Ebony G. Patterson, from the “72 Project,” courtesy Monique Meloche gallery at Lubeznik Center for the Arts
ART
Twenty Years Of Monique Meloche At Lubeznik
Michigan City, Indiana’s Lubeznik Center for the Arts’ upcoming summer exhibition, “moniquemeloche presents…” will be displayed June 18-October 21. The exhibition showcases artists represented by Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago since its inception in the West Loop over twenty years ago. “moniquemeloche promotes contemporary artists, aiming to be a trailblazer for artistic talents early or under-recognized in their careers. Working with an international roster of emerging and established artists in all media, the gallery’s focus is on discovering and fostering up-and-coming artists, bringing them to the attention of collectors, curators, institutions and global audiences. Taking a curatorial approach honed after Meloche’s years at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the gallery presents conceptually challenging installations in Chicago and at art fairs internationally with an emphasis on institutional outreach.” Lora Fosberg, LCA’s director of exhibitions, says in a release, “Not only is moniquemeloche one of the best galleries in the Midwest, but some of the artists in the show are world renowned and can be seen in some of the most important museums and galleries in the world. In addition to Monique being a hit-maker, she has showed artists of color since her gallery’s beginning, long before the art world’s attempt to catch up. It’s time to celebrate her and the artists she represents.” Participating artists in “moniquemeloche presents…” include Sanford Biggers, Layo Bright, Dan Gunn, Sheree Hovsepian, Rashid Johnson, Kajahl, Ben Murray, Ebony G. Patterson, Karen Reimer, Jake Troyli and Nate Young.
DESIGN
What Do Vegas-Style Casinos Offer Big Cities?
“Although most American casinos are in rural or suburban areas, the number in urban areas has grown in recent years. In May, local lawmakers in Chicago approved a proposed plan for the city’s first casino, which the mayor, Lori Lightfoot, framed as necessary to avoid raising property taxes,” reports the New York Times. “The extent to which casinos truly enhance local economies has been debated by officials for decades. And the full cost to communities where casinos are built—including the impact on existing businesses, crime and gambling addiction—can be hard to measure.” Ripostes New York City style guy George Hahn on Twitter: “Do the words ‘Atlantic City’ ring a bell?”
Chicago Water Taxi Service Curtailed
“The Chicago Water Taxi is shifting its focus from commuters to tourists,” reports the Trib. The Wendella Tours and Cruises-owned water taxi will run only on Saturdays and Sundays and make fewer stops “as fewer office workers are downtown to commute by boat along the Chicago River.”
Hairdresser And Dinosaur Art Collector John J. Lanzendorf Was Seventy-Six
He knew beauty; he knew beasts, writes Maureen O’Donnell at the Sun-Times. “Chicago hairdresser to society women and movie stars John J. Lanzendorf amassed one of the world’s finest private collections of dinosaur art, with pieces so scientifically accurate they were displayed in museums. He forged friendships with paleontologists, visited their digs and once said he could name 700 dinosaurs. Some of his works were created by the artists and magic makers who helped bring dinosaurs to life in ‘Jurassic Park’ and other movies.”
DINING & DRINKING
Emmit’s Irish Pub Closing After Twenty-Six Years
June 25 will be the last day for Emmit’s Irish Pub in River West, reports Block Club Chicago. Retired Chicago firefighters Kevin Doherty and Ron Halvorsen opened Emmit’s at Milwaukee and Grand in 1996. A restaurant group is buying the building, which is next to Richard’s. Doherty “courted buyers interested in keeping the Emmit’s name, but that never materialized.” The bar was formerly known as O’Sullivan’s Public House, “famous for its attempt to host the first official dwarf-tossing contest in the United States. Mayor Harold Washington put a stop to it and no dwarves were thrown.”
Starbucks Illegally Closing Unionized New York Store In “Blatant Act Of War”
“The workers’ union at Starbucks Corp. filed a complaint accusing the company of illegally shutting down a recently-unionized cafe [in Ithaca, New York], escalating hostilities between the coffee chain and the labor movement spreading swiftly through its stores,” reports Bloomberg. “Starbucks said the closure wasn’t related to union activism, but resulted from facilities, staffing, and ‘time and attendance’ issues… Regional Workers United leader Gary Bonadonna Jr. called the store closure a ‘blatant act of war’ against the union’s members. ‘We have their backs.'” Meanwhile, Union organizers at an El Paso Starbucks weigh canceling a vote, citing management pressure and “intimidation techniques.” In a massive version of this kind of move, Walmart ended meat-cutting jobs at 180 stores in six states in 2000 to stymie unionization drives.
Grubhub Gets Into Ghost Kitchens
Grubhub “will be opening its own ghost kitchen in twenty cities including Chicago,” Crain’s reports (via Eater Chicago). “The ghost kitchen will be called MasterChef Table and will feature eleven dishes developed by winners of the TV show ‘MasterChef’ and prepared by local restaurants, which will not have to pay any extra licensing fees. So far, just two Chicago restaurants have agreed to participate—Iztatl Cocina Mexicana in Jefferson Park and Señor Pan Cafe, which has three locations on the Northwest Side—but Grubhub told Crain’s that four other restaurants are interested.”
Famine As Tool Of War
“If this lurking food crisis doesn’t concern you, it should. Hunger provokes deadly conflict and social unrest. In the past, starvation has been not only a cause of war, but has also been used as a tool of war,” writes Frank Giustra at the Toronto Star. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken says that the world faces the “greatest global food security crisis of our time.” “To make matters worse, several countries are beginning to panic and implementing food export bans to protect their domestic populations. The list includes India, which banned the export of wheat. (It’s one of the world’s largest producers.) Indonesia banned exports of palm oil… Argentina, Turkey, Egypt, Kazakhstan, and Serbia banned exports [of] foods such as soybean and sunflower seeds, fruits and vegetables and meat products. Russia banned exports on wheat which when combined with the wheat supply no longer coming from war-ravaged Ukraine, accounts for thirty per cent of the world’s total wheat supply. China, with a population of 1.4 billion and the producer of almost half of global wheat production, is reported to be in ‘hoarding mode,’ purchasing large quantities of other food commodities.”
FILM & TELEVISION
MoviePass Crashed, But Cinema Subscriptions Thrive
“The subscription services that cinema companies launched amid MoviePass’ rapid rise and subsequent death spiral have proved popular as Hollywood films return to the big screen,” reports Ryan Faughnder at the Los Angeles Times. “AMC’s Stubs A-List, which debuted in 2018, charges $19.95 a month or more, depending on location, to let patrons see up to three movies a week. Regal Unlimited’s plan, which lets people go to as many screenings as they want, starts at $18 a month. AMC Chief Executive Adam Aron said in February 2020 that the company had between 900,000 and 1 million A-List subscribers.”
LIT
Scott Turow On “Chaos” At The Roberts Court
“Justice Barrett’s addition left Roberts outflanked on the right by five justices. And a series of recent events have demonstrated that Roberts’s authority and his traditionalist approach are being increasingly disregarded, as his Court’s ethical standards plunge and its credibility is incrementally eroded,” the Chicago lawyer and author writes at Vanity Fair. “What is most concerning… is that this apparent disrespect for the Court’s norms or Roberts’s leadership may also be [having an impact on] the Court’s decisions, as evidenced by Alito’s draft. The willingness by the majority to dispense with a woman’s right to an abortion prior to fetal viability—a right counted on by generations of American women since 1973, and a right which has since gained widespread public support—is symptomatic of the imperial attitudes on the right flank of the Court. Justice Alito, for example, declared in his draft that Roe was ‘egregiously wrong from the start,’ a statement of legendary arrogance and epic disrespect for the imposing majority, seven justices, including five Republican appointees, who voted for Roe, as well as the succession of justices who have chosen to reaffirm Roe in the decades since.”
MEDIA
Latino Group Makes $60 Million Cash Deal To Buy Radio Stations, Including In Chicago
“Univision is selling many of its Spanish-language radio stations—including Miami’s ultraconservative Radio Mambi—to a group led by Democrats,” reports WLRN. A group of Latinos “have signed an agreement to buy eighteen radio stations in ten cities in a $60 million cash deal,” reports NBC News. “The AM and FM stations in the deal are part of the TelevisaUnivision network.” The newly formed group is called the “Latino Media Network.” The stations are “in Los Angeles, New York City, Miami, Houston, Chicago, Dallas, San Antonio, McAllen, Fresno and Las Vegas. The group said the stations are mostly broadcasting sports, entertainment and music programming.” They expect to have a reach of one-third of all Latinos in America.
Sun-Times Interim Editor-In-Chief To Leave As Executive Editor Arrives
“Steve Warmbir, a twenty-two-year veteran of the Sun-Times and its interim editor-in-chief, said he is leaving the paper. Warmbir, a longtime investigative reporter, was a candidate for the top editing role. The job has been open since the fall of 2020,” reports David Roeder at the Sun-Times. “Owners of the Chicago Sun-Times said Thursday that Jennifer Kho, former managing editor of HuffPost and Guardian US, has been named the paper’s executive editor. She will be the first woman and the first person of color to lead its newsroom… Kho currently is a digital media consultant. She is vice president of journalism and information equity for DoGoodery, which helps organizations reach their impact goals, and president of the Journalism and Women Symposium. She advises several news organizations and belongs to the Asian American Journalists Association among other professional groups.”
“When The Onion relocated its editorial operations from New York to Chicago ten years ago, nearly a third of the East Coast scribes refused to move, prompting concerns that the satiric publication might lose its comedic edge,” reports Robert Channick at the Trib. “Three owners, a pandemic and a decade of political divisiveness later, The Onion, self-proclaimed as ‘America’s Finest News Source,’ is somehow navigating fraught times and the fragmented digital media landscape with its unique sense of humor still intact. Being funny in 2022, however, is no easy task.”
Looking Back To The DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN Front Page
“The most famous headline in this newspaper’s long history appeared on the front page of the Nov. 3, 1948, edition: DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN,” writes Rick Kogan at the Tribune as part of its ongoing 175th anniversary look back. “The presses rolled at 10:30pm the day before and no one, and I mean no one, believed the result of the presidential election would favor Harry Truman. The recent issue of Life magazine, which was already on newsstands, featured a photo of Dewey with the caption ‘The Next President of the United States’ and polls and pundits were solidly siding with Thomas Dewey, the crime-busting New York City district attorney who was the Republican candidate for the presidency. Due to an early deadline caused by a printers’ strike, more than 100,000 copies of the paper with the wrong headline hit the streets before a second edition would announce ‘DEMOCRATS MAKE SWEEP OF STATE OFFICES.'” (The Trib is selling a reproduction of the front page for $50 here.)
MUSIC
Agreement Reached By Old Town School of Folk Music, Teachers
“Teachers at the Old Town School of Folk Music have a tentative contract agreement with the school’s board of directors after more than two years of negotiations,” reports the Sun-Times. The deal covers “the more than 200 teaching artists at the school represented by the Old Town Teachers Organization. Few details were released, pending ratification, but the new contract does include a four-percent pay raise.”
STAGE
CIC Theater Leaves Longtime Location
After fifteen years producing improv classes, sketch and long-form improv shows, CIC Theater left its Lakeview location at the end of May. A new location has yet to be announced. The next session of classes will start on July 10. News of the relocation will be at the group’s Instagram; here’s an image of the abandoned space. Classes and more here.
ARTS & CULTURE
Loyola Gets $100 Million To Support Students Of Color
“Loyola University Chicago announced the single-largest donation in the school’s 152-year history, a $100 million gift dedicated to supporting students from diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds,” reports the Sun-Times. “The school aims to create a $500 million portion of the university’s endowment to make the resources permanent and fully fund hundreds of students a year ‘for generations to come.'”
Arts Organizations Thinking Locally Instead Of Globally?
“Blockbuster museum shows, like the Morozov Collection that just closed in Paris, or the Cézanne exhibit that just opened in Chicago, now involve so much financial and logistical muscle that, in an echo of professional soccer, only a tiny elite group of institutions can hope to compete,” writes Axios Capital. “Everybody else is being forced to make a virtue of necessity, and to set a local agenda rather than a global one… Institutions don’t want to be ‘world-class’ as much as they used to; companies boast less often of being ‘world-beating.’ Even the most global competition of all, the Olympics, is losing its luster… Deglobalization has arrived, and the implications aren’t just being felt on earnings calls featuring terrible words like ‘glocal’ or ‘friendshoring.'”
Chicago Eighth In Dog Attacks On Letter Carriers
“The U.S. Postal Service released rankings of 2021 dog attacks by city as part of National Dog Bite Prevention Week,” reports WGN-TV. Cleveland led with fifty-eight attacks in 2021; Chicago was eighth with thirty-five. “More than 5,400 postal employees were attacked by dogs in the United States in 2021, according to the U.S. Postal Service.”
Zelensky Tells U.S. Mayors To End Sister-City Ties With Russia
“President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine called out several American cities for having sister cities in Russia during a video address to the United States Conference of Mayors meeting on Friday,” reports the New York Times. Zelensky “criticized Chicago; Jacksonville; Portland; San Diego and San Jose, for maintaining sister-city ties in Russia. He said those relationships should be severed. ‘What do those ties give to you? Probably nothing… But they allow Russia to say that it is not isolated.’ Chicago announced earlier this year that it was suspending, but not permanently ending, its sister-city relationship with Moscow, which had been in place since 1997.”
Jewel-Osco “Requesting” Employees Mask Up
“With the city and surrounding areas considered at high risk for the transmission of COVID-19, Jewel-Osco is now asking employees to wear masks,” reports the Sun-Times. “Jewel-Osco continues to follow the guidelines set by the CDC and Illinois Department of Public Health. Due to current high transmission rates in the counties where we have stores, the distribution center, and the corporate office, we are requesting that associates wear a mask,” a Jewel-Osco spokeswoman said in a statement. “Asked to clarify whether ‘requesting’ means employees are now required to wear masks, the spokeswoman did not respond.”
Chicago Social: Sam Cushing Takes the Windy City into the Influencer Realm Starting out on Instagram when he was living abroad in South America a scant three years ago, Cushing has expanded his range to YouTube with videos that discuss his experiences and offer advice on everything from exercise routines to travel.
