Today In The Culture, November 2, 2022: Carrie Secrist Opens Temp Space | Design Summit from CAB | APT Sets Season

Nate Burger and Marcus Truschinski in “Stones in His Pockets,” American Players Theatre, 2022/Photo: Liz Lauren

ART

“The City Beyond the White City: Race, Two Chicago Homes And Their Neighborhoods” Opens Thursday

Opening Thursday, November 3, at the Charnley-Persky House Museum, the exhibition connects the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, also called the “White City,” “to the material, spatial, and social histories of two 1892 structures—the Charnley-Persky House and the Mecca Flats—located on Chicago’s privileged Near North and disinvested Near South Sides. The physical exhibition, featuring archaeologically recovered artifacts, is accompanied by a virtual exhibit; together they frame the history of race, structures of racism, and the built environment in Chicago. ‘The City Beyond the White City’ features over thirty individual artifacts excavated from the Charnley-Persky House (Adler & Sullivan, 1891–1892) and from the former Mecca Flats (Edbrooke & Burnham, 1891–1892). Together, archival documents, oral histories, and nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century artifacts unearthed in archaeological digs are used to interpret a nuanced public history of race and place in Chicago for student and public audiences.” The exhibition is co-curated by Dr. Rebecca Graff, associate professor of anthropology at Lake Forest College, and the late Pauline Saliga, former executive director of the Society of Architectural Historians and the Charnley-Persky House Museum Foundation. Reserve tickets for the Thursday opening here.

Carrie Secrist Gallery Opens Temporary Space

Carrie Secrist Gallery announces the first in its project series, “CSG BTWXT,” at their temporary gallery space at 1637 West Chicago. The first “BTWXT” will feature work by Chicago-based artists Diana Guerrero-Maciá and Oli Watt, from November 4-December 17. More here.

Art Critic Jerry Saltz On His Chicago Origins

“Decades before he became arguably the most important art critic in America, long ago when print was king and being the most important art critic in America meant having the gravitas to influence the direction of the art world itself, Jerry Saltz vowed to stand outside of the art world looking in,” writes Christopher Borrelli at the Trib. “Being from Chicago helped. Having a minuscule studio near the Red Line in the Loop helped. Meeting outsider Chicago artists like Joseph Yoakum and Lee Godie, and having grown up without much art at all, helped. Becoming a self-taught artist, and showing more affinity early on for the ancient art in the Field Museum than the celebrated art movements splashed across the Art Institute, that helped, too. As Saltz would write many years later, he loved that the Field was full of art removed from the burdens and judgments of the art world. He figured himself ‘an outsider worm in the bowels of the insider hyena.'” The presentation “Jerry Saltz: Art Is Life” is part of the Chicago Humanities Festival at the Music Box, Saturday, November 5, 10:30am. Tickets are $20 here.

State Department Selects Cleveland Spaces Gallery For 2023 Architecture Biennale U.S. Pavilion

A small, nonprofit art gallery on Cleveland’s West Side, Spaces, has been chosen by the U.S. State Department to organize an exhibition at the U.S. Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, reports Cleveland.com.

Grand Rapids ArtPrize Ends After Thirteen Years

“After thirteen years, the ArtPrize organization is calling it quits,” reports MLive. “The international art competition, which launched in 2009 and has annually drawn thousands of visitors to downtown Grand Rapids, announced that its board of directors is winding down operations.” The group is turning over “its creative, technological and communications platforms to a new partnership between Downtown Grand Rapids Inc., the city of Grand Rapids and Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University.”

DESIGN

Chicago Design Summit Lands Saturday

“The Chicago Design Summit: The Future Real Conditional” is this Saturday, November 5. “The Chicago Design Summit serves as a catalyst for collaboration and partnership by offering a platform for participants to share and respond to ideas related to the upcoming CAB 5 titled, ‘This is a Rehearsal.’ Led by the CAB 5 artistic team, Floating Museum, the one-day in-person event will feature sessions with local guests and visiting panelists, including the founder of JIMA Studio, Ujjiji Davis Williams; principal at MASS Design, Jha D Amazi; anthropologist Vyjayanthi Rao; founding director of Stoss, Chris Reed; architect Feda Wardak; CEC Arts Link program director, Megha Ralapati; and Manager of Archives for Cook County Skyla S. Hearn. Ideas explored during the Summit—such as rehearsing critique, production, and relations—ask us to consider how we might rehearse new design approaches to collectively address emerging conversations about the contradictions between the realities of our lives and environments and the narratives we construct.” Program description here. Attendance is free with reservation here.

Green Line Damen Station Near United Center Slated For 2024 Completion

“More than five years after it was announced, a new CTA Green Line station near the United Center is under construction,” reports the Trib.

DINING & DRINKING

Edgewater’s Rewired Pizza Cafe And Bar Turns Two

Rewired in Edgewater has an all-day two-year anniversary running through Thursday, November 3, with $2 pizza slices, $2 select shots, $2 small drip coffee and $2 pastries, as well as a wine tasting led by Burke Beverage. The complimentary tasting is from 5pm-6:30pm, followed by live music from Tamila Viola. Reservations here.

LIT

Closing Event For One Book, One Chicago’s “Maus” With Art Spiegelman

Art Spiegelman will be in conversation with his wife and collaborator Françoise Mouly to discuss his career, “Maus,” and the importance of freedom as the closing event of the Chicago Public Library’s One Book, One Chicago spotlight on his indelible work.. Thursday, November 3, 6pm, Harold Washington Library. More here.

Judge Blocks $2.2 Billion Penguin Random House Merger

A federal judge has blocked the proposed $2.2 billion Penguin Random House merger, reports the Guardian. The Justice department argued that combining that publishing house with Simon & Schuster would harm competition and writers’ compensation. “The largest five publishers control ninety percent of the market. A combined PRH and Simon & Schuster would control forty-nine-percent of the market for blockbuster books, while its nearest competitors would be less than half its size.” Tweeted Simon & Schuster author Stephen King: “I am delighted that Judge Florence Pan has blocked the merger… The proposed merger was never about readers and writers; it was about preserving (and growing) PRH’s market share. In other words: $$$.” The New York Times: “Penguin Random House and its parent company, Bertelsmann, said in response that they planned to appeal… ‘The proposed merger would have reduced competition, decreased author compensation, diminished the breadth, depth, and diversity of our stories and ideas, and ultimately impoverished our democracy,’ said Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the department’s antitrust division.”

MEDIA

Why Lite-FM Is Already Playing Christmas Music

WLIT-FM 93.9 is playing only Christmas music round-the-clock. “It is the earliest date in the station’s twenty-two years of hosting the format that it is making the switch,” reports the Trib. “Why? Listeners love it.”

The Daily Tweet

Twitter has frozen some access to content moderation and other policy enforcement only a few days before midterms, “curbing the staff’s ability to clamp down on misinformation ahead of a major U.S. election,” writes Bloomberg. General Motors pauses paid advertising on Twitter as Elon Musk takes ownership, reports CNBC: “We are engaging with Twitter to understand the direction of the platform under their new ownership,” GM said. “GM and Musk’s Tesla are rivals.” Observes author and podcaster Lux Alptraum: “Everyone’s gotta do what’s right for them but one of the things that irritates me about these ‘major celebs are leaving Twitter!’ stories is that these stories are inevitably about people for whom leaving is a choice and whose livelihoods will not be harmed by Twitter loss. Feels actively irresponsible to ignore the pressures put on lower level media folks/performers/comedians/etc to Have A Platform™, and the potential cascade effect of a total loss of Twitter.”

MUSIC

Why Many Musicians Can’t Afford To Tour

The Guardian stays on the subject of the troubled tour business, looking largely at Europe and Great Britain’s unfinished “Brexit”: “The received wisdom directed at musicians was simple: streaming means you’re not earning from recordings any more? Make it up on the road! Get out there and tour, like musicians used to, then you’ll be fine! That has proven to be a myth… An increasing number of acts have announced that they are cancelling tours, or scaling down their live commitments because they simply can’t afford to play… ‘All of a sudden you constantly had to do social media to keep marketing yourself, find out what you can sell, get branding deals, do private gigs,’ Santigold told the paper. ‘It’s almost undoable… There needs to be systemic and structural changes, but I also think you’ve got to change the notion that art should be free. Somebody has to say: “We value art.”’”

The Daily Ye

Ye can’t leverage “White Lives Matter” T-shirts or other merch: two Black radio hosts own the trademark, reports Atlanta’s Capital B. “One of the most racist phrases in America is owned by… Ramses Ja and Quinton Ward, two Black radio hosts in Phoenix, were gifted the trademark from a longtime, anonymous listener of their show, Civic Cipher. The listener procured ownership of the phrase in 2020 to ensure it didn’t fall into the wrong hands, and offered to transfer the trademark to Ja and Ward in September. It officially entered their possession on October 28.” Ja told the publication, “This person who first procured it didn’t really love owning it, because the purpose was not necessarily to get rich off of it; the purpose was to make sure that other people didn’t get rich off of that pain.” “Coincidentally, just as the trademark was transferred into Ja and Ward’s hands, Kanye West began his weeks-long tirade promoting anti-Black and antisemitic beliefs.”

STAGE

RIP Andrew Duncan, Player In First Second City Revue

Andrew Duncan was part of the first Second City production, “Excelsior & Other Outcries,” in 1959, “in an ensemble that included Barbara Harris and Severn Darden,” reports the Sun-Times. “‘Andrew Duncan was the quintessential straight man and interviewer at both The Compass and Second City,’ colleague Sheldon Patinkin wrote in his book ‘The Second City: Backstage at the World’s Greatest Comedy Theater.'” (Second City notes his passing here.) His later Second City shows included one on Broadway, and he was in “Slap Shot,” “Love Story,” “Used Cars,” “Last Embrace,” “An Unmarried Woman,” “Network,” “The Rain People” and “The Andy Griffith Show.”

Can Regional Theater Survive Without More Federal Money?

“Morning Edition” is continuing its “Next Stage” series, looking at the “$16 billion for theaters, music venues and other cultural institutions [that was] part of the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program, run by the Small Business Administration. ‘The federal government has been a huge partner in this,’ said Jeffrey Woodward, managing director of the Dallas Theater Center. ‘There were a slew of government programs–I call them the alphabet soup.’ Woodward listed them… ‘Payroll Protection Plan or PPP. Employee Retention Tax Credit, ERTC. Shutter Venues Operating Grant, S-VOG.’ Without that federal money, non-profit theater as we know it would have died, said Teresa Eyering with the Theater Communications Group.”

Hell In A Handbag Presents “The Golden Girls: The Lost Episodes, The Obligatory Holiday Special”

Hell in a Handbag Productions leads off its holiday season with the return of its favorite seniors. Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, Sophia and their friends and relatives return in all-new episodes written by artistic director David Cerda and directed by Spenser Davis. The production features original cast members David Cerda, Grant Drager, Ed Jones and Ryan Oates as “the Geriatric Fab Four,” joined by Lori Lee, Terry McCarthy, Michael Miller, Michael Rashid, Coco Sho-Nell, Jamie Smith and Danne W. Taylor. November 26–December 30 at The Hoover-Leppen Theatre at The Center on Halsted. More here.

American Players Theatre Sets 2023 Season

American Players Theatre has announced its 2023 lineup, running June 10–October 8. The Hill Theatre will open with Shakespeare’s “The Merry Wives of Windsor” on June 10. The second Shakespearean classic will be “Romeo + Juliet,” featuring Shakespeare’s words performed both in spoken English and in American Sign Language. Also playing on the Hill, David Ives’ farce “The Liar”; Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town”; and “Anton’s Shorts,” early one-act comedies by Anton Chekhov, adapted by playwright Aaron Posner. The current season’s production of “Stones In His Pockets,” by Marie Jones, runs through November 20 with limited ticket availability. More here.

ARTS & CULTURE & ETC.

State Street Holiday Market Features Eighty-Five Small Businesses

The free State Street Holiday Market, November 18-December 18, will feature vendors from Sundays on State indoors, with local artisanal materials and festive gift options. The State Street Holiday Market is a project of Chicago Loop Alliance made possible through a Chicago Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection (BACP) Small Business Storefront Activation Program grant and all vendors are Chicago businesses that were affected by the pandemic. Vendors and other details here.

Susan Kelly Power, Ninety-Seven, A Founder Of Country’s First Indian Center

“Susan Kelly Power, [a Yanktonai Dakota], helped found what is now the American Indian Center of Chicago… in a basement in 1953, where she and others [linked] newcomers to homes and jobs. The center continued to grow and is now at 3401 West Ainslie. It was the first Indian center in the United States,” reports the Sun-Times. “In the early 1970s Ms. Power became a pivotal activist in the Chicago Indian Village movement, which protested poor living conditions and inadequate job opportunities available to Native people lured into cities, her daughter said.”

Delta Airlines Strike Anticipated

“Voting closed on a historic strike authorization ballot–the first one conducted by the Delta pilots since 2006–with an outstanding ninety-six-percent participation and ninety-nine-percent of us voting in favor of strike authorization,” the chairman of the Delta Master Executive Council notified the airline’s pilots. “No matter your seniority, we are all in this fight together. Your unity and engagement are the most powerful tools we provide the Negotiating Committee to leverage at the bargaining table. The results send an undeniable message to management: we are ready to go the distance, up to and including exercising our rights to self-help under the Railway Labor Act (RLA), to secure a contract that reflects the value we bring to Delta Air Lines. The RLA allows for unions to be released for self-help, and a strike is the ultimate action we could take after exhausting the required process. A strike is not an action we take lightly and one we hope to avoid, if possible. However, we will no longer accept further delays or excuses from management: we are willing and ready to strike.”

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