Immersive Van Gogh Chicago/Photo: Michael Brosilow
ART
Foundations Commit $5 Million For Ten Latinx Art Curatorial Positions
“The Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Getty Foundation and the Terra Foundation—four of the country’s leading philanthropic grant-makers—have partnered to create an initiative called Advancing Latinx Art in Museums (ALAM),” reports ARTNews, “which is ‘part of a long-overdue effort to support Latinx artists and to ignite a public conversation about the rightful place of Latinx art within American art. The four foundations have pooled $5 million, which will go toward giving ten U.S. museums or art institutions grants of $500,000 each to formally create ten permanent early or mid-career curatorial positions with an expertise in Latinx art.” The institutions include Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art.
CityArts Applications Open
The 2023 CityArts Program grant application is open until March 24. The goal of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events program is “to encourage the attainment of artistic excellence and financial stability.” The Chicago Arts Recovery Program for arts and culture nonprofits is also open. More information and applications here.
Immersive Van Gogh Closes February 26
“Chicago was the first city to debut Immersive Van Gogh in the U.S. in February 2021. Since then, it has traveled to over twenty U.S. cities and been seen by over six million people,” but it is about to close in Chicago. More here.
DESIGN
CTA, Pace Launch Shared, Unlimited Passes February 20
“The CTA and Pace are merging their day and multiday pass programs into a series of passes that work across both platforms. Prices won’t change,” reports the Sun-Times.
Southwest Side Former Kmart Won’t Yet Get Hundreds Of Migrants
As many as 650 migrants “could soon move into a vacant store in West Lawn, but officials are asking for more time to prepare the site and engage with residents,” reports Block Club. “The migrants were originally supposed to move into the building February 9, but plans have stalled.” State Representative Angie Guerrero “has asked state agencies to pause the project until they can ensure the site is ready for families to live there. She still has questions about how long people will be living there and what type of security and other resources will be provided.”
Little Village Discount Mall Will Stay Open For Now
“Many vendors will be allowed to stay after much uncertainty—but the Discount Mall could be facing a reduction in size. The plaza will undergo renovations this spring,” reports Block Club.
FILM & TELEVISION
Filmmaker Deborah Stratman Talks Career
Deborah Stratman [Newcity Film 50] talks science and art in a career overview at Tone Glow: “I don’t know that I could say when I started being curious about… everything. But it’s been a long time. It infuriates people sometimes because I don’t stop asking questions. As a younger person, the sciences satisfied that in me, but at some point—probably from one too many attempts at a calculus class—I was like, hey, there must be some other way to satisfy this probing. And this feeling is curiosity nudged by wonderment. I mean… The world is freaking amazing. The more you ask questions of it the more it spews out crazy stuff. Up through early college, I had been more science tracked—very physics tracked. I loved astronomy and particles and the hugeness of stuff. But these days I’m more interested in the sciences that hold history, like geology and biology. I pursued that physics track until calculus made things go haywire, and then I entered the arts and that was a revelation. It was like, oh, I can just ask everything I want to ask, through the process of making. I’m always making because I don’t know. Art seemed to have many more registers to ask in.”
LIT
DeSantis Says He Could Banish Advanced Placement Courses In Florida
“After he was embarrassed by the College Board calling him out on his rejection of Advanced Placement African American History, [Florida Governor Ron DeSantis] responds with his usual playbook, threatening to disband the entire AP program in Florida, or have Florida colleges reject AP credit for all courses,” posts attorney Ron Filipkowski, with video. “Nobody elected them to anything; they’re just kinda there… and so you can utilize that service, or not, and so they provided these AP courses for a long time, But ya know, there are probably some other vendors who may, who may be able to do that job as good, or maybe even a lot better,” DeSantis tells a crowd.
Iowa Governor Proposes Learning Restrictions; Gender Notifications To State
“Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds unveiled a large education bill that would set new standards for what students can and can’t learn,” reports KCRG Cedar Rapids. “Schools would be forced to publish all educational materials like books and lesson plans. The bill would ban topics like gender identity and sexual activity in grades K through 3. It would remove teaching grades 7 through 12 about HPV and AIDS… The bill bans any nicknames or pronouns that are different from a student’s birth certificate unless a parent gives permission, and requires schools to notify parents or the Department of Human Services if a student says they are transgender.”
MUSIC
Springsteen At Wrigley
Bruce Springsteen will play Wrigley Field to open the second leg of his North American tour on August 9. Tickets go on sale Friday, February 17 here.
Diana Ross Coming To Hard Rock Live
Diana Ross will appear at Hard Rock Casino Northern Indiana’s Hard Rock Live venue on Friday, May 5. Tickets go on sale Friday, February 17 at 10am. The show is fully seated. More here.
STAGE
Tina Fey And Amy Poehler Set Chicago Date
Tickets go on sale today, Wednesday, February 15, for Tina Fey and Amy Poehler at the Chicago Theatre.
“Boop” Musical Pre-Broadway Tryout Set For Chicago
“Chicago will host the world premiere of a new, Broadway-bound musical about the famous cartoon character Betty Boop,” reports Chris Jones. “The long-in-gestation show, officially dubbed ‘Boop! The Betty Boop Musical,’ will feature music by David Foster and lyrics by Susan Birkenhead. The book will be by Bob Martin (‘The Drowsy Chaperone,’ ‘The Prom’) and the high-profile piece will be directed and choreographed by Jerry Mitchell, who long has favored Chicago as his tryout city.”
Broadway Theaters Merge
Two groups of Broadway house owners – Jujamcyn Theaters and Ambassador Theatre Group – are merging, writes the Hollywood Reporter, comprising seven of the forty-one professional Broadway houses. “Shaking up theater ownership on Broadway is rare. The two parties are among the smaller theater owners on Broadway, compared to the Shubert Organization, which owns seventeen of the forty-one Broadway theaters, and the Nederlander Organization, which owns nine. But combining forces will give a bigger footprint to Jujamcyn Theaters and notably to Ambassador Theatre Group, which had been looking to expand its Broadway presence after acquiring the Lyric Theatre, current home of ‘Harry Potter and the Cursed Child,’ and the Hudson Theatre.”
ARTS & CULTURE & ETC.
The Apprentice Executioner: Trump Considers Live Killing By Guillotine
Donald Trump, if reelected, intends to bring back the death penalty by firing squad and guillotine, reports Rolling Stone. He has “mused about televising footage of executions, including showing condemned prisoners in the final moments of their lives. Specifically, Trump has talked about bringing back death by firing squad, by hanging, and… possibly even by guillotine. He has also… discussed group executions… Trump privately mused about the possibility of creating a flashy, government-backed video-ad campaign that would accompany a federal revival of these execution methods. In Trump’s vision, these videos would include footage from these new executions, if not from the exact moments of death.”
CDC: Teen Girls “Engulfed” In Violence
“Teen girls across the United States are ‘engulfed in a growing wave of violence and trauma,’ according to federal researchers who released data showing increases in rape and sexual violence, as well as record levels of feeling sad or hopeless,” reports the Washington Post. “Nearly one in three high school girls reported in 2021 that they seriously considered suicide—up nearly sixty percent from a decade ago—according to new findings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Almost fifteen-percent of teen girls said they were forced to have sex, an increase of twenty-seven-percent over two years and the first increase since the CDC began tracking.” The complete survey is here.
Preckwinkle-Led Coalition Wants To Take Cash Assistance National; Times Looks At Chicago Programs
“Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle joined a coalition of other county leaders in Washington, D.C. to announce an organized push for federal support of guaranteed income programs,” reports A.D. Quig at the Tribune. “Preckwinkle will serve as co-chair of the new national group, Counties for Guaranteed Income. Made up of county commissioners and county board leaders from around the country, it’s an expansion of Mayors for Guaranteed Income. Both are networks of local leaders advocating for guaranteed income and spearheaded by Michael Tubbs, the former mayor of Stockton, California, where a guaranteed income pilot drew national attention.”
The New York Times looks at the Chicago guaranteed income programs: “Chicago and the surrounding suburbs of Cook County are conducting the largest experiment of its kind in the nation, an effort to supply thousands of residents with a basic level of subsistence, not in the form of food, housing or child care—just cash. Ms. Lightfoot’s $31.5 million Resilient Communities Pilot selected 5,000 city residents in August to receive a guaranteed cash income for a year. The first $500 checks from a separate program, a $42 million county pilot, went out in December to 3,250 residents concentrated in the near-in Chicago suburbs… For Democrats, the concept is a wager on big government at a time when faith in democratic governance is at a low ebb. For Republicans, it’s a return to discredited welfare handouts that waste money and foster dependency.”
