Theodora Allen, “Syzygy (Narcissus),” 2021/Photo: The Driehaus Museum
ART
CCMA And MAC Set Summer 2023 Andy Warhol Exhibition
The Cleve Carney Museum of Art (CCMA) and the McAninch Arts Center (MAC) at the College of DuPage will present an Andy Warhol exhibition in summer of 2023. The exhibition will feature ninety-four works from “Andy Warhol Portfolios: A Life in Pop” and over a hundred pieces from the College of DuPage Permanent Art Collection. “It is truly an honor to have the opportunity to present work by an artist who embodies so much of the American dream,” MAC director Diana Martinez says in a release. “We are working hard at the College of DuPage to transform our arts center into an unforgettable experience and create partnerships throughout the community to welcome Warhol fans near and far to DuPage County.” “Notable works from the College of DuPage Permanent Art Collection include Warhol’s 1980 screen-printed portrait of Joseph Beuys, as well as his iconic ‘$’ (1983). The exhibition will also present over a hundred photographs by Warhol from the college’s permanent collection, comprised of both black-and-white gelatin silver prints and color Polaroid prints. These photographs offer a rare and intimate glimpse into Warhol’s New York of the 1970s and 1980s. The exhibition will encompass both the CCMA and the MAC, unfolding across roughly 10,000 square-feet of exhibition space. Educational and interactive elements will include a historical timeline, video archive installation, interactive mural, children’s print factory area, Studio 54 experience and Central Park-inspired outdoor café, creating an immersive, multifaceted exhibition focused on the life and work of one of the most influential artists of the past century.” More here.
“Theodora Allen: Saturnine” Presented By The Driehaus Museum
The Driehaus Museum presents “Theodora Allen: Saturnine” as part of their 2022 exhibition program, “A Tale of Today,” which showcases work by leading contemporary artists to expand the immersive experiences in art, architecture, design, and the history of the Nickerson Mansion. Installed in the second-floor galleries of the Gilded Age home, the artist’s meticulous and luminous paintings resonate in the Museum’s uniquely immersive environment. Drawing upon the museum’s focus on ornamentation and exquisite craftsmanship alongside specific histories and motifs of the Nickerson Mansion and Driehaus Museum Collection, the exhibition complements the building’s storied past with new perspectives. Curated by Stephanie Cristello, the exhibition aligns with EXPO CHICAGO (April 7-10) and opens March 25 with a vernissage and artist talk, 6pm-9pm. More here.
Operations Manager Of South Side Community Art Center Named
“I am absolutely delighted to have been selected as the executive assistant and operations manager at the South Side Community Art Center,” Jeneca Onikoyi says in a release, and that she is “looking forward to working with this talented team, supporting the continued engagements at this historic institution, as well as being surrounded by emerging and legendary creatives.” Onikoyi “brings years of experience as an arts manager and multidisciplinary practicing artist. Daughter of a Nigerian painter and Diasporic band promoter, she grew up in a multicultural home full of love and color. At an early age, she was backstage with international performers and centerstage with artists, developing an appetite for dance, music and visual art with a quickness.”
DESIGN
Another Chicago Marketing Slogan?
The Tribune’s Gregory Pratt spies: “Chicago has a new marketing campaign at its airports: ‘What we’re made of.’ Much better than ‘Chicago not in Chicago.'”
Census Data Confirms Chicago Gentrification
“WBEZ analyzed the census bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS) data covering two five-year periods — 2011 to 2015 and 2016 to 2020 — for all Chicago ZIP codes with at least 10,000 residents. The five ZIP codes where the median household income increased by 30% or more were 60608, 60642, 60618, 60647 and 60616. They include neighborhoods such as Pilsen, Logan Square, the Lower West Side, Noble Square, Irving Park and the Near South Side. All five ZIP codes gained white residents while losing Latino population between the two five-year periods.”
Foreclosure Crisis Driving Black Flight In Chicago
“New econometric analysis brings statistics to bear in support of common-sense conclusions that people can’t stay in neighborhoods if they don’t have homes,” reports Governing. “The original reason for this population drain could be linked to deindustrialization, and shrinking opportunities, along with a racist backlash to a growing Black population that manifested as ‘white flight’ to the suburbs. That phenomenon has been studied extensively. Less well documented is the later exodus of African American residents from these same cities—even as some other racial groups have been gravitating toward urban life again… Philadelphia has roughly 500,000 fewer residents today than it did in 1950. Chicago is almost 875,000 short of its peak… Foreclosures were the best predictor of Black population loss in Chicago over that time period,” the new study indicates.
First Building Of Sterling Bay’s Lincoln Yards Near Completion
The White House considered sending gas cards to families to cushion the cost of gasoline for those who drive, but decided “it is not feasible,” reports CNN. “The Biden administration is worried that gas cards won’t work because of execution issues and fraud concerns. In the past, cards have been stolen from mailboxes.”
But Do “Gas Giveaways Harm People”?
John Greenfield expands his take on the utility of the wealthy giving away gasoline at Streetsblog Chicago. “Willie Wilson has doubled down on this smog-generating PR move, announcing that this Thursday, he plans to dole out $1 million more in free gas at fifty locations in Chicago and the rest of Cook County… The upshot is that people in inner-ring suburbs will get to experience the same totally unnecessary, nightmarish traffic snarls and noxious fumes as city dwellers.” Greenfield compiles a history of Wilson’s failed political campaigns and his sway. Greenfield also quotes a Streetsblog reader: “I don’t agree with Willie Wilson’s political stances, but a LOT of politicians/activists could learn from what he’s doing. He’s putting something tangible in the hands of people in the Black community. Not the ‘promise’ of something, actually useful today. That’s smart politics.” Greenfield continues, “Wilson argued that giving people free gas left residents with more money for other needs, such as better food for their families. So why not give people gift certificates for grocery stores? Or else he could simply give them cash, or prepaid credit cards… None of that would clog the streets and generate smog. Of course, the best approach to easing transportation costs for drivers is to enable and encourage them to drive less, by avoiding unnecessary trips, carpooling, riding transit, walking, or biking.”
Blue Tin Production And “Ethical Manufacturing”
“Blue Tin Production is a Chicago-based apparel manufacturing cooperative setting the bar for sustainable fashion and production,” reports Reema Saleh at South Side Weekly. “The worker-owned cooperative is run by immigrant, refugee, and working-class women of color, and all members collectively make decisions about daily operations and share profits equally among themselves. ‘The first [goal] was to provide an alternative for designers in terms of manufacturing and thinking about an alternative to sweatshops because right now almost everything that we’re wearing is being made in sweatshops, here in the United States, as well as abroad,’ [Hoda] Katebi said. ‘Labor is this big question mark within fashion and fashion supply chains.’ For Blue Tin, social justice for the fashion industry requires organizing at the intersection of labor rights, immigration, racial justice, and community development… [As] put on their website, ‘we cannot end sweatshops alone when they are so deeply intertwined with other structures of violence that plague our communities.’”
Obama Center Gentrification Fears Jell
“The Obama Center has ignited a fight in South Shore, as anti-gentrification forces square off with homeowners hoping for some long-awaited upside,” reports Crain’s. The center, “set to open in Jackson Park in 2025, is catalyzing a dispute over the neighborhood’s future. The center is expected to spur redevelopment, a possibility some residents welcome and others dread.”
DINING & DRINKING
Tecalitlan Styles Ticketed Tastes Of Mexico In New City Development
“More than six months have passed since Tecalitlan, a cherished Mexican restaurant that served hoards of fans in West Town for nearly half a century, has settled into its new digs in Lincoln Park,” reports Eater Chicago. In Lincoln Park’s sprawling New City development, “Tecalitlan and its second-generation owners, siblings Karla Garcia and chef Juan Carlos Garcia Jr., have forged through pandemic challenges and turned to a new chapter… with Sabores de Mexico, a new series of ticketed events designed to showcase the [breadth] and diversity of Mexican cuisine… This is a far cry from the West Town operation as each month, Tecalitlan will feature a rotating three-to four-course menu with dishes from a different Mexican state, plus cocktail and beer pairings.” A lineup of the states is online and tickets for April (Michoacan) and May (Puebla) are for sale via Tock.
Wheat Shortages Start From Russia’s War Against Ukraine
“Three weeks after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, the war is starting to have devastating effects not only on the ground, but in many countries that rely on Ukraine’s important wheat production. The United Nations has warned of a ‘hunger hurricane,'” reports France 24. “Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria have already started to feel the sting of the wheat-shortage…. For Egypt, it’s catastrophic. ‘Egypt is the world’s largest importer of wheat and gets sixty percent of its imports from Russia and forty percent from Ukraine.'”From the Financial Times: “Even before the Ukraine crisis, Lebanon was in the grip of a financial meltdown; its currency has lost more than ninety percent of its value since 2019. With more than seventy percent of its wheat imports coming from Ukraine, consumers have been dealt a further blow… Egypt has adopted drastic measures to ensure that its subsidized bread programme, which feeds seventy million people, will remain on course despite the war. Officials say they have four months’ worth of wheat in their granaries, and the local harvest will start in mid-April.” Human Rights Watch: “The Black Sea area affected by the [war against Ukraine] exports at least twelve percent of the food calories traded in the world. Ukraine has one-third of the world’s most fertile soil according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, and forty-five percent of its exports are agricultural-related. It is among the world’s leading exporters of sunflower oil, rapeseed and barley, corn, wheat, and poultry. A large part of the country’s wheat production comes from areas of eastern Ukraine where the [invasion] is most intense.”
East African Coffee Endangered
“Warming weather in east Africa, the birthplace of coffee, is already beginning to harm one of the region’s most important export crops, which is worth some $2 billion a year,” reports The Economist. “Overheating coffee shrubs also foreshadow the harm that may befall other vital crops such as tea, Kenya’s biggest export. And if coffee becomes more expensive or less tasty, it is not just farmers who will suffer, but the big chunk of humanity who together glug down some three billion cups of the stuff a day, at a cost of about $200 billion a year.”
LIT
RIP Chicago Poet Shappy Seasholtz
Twentieth-century slam stalwart Shappy Seasholtz has passed, his friends report. Shappy’s regular haunts included Mental Graffiti at Mad Bar, alongside poets like Krystal Ashe and Anacron. Among his routines: “Quacky the Duck who Loved the Internet Too Much.” Ashe: “We first met through poetry open mics in Chicago, and he is a large part of why I got involved with Poetry Slam. He talked me into having a Mad Bar slam team, and introduced me to the National Poetry Slam world, where I made life long friends, and eventually moved to California because of these friendships. Shappy always supported me, loved going to White Castle with me at 2am, and was truly loyal. And for those that didn’t know him, he was one of the funniest, wittiest people I’ve ever known. A great performer.” Bill Abbott on Facebook: “I first met Shappy at the first Rust Belt, which I put together and hosted. I didn’t get to know him then, and didn’t really know him enough to like him. If anything, as an organizer, I was a little baffled. See, he came to the erotic reading with a ventriloquist’s dummy, read an erotic piece, and ended it with the dummy having an orgasm on stage. Dude. I really got to know Shappy in the last couple of years, and mostly over comic books. Shappy may have been the nerd poet, the inventor of the nerd slam. He clearly had staked out his reputation on that. He was also very genuine and just as nerdy as he seemed.” From YouTube, here’s Shappy’s routine, “I’m That Nerd.”
Kingsland, Texas Librarian Fired For Refusing To Remove Books
“Suzette Baker was fired as head librarian at the Kingsland Branch Library in Llano County, Texas,” reports KXAN Austin. “‘This is the final warning and termination,’ Baker said, as [to] why she was removed… ‘for creating a disturbance, insubordination, violation of policies and failure to follow instructions.’ Baker said she was given the warning to remove books by her boss, but she did not comply. ‘The books in my library in Kingsland were not taken off the shelves, we did not move them, I told my boss that was censorship…’ According to Baker, a group of people had reached out to the library system about books that they said were ‘inappropriate’ or ‘pornographic,’ and they wanted them removed, but she disagreed. She claims one of the books was about life as a transgender teen. ‘It is her biography of her life growing up as a transgendered teenager and obviously this group thought that was too much for their children to read, which no one is forcing their kids to read anything.'”
MEDIA
Block Club Chicago Will Be “On The Block” On TV
WCIU will be the base starting in April for Block Club Chicago’s weekly series, “On The Block.” “The award-winning neighborhood news site is teaming with Weigel Broadcasting Co.’s CW26 and The U for a new weekly televised newsmagazine.” The half-hour weekly omnibus “will tell community stories with visually rich and longer-form news content, giving viewers television news in a way they’ve never seen before. Hosted by Brandon Pope, the show will provide in-depth coverage of Chicago’s more than hundred neighborhoods and outlying suburbs from Block Club reporters and Jon Hansen, who [hosts their] ‘It’s All Good’ podcast. Hansen also serves as the show’s coordinating producer.”
Blind Sportswriter Craig Lynch Was Seventy-Two
“Craig Lynch spent more than twenty-five years covering prep sports for the Sun-Times, part of a career that saw him become one of the more well-known and well-loved members of the Chicago sports media scene,” reports Mike Clark at the Sun-Times. “Lynch’s work spanned multiple decades and media. In the 1980s and 1990s, besides his freelance work for the Sun-Times, he was a full-time employee of Triton College. As the sports director of the college’s radio station, he covered a Triton baseball team that featured future MLB players Kirby Puckett and Lance Johnson. Lynch also covered college sports at Northwestern and DePaul (he went to school with longtime Blue Demons women’s basketball coach Doug Bruno) and filed radio reports on the Cubs for downstate stations. But his coverage of high school sports may be his most enduring legacy. After leaving the Sun-Times, Lynch continued to work for suburban outlets… ‘He did the job as well as anybody with sight,’ former Sun-Times prep sports editor Taylor Bell said. ‘He always got the interviews, always got the statistics.’”
MUSIC
University of Chicago And Folks Operetta Present Korngold Festival
The Korngold Festival, presented by The University of Chicago and Folks Operetta will run April 1-10. The festival will include the American premiere of composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s “Die Kathrin,” “a forgotten opera,” and will also explore his history as one of the most successful yet unrecognized composers, known best for his vivid scores for classic Hollywood movies like “Captain Blood,” “The Sea Hawk” and “The Adventures of Robin Hood.” The festival will be “a rare opportunity to explore, through scholarship and performances, one of the twentieth century’s most unjustly neglected composers and a potent reminder of all that is lost in a world of intolerance and indifference,” Gerald Frantzen, co-founder of Folks Operetta says in a release. “The Korngold Festival gathers an extraordinary collection of international scholars and musicians at the University of Chicago to explore the history of Jewish exile from the artistic worlds of Europe to North America during the Shoah and World War II,” Philip V. Bohlman, the Ludwig Rosenberger Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Music at the University of Chicago adds. “The imaginative and prolific composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold is emblematic of those who permanently transformed American cinema and film music.” Festival details and tickets here.
Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra’s Christina Salerno Awarded Illinois Council of Orchestras’ Executive Director of the Year
The Illinois Council of Orchestras has named Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra’s Christina Salerno as the 2022 Executive Director of the Year. “The accolade was part of ICO’s annual awards for excellence in the field of music performance and for support of musical organizations. An awards panel of judges drawn from the Illinois Council of Orchestras Board of Directors and independent professional conductors and musicians reviewed nominations representing orchestras, youth orchestras, and chamber ensembles from throughout Illinois,” the group relays in a release. More about IPO here.
Music of the Baroque Announces Season
Music of the Baroque has announced plans for the ensemble’s fifty-second session, which marks the twentieth anniversary of the appointments of music director Dame Jane Glover and principal guest conductor Nicholas Kraemer. The season will include the St. Matthew Passion, the monumental work the ensemble had planned as the highlight of its fiftieth-anniversary celebration during the 2020-21 season. The lineup also includes guest artists such as renowned countertenor Reginald Mobley, pianist Gabriela Montero and guest conductor Patrick Dupré Quigley. Music of the Baroque will also continue its participation in Project Inclusion. More here.
Ye Grammy Ban
“Ye, the artist formerly known as Kanye West, has been barred from performing at the 2022 Grammy Awards due to his ‘concerning online behavior,'” reports NPR. The decision “comes days after Ye hurled racial slurs against ‘Daily Show’ host Trevor Noah, who is slated to host the annual music awards show next month.”
STAGE
“MJ” National Tour Comes To Chicago
The Michael Jackson estate’s jukebox musical biography “MJ” will bring its national tour to the James M. Nederlander Theatre. “One of the greatest entertainers of all time, Michael Jackson’s unique and unparalleled artistry is finally coming to Chicago, July 15–September 10, 2023,” Broadway in Chicago relays in a release. Set during “the making of his 1992 ‘Dangerous World Tour’ and created by director-choreographer Christopher Wheeldon and playwright Lynn Nottage, ‘MJ’ goes beyond the singular moves and signature sound of the star, offering a rare look at the creative mind and collaborative spirit that catapulted Jackson into legendary status. Turn it up—MJ is on tour!”
ARTS & CULTURE
RIP Eugene N. Parker; Predicted the Existence of Solar Wind
“At first, almost no one believed his findings on gigantic eruptions from the sun. Today, a NASA mission to fly through its outer atmosphere is named after him,” reports the New York Times. Astrophysicist “Eugene N. Parker, ninety-four, predicted the existence of the solar wind, a continuous outpouring of charged particles traveling from the sun at a million miles per hour… His death was announced by the University of Chicago, where he had been a professor for decades. In 2017, a NASA mission to fly through the outer wisps of the sun’s atmosphere was renamed after Dr. Parker. ‘He wrote the textbook on heliophysics,’ said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator for NASA’s science directorate, who spearheaded the name change. The solar wind, while continuous, can become violent when the sun throws out gigantic eruptions of particles known as coronal mass ejections. Those eruptions have the potential to induce electrical surges in power grids that could lead to continent-wide blackouts.”
A History Of Vital 1990s Institution Amigas Latinas
“For twenty years, queer Latinas could count on one space in Chicago where they could fully be themselves: Amigas Latinas. The volunteer-run support group and organization met monthly in different members’ homes, gathering around potlucks,” reports Ariel Mejia at Borderless. “Amigas Latinas grew out of Women of All Colors and Cultures Together, a peer group for Chicago women. Cofounders Evette Cardona and Mona Noriega saw the need for a similar group where Latinx lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer women could bond over their shared identities. Beginning in 1995, Amigas Latinas met for platicas (chats) on the third Sunday of every month. Members provided support for and found home in one another as they talked about what it meant to be queer and Latina, struggles of coming out, motherhood and navigating the legal and education systems.”
