 40 years, Salamanca and her husband have driven from their home in Bucktown to Bronzeville to sell tacos and tortas, first at Dunbar Park on 31st Street and Indiana Avenue, and in recent years at Vincennes Avenue near 37th Street, next to Ellis Park. Sanders tried her tacos for the first time at Dunbar Park when he was ’15, 14, 13, one of those years,’ he said. It’s been a long time, and he considers her family now. ‘I got her number in my phone as OG,’ Sanders said. ‘We know what her name is, but I just call her OG, (or) Momma.'”
Tribune Food Critic Tasks Pizzaboy On Social Media
Tribune co-food critic Nick Kindelsperger cross-posted to Facebook and Instagram regarding Edison Park eatery Pizzaboy, reports Eater Chicago. “I’ve never done this, but I can’t recommend even visiting @pizzaboychicago. I’ve eaten at places all around the city over the past year, and none have shown such disregard for public health during a pandemic. No one was wearing a mask. Not the cashier, the workers in the kitchen or the owner @pizzaboycb. There wasn’t even a half hearted attempt. It seems like they are going out of their way not to comply. There’s no sign on the door about customers wearing masks, though a few like me did. I’m probably going to get trolled by the anti-mask crowd now, and that’s fine. But being against masks is childish.” Writes Eater: “Masks were off when Kindelsperger came in, [owner Carlo] Bertolli says, because he and his staff were eating. ‘How are you supposed to eat with a mask? I didn’t know he was here. If he had said something, I would have talked to him… The post was dumb and unprofessional. Being a food critic is being a food critic. A political food critic, there’s no room for this in this business.” Responds Crust Fund Pizza proprietor and Revolution Brewing hype person John Carruthers on Twitter: “So, following this whole denial… cooks were eating while cooking. Cashier was eating while checking people out. And the owner I guess thinks we are complete morons. Like, just say ‘my pizzeria is in Edison Park, I don’t have to do shit.’ I would respect the honesty. I also don’t know how you can look at a city swimming in bought and paid for restaurant PR week in and week out and think [Kindelsperger] giving actually useful information is anything other than public service.”
New Wicker Park Deli Seeks Infusion Before Opening
Block Club Chicago reports that Helfeld’s Delicatessen & Catering needs more money before it can sell their bagels and other provisions in Wicker Park. “A family-owned Jewish deli is expected to open this December… but the owners hope to raise $25,000 to cover unforeseen expenses.” Helfeld’s Deli which will be at 1750 West North, “will offer Jewish deli staples, like pastrami sandwiches, matzo ball soup and knishes.” The family had hoped to open earlier this year, but their business license application was held up. “When they finally heard back from the city, they were told additional work was needed to get their storefront up to code… The space was previously home to a high-end sneaker store.”
LIT
Chance & Bri’s Books & Breakfast Brings Books To Children Across South And West Sides
Briana McLean and artist Chance the Rapper started Chance & Bri’s Books & Breakfast this summer, reports Cheyanne M. Daniels at the Sun-Times. “McLean, a former kindergarten teacher at Marquette Elementary School, created the program after she ‘became very aware very quickly what was happening inside of my classroom and the culturally responsive teaching that I was doing was not happening outside of the walls of my classroom.’ She created a nonprofit—Boundless Early Education—that would focus on three things: digital resources filled with things like lesson plans; early learning literacy resources; and Books & Breakfast.”
MEDIA
Bill Zwecker Auctions Memorabilia
The auction “Seeing Stars: Property from the Collection of Bill Zwecker,” will be conducted by Hindman Auctions. The longtime Chicago entertainment journalist’s collection of 172 lots includes film ephemera and memorabilia from names such as Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jordan, Tom Hanks, Robert F. Kennedy, President Richard Nixon and Lady Bird Johnson. “Beginning his journalism career in the 1980s, Zwecker is an industry veteran who has interviewed some of the most renowned celebrities across a breadth of industries. His original career inspiration came from his mother, Peg Zwecker, who was a longtime fashion editor and columnist for the Chicago Daily News and the Sun-Times,” writes Hindman. “Top Chicago celebrity lots include a framed, signed copy of Michael Jordan’s memoir ‘For the Love of the Game’ that was a gift to Zwecker for his fiftieth birthday. Oprah Winfrey will also be represented through a handwritten note from Winfrey to Zwecker in 1987, shortly after she came to Chicago to host AM Chicago. The note conveys Winfrey’s gratitude to Zwecker for his support when he defended her in a column after false rumors being spread about her in the press.” Cartoon art includes a Charles Schulz drawing of Snoopy from “Peanuts,” signed by Schulz and seven cartoons by Jack Higgins that were featured in the Chicago Sun-Times and also signed by the artists. A “personal, hand-signed letter from former President Richard M. Nixon regarding his wife, Pat Nixon’s health to Zwecker’s mother is another poignant offering.” Catalog here.
MUSIC
Bloodshot Records Catalogue To Be Managed And Distributed By Exceleration Music
Troubled Bloodshot Records’ catalogue will be distributed and managed by Exceleration Music, with Exceleration initiating a longterm campaign to build the presence and availability of the Bloodshot catalogue digitally as well as physically. The company, which struck an agreement with Bloodshot Records founders Rob Miller and Nan Warshaw to acquire the label, has invested in or partnered with a growing roster of companies that include fellow Chicago label, Alligator Records. Exceleration Music is a global music venture founded by executives Glen Barros, John Burk, Charles Caldas, Amy Dietz and Dave Hansen to invest in independent labels and their legacies. More about Exceleration here.
From a statement by Nan Warshaw: “From the early days of the Bloodshot Records office in my basement, it was a label where artists could freely create, never having to force their unique sound into a square genre hole or a widget assembly mold. The sale of Bloodshot to Exceleration Music will ensure that the legacy of nurturing and celebrating exceptional indie music will live on… I fought to ensure that every artist would be guaranteed their compensation in full. There were various options considered to allow Bloodshot Records to continue without me, including selling my half to my co-founder, but we ultimately made a mutual decision to sell to Exceleration Music. Thankfully, Exceleration can provide our artists a creative path forward, breathe new life into their catalog, and offer them meaningful opportunities… I want to thank each of the artists who made the crazy idea of Bloodshot Records a reality. I’m truly honored to have worked with and for you. You gave me the opportunity to witness mind-blowing artistic development from your first record to your second and from your tenth show to your four-hundredth show. There were the country-as-punk guitar non-solos that almost went off the rails but somehow didn’t, and there were the edgy songs with the most gorgeous harmonies that sent chills down my spine, and so much more.”
STAGE
Dancer, Teacher Mildred “Millie” Cruzat Was 94
“Mildred ‘Millie’ Cruzat was nearly 50 when she got an invitation to join Joseph Holmes Chicago Dance Theatre. She said yes and started touring with performers less than half her age,” records Maureen O’Donnell at the Sun-Times. “In her 70s, she signed a modeling contract… To the end of her life, she would dance into rooms and occasionally greet people at the door with one leg extended over her head… Young Millie took ballet lessons and found inspiration in dancers Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Katherine Dunham, Martha Graham and Gene Kelly. She got a job at the post office, saved her money and headed to New York City in her 20s to study dance. She was one of the first Black women hired at Bloomingdale’s… Because she was light-skinned, her daughters said, people sometimes asked Ms. Cruzat if she was European and occasionally mistook her for prima ballerina Maria Tallchief, a member of the Osage Nation. She took dance lessons at Carnegie Hall. Photographer Gordon Parks lived around the corner, and she watched tennis legend Althea Gibson play on a neighborhood court.”
Bobcat Goldthwait Talks “Cancel Culture”
“I actually don’t believe there’s a ‘cancel culture.’ It just reminds me of like in the 80s when a shock jock would get fined by the FCC or get in trouble with management or a sponsor. They would say, ‘I’m getting killed by the man,’ and then that person’s fans would rally behind them, and they would end up making millions of dollars,” recently relocated to the Chicago suburbs Bobcat Goldthwait tells Matthew Sigur at the Reader. “When people use the term cancel culture, it’s just a way of people marginalizing marginalized groups, and it gives permission to their audience to feel like they’re the victim. No one’s freedom of speech is being taken away. All these millionaires are going to keep on making millions of dollars. If it boils down to a millionaire and a major corporation versus people who are being murdered and have a high rate of suicide, which side do you think I’m going to be on? I’m going to be on the side of marginalized people. I’ve always considered myself an outsider, you know?”
ARTS & CULTURE
Redmoon Theater’s Jim Lasko Launches Ambitious Avondale Creative Space By The River
“Sitting not far away from where the former Riverview Park once thrilled the citizens of this city for more than six decades, three people are talking about their new venture, which they hope will enrich the populace,” writes Rick Kogan at the Trib. “‘The idea is a place where like-minded creative people can gather and share ideas and work and in so doing help make this city a better place,” says Jim Lasko. He is sitting with Mike Healy and Elyse Agnello, his partners in what they named Guild Row at 3130 North Rockwell… It’s an ambitious endeavor, a private club and multi-use space with a lofty purpose. It is a spectacular campus carved from what had been for many years Hu-Friedy, a dental tool manufacturer that was founded here in 1908 and continues in operation a few blocks north of its former home.”
“Day Of The Dead” Stamps
The Postmaster of Chicago, artist Luis Fitch and local officials and community leaders will join the National Museum of Mexican Art today at 10am for the unveiling of the USPS’ first-ever Day of the Dead stamps. Fitch’s work was on display at the Museum in 2018 when a visiting USPS art director saw it and found Fitch to be an ideal choice to design the stamps. The stamps “showcase the Day of the Dead holiday in all its flower-bedecked splendor. A pane of twenty Forever stamps contains five rows of four colorful stamps featuring several iconic elements of a traditional Day of the Dead offering. Stylized, decorated sugar skull are personalized as family members—a child with a hair bow, a father sporting a hat and mustache, a mother with curled hair, and another child. The vibrant colors of marigold flowers and other embellishments, along with the white of the sugar skulls, stand out brightly from the stamps’ black background.”
Meet The YMCA’s New CEO
“Many who know Dorri McWhorter say she has ‘incredible energy,'”reports the Sun-Times. “She laughs easily, gestures a lot and is not afraid to share her thoughts. All that is especially clear when the CEO of the YMCA of Metro Chicago is asked about revamping the 163-year-old organization.” “I just really want us to be recognized as the largest provider of human services and that we are engaging with communities in such deep ways,” she tells the paper. “I don’t know that people really recognize how much work we do.” … She is the first woman and the first Black executive of the Chicago YMCA. Her first weeks in her new job already included challenges. “Membership decline over the years led to drastic financial losses and forced three locations to close permanently in 2020.”
Philanthropist Madeleine McMullan Was 92
The Arts Club alerts us to the passing of Madeleine McMullan, who was 92: “Mrs. McMullan joined The Arts Club in 1985. Her dedication to Chicago was evident in her many philanthropic efforts. She served on the Membership Committee for many years and will be dearly missed by our community.” From the Legacy page at the Sun-Times: “Madeleine Monica McMullan, nee Engel de Janosi, died on October 1 surrounded by family at her home in Lake Forest. Madeleine was born in Vienna, Austria in 1928. After Nazis seized the family estate, Madeleine and her parents fled to Lyons, France in 1939, where relatives hid them. Eventually, the family settled in England, where Madeleine taught herself English reading the dictionary. When the Johns Hopkins University history department offered [her father] Friedrich a teaching position, the family reunited and emigrated to the United States. Madeleine earned her B.A. in English from Trinity College in Washington D.C., and her M.A. in History from Johns Hopkins University in 1952. She wrote for The Evening Star before becoming an intelligence officer for the CIA. In 1957, at a party in Washington, D.C., Madeleine met a young man from Newton, Mississippi who was visiting his sister. Three days later, James McMullan proposed. They married and moved to Mississippi where Madeleine taught at East Central Junior College and then Millsaps College, where she became Associate Professor. She taught European History and co-authored an integrated Humanities program that was awarded a Ford Foundation grant. Madeleine also served as president of the Mississippi Art Association and the Opera Guild board. When her husband took a job in the securities business with William Blair & Company in Chicago in 1969, they moved to Lake Forest. Madeleine focused on philanthropy and volunteer work at Holy Family Church in Chicago, the Women’s Board of Lake Forest Hospital, the Chicago Botanic Garden, and the Chicago Historical Society. Madeleine also became a founding member of the Infant Welfare Society of Chicago, where she volunteered for decades, focusing on helping immigrants fill the gap in their health care coverage. She continued her philanthropic foundation work after her husband’s death in 2012, providing generous education grants, scholarships, and funding to nonprofit organizations including the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Chicago Public Library, the Mississippi Museum of Art, the Mississippi Book Festival, the Eudora Welty Foundation, Millsaps College, the University of Mississippi, Newton High School, Pass Christian High School and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum. Madeleine also initiated paid internships at the Art Institute of Chicago for students who have been historically underrepresented in the arts community.”
