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ART
MCA Chicago And APIDA Arts Festival Host Event
In celebration of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, MCA Chicago, in collaboration with APIDA Arts Festival, “Celebrating the Creativity of Asian, Pacific Island, Desi/South Asian Americans,” will host an all-day celebration on May 7. The MCA event is part of a weekend program that includes activities at the Goodman Theatre, Lookingglass Theatre and the Chicago Cultural Center. “The mission of the APIDA Arts Festival is to amplify and unify Asian, Pacific Islander and Desi/South Asian American artists in Chicago by showcasing their work at premier cultural institutions, providing greater representation, equity and opportunity.” Full festival details here.
MOCAD Names Inaugural Artistic Director
“The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) has named Jova Lynne as MOCAD’s first artistic director. She assumes the role as of April 3. Lynne has a long history with the museum, joining the organization in 2017 as a Ford Foundation curatorial fellow. In 2019, she became the Susanne Feld Hillberry senior curator,” reports DBusiness.
Fine Art-Selling Valparaiso University Buys Former Strongbow Inn For $2.2 Million
“As controversy swirled on the Valparaiso University campus weeks after President Jose Padilla announced the private school was considering selling three cornerstone pieces from the Brauer Museum of Art to fund dorm renovations for first-year students, the university purchased The Market, formerly Strongbow Inn, for $2.2 million,” reports the Trib. “The endowment funds being used for said purchase are restricted, as is the majority of the funding in the endowment. Using that money for other projects, including the proposed residence hall renovations, would not have been an option,” a university spokesman said. “This purchase is part of the overarching investment strategy and is expected to provide a positive cash return.”
DESIGN
One Howard Street Launched
The nonprofit Rogers Park Business Alliance, the City of Evanston and the City of Chicago have launched One Howard Street, a unified corridor plan for Howard Street between Sheridan Road and Western and Asbury Avenue. Made possible by a nearly $100,000 grant from the State’s Research in Illinois to Spur Economic Recovery (RISE) Program, this intermunicipal project will “engage the community in designing a commercial revitalization plan that fosters economic recovery, employment, public safety, affordable housing, public transit and traffic infrastructure, education resources, cultural development and inclusive community for diverse residents, on both sides of the street that border the cities.” The community is invited to share their own vision for the future of Howard Street with the project team at a community meeting and park cleanup Saturday, April 22, 10am-noon, at Willye B. White Park, 1610 W. Howard St. The event will include hands-on activities, snacks and more information about the One Howard Street planning process. More here.
EPA: Illinois And Florida Have More Lead Pipes Than Other States
“Some 9.2 million lead pipes carry water into homes across the U.S., with more in Florida than any other state, according to a new Environmental Protection Agency survey that will dictate how billions of dollars to find and replace those pipes are spent,” reports AP. “Illinois ranked second in Tuesday’s survey, with 1.04 million lead pipes, followed by Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and New York.”
Time Out Survey Says Chicagoans Like Their CTA
“More than 20,000 riders in over fifty cities were asked the simple question: ‘Is it easy to get around your city by public transport?’ Here in Chicago, eighty-two percent of locals had positive things to say about our rail-and-bus network,” reports Time Out.
Is Architecture A “Hollowed-Out Profession”?
“There have always been architects. They, we, are a necessary, even vital, component to human society. Architects may not always have been called architects but for most of history there have been someones who ‘designed’ shelter and guided its construction,” writes Eleanor Jolliffe at Dezeen. “Paul Crosby and I have explored the last 3,000 years of the western history of these someones, charting the evolution of their practice and education for our recently released book, ‘Architect: The Evolving Story Of A Profession.’ What we found however, was that after 3,000 years of well-meant adaptation and evolution architecture is a hollowed-out profession with architects seemingly less vital than ever.”
Remote Work Will Not Doom Cities
“If you look at contemporary usages of this idea of ‘urban doom,'” reports Curbed, it’s “similar to the way a lot of people in the seventies and eighties were talking about cities. There are a bunch of continuities between now and then. One of them is this equation between the urban general good and the good of downtown real-estate owners. You can very strongly see this. And there’s also a barely hidden—or not at all hidden—racism, clearly articulated from the perspective of a white Establishment that is horrified with the idea of people of color having a stronger political presence in cities… You can picture a version of adaptive reuse of downtowns, which just maintains them as these sort of elite citadels that just change from commercial real estate to residential real estate, but still maintains the exclusionary class character of these areas. Or you could imagine the democratic transition, which looks at all this urban space located within cities and says, ‘We’re going to use it to build housing for workers. We’re going to use it to build healthcare facilities, schools, public spaces, public institutions, and community spaces.’ I mean, there’s no limit to how these spaces could be reused if they’re unshackled from this imperative.”
DINING & DRINKING
LeTour Starts Lunch, Brunch
LeTour, the new French-Moroccan restaurant in Evanston from Amy Morton and James Beard winner Chef Debbie Gold, starts weekend brunch service over Easter weekend with their first service Sunday, April 9. They will offer weekend brunch Saturdays-Sundays from 10am-2pm and open the patio as “Place LeTour,” the North Shore’s largest outdoor patio dining, seating 150, with lunch service starting mid-May. The brunch menu has a nod to Gold’s background in pastry with house-made croissants and the French-Moroccan menu theme carries over with marinated olives, Tunisian Deviled Eggs, Tamara and Duck Liver Mousse, Salad Lyonnaise and tagine in addition to classic brunch entrees. Highlights: Rose Granola, maple, greek yogurt and citrus; eggs Shakshuka with goat cheese; chilled salmon with celery root remoulade, horseradish; brioche French toast with apple butter, maple syrup; steak and eggs: eight-ounce bavette steak, persillade, two fried eggs, Moroccan pancakes. More here.
“Moderate” Drinking Still No Good, Says Study Of Studies
A review “found that the methodology of many previous studies was flawed and that risk of myriad health problems increased significantly after less than two drinks a day for women and after three for men,” reports the New York Times.
What A TikTok Ban Would Do To “Food Creators”
“TikTok has become a platform for both food lovers and creators to find exactly what they’re looking for,” reports Bon Appétit. “The app’s algorithm has an almost spooky way of recommending content you actually want to see. It’s led to viral recipes like Emily Mariko’s salmon rice bowl and the ubiquitous feta pasta. For chefs and creators, the platform is even more vital—many have been able to quickly build a large following in a way that’s impossible on other social media apps. That success has allowed a whole generation of content creators to make cooking and recipe development into a full-time job, which means more recipes, meal plans and cookbooks for audiences.”
Oak Park Farmers Market Staple Geneva Lakes Produce Burns
“Just as spring plantings were ramping up, an enormous fire devastated three major buildings at Geneva Lakes Produce in Burlington, Wisconsin,” reports Wednesday Journal. The farm “has been a mainstay at the Oak Park Farmers Market for the past three decades.”
FILM & TELEVISION
Regal Cinema Parent Makes Deal To Emerge From Bankruptcy
“Movie theater giant Cineworld said… that it has struck an agreement with lenders that would see it emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy via a restructuring,” writes the Hollywood Reporter. “The proposed restructuring aims to reduce the firm’s indebtedness by about $4.53 billion, mainly through lenders getting equity in the reorganized group in exchange for releasing their claims.”
LIT
Judge Blocks Texas County Book-Banning
“A federal judge in Austin has found that a library board in Llano County, Texas, likely infringed the constitutional rights of readers in the community by unilaterally removing books it deemed inappropriate,” reports Publishers Weekly.
MUSIC
Constellation Marks A Decade
“For its tenth anniversary, Constellation is taking a moment to celebrate and promote its nonprofit arm, Constellation Performing Arts, an endeavor that seeks to cover programming costs; if you buy a weekend pass, sixty percent of the price is tax deductible. Each night is packed with performers who’ve repeatedly trod the venue’s floorboards, and several are presenting new work,” writes Bill Meyer at the Reader. “Since April 2013, when Constellation opened on Western Avenue in a shared space with Links Hall, it’s been far more than just a club with cutting-edge bookings; it’s been a stabilizing and nurturing influence on jazz, classical, experimental, and other music scenes buffeted by an increasingly hostile economic and political climate.”
ARTS & CULTURE & ETC.
“Chicago’s Election Will Shape The Future Of Public Safety”
A pre-election piece from Eric Reinhart in The Nation: “Paul Vallas [promised] that [he would increase] the police force. Brandon Johnson says that to build safety, he’ll ‘invest in people.’ What does that mean, and what are voters choosing between? … The police model around which Vallas… built his campaign, with backing from Republican donors and the city’s… police union, [considered] public safety as first and foremost a matter of ‘crime.’ Crime has spun out of control, this framework tells us, because we have not yet spent enough money on police nor hired enough officers to patrol the city’s schools and streets. Consistent with this approach, Vallas’ central electoral strategy [was] to cast Johnson as a delusional proponent of ‘defunding the police’ for his suggestions that investing in a public health model for safety would yield better results than repeating the police-first policies that have ruled the city for decades while social services have been defunded and privatized.”
Mayor-Elect Johnson Talks Running As A Progressive
Late last month, Brandon Johnson talked to In These Times about running for mayor as a progressive: Vallas “promised to ‘take the handcuffs off’ the police, in his words, while dramatically increasing the number of officers on the street. Johnson, meanwhile, has released a comprehensive proposal to make investments in social programs, violence prevention and alternatives to traditional policing. When it comes to paying for these investments, Johnson wants to raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Vallas, meanwhile, [argued] that budgetary maneuvers are the answer to the city’s economic problems.”
An Argument That Cities Can Make Mental Health Support A Goal
Mayor-elect Brandon “Johnson proposes investing more in areas like mental health and housing, but he also wants to fully fund year-round youth employment opportunities and create an Office of Community Safety. He is seeking deeper crime prevention rather than just crime response,” wrote the New Republic’s Prem Thakker in late January. “This is not radical, right? The fact that employment and investment in people is considered a progressive idea, and is not just a humanitarian idea, tells you everything that’s wrong with the same old stale politics and policies that continue to make it to debates… They shouldn’t be allowed to debate failed policy. We should just retire any policy that has failed people for the past forty years.”
Repatriation Reform Bill Passes Illinois House Unanimously
“If signed into law, the legislation would create a protected cemetery for the reburial of repatriated Native American ancestors and establish a committee of tribal leaders to review state projects that may disturb culturally significant sites,” reports ProPublica.”Most excavated Native American remains in Illinois are held by state universities and museums. Our investigation found that the Illinois State Museum holds the remains of at least 7,000 Native Americans, yet it has returned only two-percent of them to the tribal nations who could claim them under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, a 1990 federal law that pushed for the expeditious return of human remains and funerary items excavated from Indigenous burial sites. The museum has the country’s second-largest collection of unrepatriated Native American remains, and one of the lowest return rates.”
Rate Of Dangerous Derailments Accelerates
“Almost every major rail company in the United States has had a multi-car derailment in the last week. At least 157 cars derailed in six train accidents around the country,” calculates More Perfect Union. “In California, two locomotives and all fifty-five cars of a Union Pacific ore train were destroyed in a wreck after losing control and reaching speeds of roughly 100mph on a hill in the Mojave Desert. On the same day in North Dakota, thirty-one cars of a Canadian Pacific train derailed, spilling hazardous chemicals including liquid asphalt and ethylene glycol from at least six cars. On Thursday, hundreds of people had to evacuate their homes in Minnesota after twenty-two cars that were hauling ethanol derailed and caught fire. The train was run by Warren Buffett-owned rail giant BNSF.”
