Today In The Culture, September 13, 2022: Money for Birthplace of Gospel | Food Apartheid? | Humanities Fest’s Fall with Patti Smith, Pussy Riot and More
La Lupi, Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theater/Photo: David Chiriboga
ART
Minnesota Artist Quits Over Charges Of Cultural Appropriation
“Inkpa Mani, née Javier Lara-Ruiz, was awarded a $400,000 commission to create a stone sculpture in downtown Minneapolis,” reports the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. “A few months later, his contract came to an abrupt end… The situation echoes many instances of Native-presenting people called out to prove their identities across Indian Country, raising questions about belonging — who is permitted to practice Native arts and who gets to decide.”
DESIGN
Evanston Adding A Dozen Portable Toilets
With a sanitation issue at hand, Evanston city manager Luke Stowe told a community meeting “that he expects to budget for ten-to-twelve portable toilets, or maybe even more, with locations to be figured out,” reports Evanston Now.
Pullman-Altgeld Gardens Could Get 101-Room Hotel
“Developers want to build a Hampton by Hilton Hotel on part of Pullman Park and a Save A Lot grocery store that could serve thousands of residents in a Far South Side” area without adequate access to food, reports Block Club Chicago.
Architect Lucien Lagrange Joins Lamar Johnson Collaborative
“Lucien Lagrange, the architect who designed several of Chicagoland’s most iconic residential skyscrapers, including the seventy-story Park Tower, has joined the Lamar Johnson Collaborative, a subsidiary of Clayco, a national development firm… working on the Obama Presidential Center and the $8.5 billion O’Hare International Airport modernization project,” reports the Trib. “Moving to a huge company like Clayco is a significant shift for Lagrange, who founded an independent design firm in 1985. But the eighty-two-year-old, who brought over his entire ten-person design team, said he still has plans for big-scale residential projects and hotels, and Clayco, which handles all facets of development from design and engineering to construction, will help make those visions a reality.”
Laura Washington Now Fears The CTA
“I am a CTA devotee,” writes columnist Laura Washington at the Tribune. “I have spent a lifetime riding the buses and trains of Chicago, with sentimental memories of the all-day Super Transfer and those old green CTA buses of the 1960s and seventies. They were dubbed ‘the green limousines’… Taking public transportation keeps me close to the ground. As a reporter, I rely on the CTA to find stories in the nooks and crannies of Chicago neighborhoods. Now, for the first time in my life, I fear the CTA.” She’s “spooked by the rule-breaking offenders taking over our trains and buses…Most of the violent crime is occurring in the late night and early morning hours. Those are times when I can—and do—avoid the CTA. Others cannot avoid the CTA, such as my nephew who must take the Red Line downtown to his overnight shift at UPS. Just one more thing to fear.”
Surveying Urban Highways That Could Profitably Be Demolished
The New York Times prepared a complicated multimedia package to look at cities where highways are taking up immense amounts of urban space. “The United States chooses to force highways through communities with the least political power to resist. A Los Angeles Times analysis found that expansions of existing highways have displaced more than 200,000 people over the past three decades, predominantly in nonwhite neighborhoods. Today, in El Paso, Austin, Portland, Los Angeles and Shreveport, planned highway expansions threaten many more with the loss of their homes. In Houston, the Third Ward—the heart of the city’s Black community—remains blocked off on all sides by highways.” (Bronzeville in Chicago provides several captioned slides.)
Ebenezer Church Slated To Get $900,000 Landmark Grant
“Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church is known as the birthplace of gospel music and was awarded Chicago landmark status in 2011… Announced in late 2021 as a finalist for Adopt-a-Landmark grant dollars, the church submitted its plan late last week for exterior repairs totaling $900,000, which the Commission on Chicago Landmarks unanimously accepted at its monthly meeting. Because the grant is in excess of $250,000, City Council must also approve the funds,” reports WTTW.
DINING & DRINKING
How Chicago “Food Apartheid” Happens
Food stores closures on the South and West Side of Chicago “have sparked outrage among residents and community leaders, along with a larger conversation around the inequitable state of food access across Chicago,” reports Melissa Renee Perry at WBEZ. “A common term that has been used to describe areas with low food access, like West Garfield Park in Chicago and across the U.S., is ‘food desert.’ However, some organizations, such as the Chicago Food Action Policy Council, dislike the phrase, arguing for the use of ‘food apartheid’… Supporters of that term argue labeling a community a food desert implies low food access is naturally occurring and diverts blame from the systems and parties that should be held responsible.”
How The Modern Food Writer Became A “Content Provider”
“I am loath to think of myself as an entrepreneur. Yet here I am,” writes Alicia Kennedy on her Substack newsletter. “Something is happening to the food writers: We’re losing our minds. This job requires knowledge of not just food and cooking, plus whatever one’s niche is that makes them desirable on the market, but also to be a photographer (not new) and now a videographer—perhaps with three cameras in various positions in order to ensure a cinematic result, when we go on to act as editors. Oh, and we should maybe know how to host a podcast and edit audio, for good measure. We are food stylists and recipe developers and restaurant recommenders. We are everything, because there’s no other choice.”
Food Supply Could Be Affected By 115,000 Striking Freight Rail Workers
“Major U.S. freight railroads [are] preparing for a possible strike and service disruption a week before a deadline in protracted labor talks,” reports Reuters. After September 16, “contract negotiations between railways including BNSF, Union Pacific, CSX and unions representing 115,000 workers” could result in a strike “after more than two years of talks” that affects thirty-percent of the nation’s freight. CNN Business quotes fearful business concerns that “a prolonged strike could mean empty shelves in stores, temporary closures at factories that don’t have the parts they need to operate, and higher prices due to the limited availability of various consumer goods.” The White House reacts: “Biden administration officials have started preparing for a potential shutdown and have warned that a strike could seriously damage the U.S. economy, while also warning it could hurt Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections… Labor Secretary Marty Walsh was part of meetings led by the White House National Economic Council last week, and President Biden is also personally tracking the matter… Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is also involved in trying to broker the impasse…The president has been an adamant defender of union workers but does not want a breakdown in the nation’s transportation infrastructure that would disrupt commuter and passenger services.”
LIT
Is The Internet Archive Endangered?
A case of publishers versus the Internet Archive, reports Slate, “could cripple the archive and, subsequently, the services it offers the 1.5 million people who visit it every day. In addition to lending books digitally, the Internet Archive hosts the Wayback Machine, a tool that has chronicled internet history since 1996; the concern is that if legal costs drain the archive of its funds, all of its services could be affected. Users of the site and digital archivists have compared the potential loss of the archive’s services to the burning of the Library of Alexandria. Yet book companies also view the stakes here as existential for their business model; the International Publishers Association stated that this case is of ‘global significance’ to its members.”
Librarians On The Front Lines
“In a political environment where book-banning efforts are being used to drive voter sentiment, librarians find themselves on the front lines,” writes Erika Hayasaki at the New York Times. “Over the last year, campaigns to ban books have erupted throughout school districts and local libraries across the country.” The American Library Association “previously documented roughly 300 to 350 complaints annually, with most challenges targeting a single title each. But in 2021 alone, the association noted 729 complaints against 1,597 different books… A regular target of challenges, and a frequent object of political attacks, has been ‘The 1619 Project,’ a 2019 special issue of [the New York Times] magazine and a subsequent best-selling book examining the legacy of slavery in American life… Strategies on how to lodge complaints against books are traded on Facebook and shared among branch chapters of parental rights groups. One of the most influential of these groups is the Florida-based Moms for Liberty. Since its inception in January 2021, it has grown to include more than 200 chapters nationwide, with more than 100,000 members. In some towns, members have compiled their own book lists with dozens of titles.”
Art Spiegelman to Receive National Book Foundation Lifetime Achievement
The National Book Foundation will honor One Book, One Chicago author Art Spiegelman with the 2022 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Spiegelman is the first comic artist to receive the medal, which will be presented by author Neil Gaiman at the National Book Awards Ceremony on November 16,” reports Publishers Weekly. “Recipients receive $10,000 and a solid brass medal.”
MUSIC
Yeah Yeah Yeahs Play Metro
“New York City indie rock legends the Yeah Yeah Yeahs will grace the Metro stage for the first time in eighteen years” on September 19 after a Riot Fest appearance, reports WGN-TV. “Karen O and company have been playing select dates, mostly festivals, this summer in anticipation of their upcoming fifth studio album—’Cool It Down.'”
STAGE
Kenosha-Born Angelica Ross Makes Broadway History
“Pose” star Angelica Ross joined the cast of “Chicago” in New York on Monday, reports Associated Press, “the first openly transgender woman to play a leading part on Broadway. ‘I think about the trans women who are looking at me right now and are now thinking that this is possible,’ Ross told The Associated Press. ‘I am really excited to embrace the audience as they embrace me.'”
Navy Pier Releases Full Chicago Live! Schedule
Navy Pier has announced the full lineup for the Chicago Live! event highlighting Chicago’s performing arts scene, supported by the Pritzker Foundation. “More than sixty of the city’s top marquee names—a third of which are participating for the first time—will give back-to-back performances Saturday, September 24, noon-9pm and Sunday, September 25, noon-6pm. Performances are at the East End Plaza, the Wave Wall Platform and the Lake Stage. More here.
Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theater Plays Auditorium
The Auditorium Theatre season with its popular Chicago Dance series includes a performance by Ensemble Español Spanish Dance Theater on Saturday, October 1. “Flamenco Passion,” honoring Hispanic Heritage Month, will feature global flamenco superstar La Lupi (Susana Lupiañez Pinto) joining the Ensemble Español company to perform her “Pasos Largos” (Long Steps) in the Caña-style set to a score performed by her husband, guitarist-composer Curro de Maria, along with classic works from the company’s repertoire. Opening for Ensemble Español will be Para.Mar, a Chicago-based contemporary ballet company formed during lockdown. Tickets start at $25 here.
Tina Ramirez, Founder Of Ballet Hispánico, Was Ninety-Two
“Tina Ramirez, who founded Ballet Hispánico in New York on a shoestring more than fifty years ago and built it into the country’s leading Hispanic dance performance and education troupe,” died at her home in Manhattan, reports The New York Times.
ARTS & CULTURE & ETC.
Chicago Humanities Fall Events Include Patti Smith, Pussy Riot, Jonathan Franzen, Chelsea Manning, Jim Jarmusch
Chicago Humanities Festival for fall continues its theme of “PUBLIC,” looking at “how we are reimagining public lives.” “With whistleblower Chelsea Manning and Pussy Riot’s Nadya Tolokonnikova, CHF will ask what right the public has to information; Marianne Williamson will address the role of public politics after the midterm elections. Reporter April Ryan and political advisor Valerie Jarrett will talk about how Black women can save the public. And poet Elizabeth Alexander, photographer Devin Allen, artist Jefferson Pinder, and scholar Margaret A. Burnham will all explore how racism divides the American public.” Other events include appearances by Patti Smith; Jonathan Franzen; Jessica Lange; George Saunders; Jim Jarmusch and Jonathan Ames; Margo Price; Iliza Shlesinger, Kevin Nealon and Chicago native Jeff Garlin. “As we return to our first fully in-person fall festival since the start of the pandemic, we wanted to explore how each of us is returning to public life, how attitudes towards America’s various publics have changed, and how we can use this transition to better engage in the vital public conversations of our time,” CHF executive director Phillip Bahar says in a release. “From deep conversations about gun violence, religion and politics, to laugh-out-loud events with comedians and entertainers, we have a broad range of programs to tempt Chicagoans to come out and reengage with the remarkable public life of our great city.”
Amazon CEO Says $25 An Hour Is Too Much For Workers
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy says that “wage inflation for frontline workers can’t get out of control,” reports Fortune, “and that $25 is too high for rank-and-file.”
Times Looks For America’s “Missing Workers”
“The labor market appears hot, but the share of people who are either working or actively looking for a job still hasn’t quite recovered,” reports the New York Times. “On a basic level, there are two reasons that employers have been so desperate to hire workers as the United States emerges from the pandemic. The first is that demand for goods and services rebounded. The second: A bunch of former workers never showed up to take the jobs that resulted.”
