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ART
Paschke Art Center Applies For Zoning Change
A zoning application has been submitted for an expansion of the Ed Paschke Art Center n Jefferson Park, reports YIMBY Chicago. “The addition is the first phase of what will be a larger arts campus. Ed Paschke [Family Foundation] along with Chicago Art Center are the developers of the addition which is being designed by Sandberg Architecture & Design Inc… After closing in 2020, the center is gearing up to reopen with an expansion to their existing two-story museum, the focal point of the work will be a new eighty-two-foot-long top floor gallery with fifteen-foot ceilings and three raised skylights.”
Two Statsinger Works Acquired By Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has acquired Evelyn Statsinger’s iconic works, “Land and Sea” (1951) and “Harvest Angel” (1976), for the museum’s permanent collection, announces GRAY. “Statsinger studied at the Art Students League in New York. In Chicago, she received her degree from the School of the Art Institute in 1949. At that time she was associated with Chicago’s ‘Monster Roster’ painters because of the distorted figures present in her early work. Statsinger (1927-2016) depicted her experiences of the natural world through drawing, painting and sculpture. In her mature work, she relinquished readily identifiable forms such as the figure in favor of fantasy forms abstracted from nature. Statsinger worked across a variety of media creating complex psychological and colorful compositions that balance abstraction, representation and fantasy.” More on Statsinger here.
DESIGN
Chicago Architecture Biennial Announces Participants
The Chicago Architecture Biennial has released the participant list for its fifth edition, “CAB 5: This is a Rehearsal.” The citywide exhibition, on view from September 21 through January 2, 2024, will feature more than seventy creative practitioners whose work spans art, architecture, design and performance. “This is a Rehearsal,” CAB writes in a release, “will center process and community through a broad curatorial lens, bringing together a network of activations” that demonstrate the role of architecture in urban life. Selected by Floating Museum, which includes Jeremiah Hulsebos-Spofford, Faheem Majeed, Andrew Schachman, and avery r. young, this year’s participants “will explore how environmental, political, and economic issues transcend borders, while also addressing these concerns within specific contexts.”
Among the local participants: Amanda Williams; Andrea Carlson; Andrea Yarbrough, House of Kapwa; Botanical City; Carol Ross Barney with Ryan Gann and DuSable Park Design Alliance; Cecil McDonald, Jr.; Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project; Chris Bradley; Could Be Design; Dan Peterman; Deb Sokolow; Depave Chicago and The Montessori School of Englewood; Diane Simpson; Edra Soto; Eve L. Ewing; Grow Greater Englewood; Jeff Carter; Jennifer Reeder and Adri Siriwat; Kane One, Graffiti Institute; Lauren Pacheco, Steel Studio; A Long Walk Home; Modou Dieng Yacine; Norman Teague Design Studios, Tonika Johnson, Max Davis, Ernest Wong Mejay Gula and Tanner Woodford; Project Onward with Ricky Willis and Kareem Davis; Red Clay Dance Company; Roy Kinsey; site / site design group, ltd.; Slo ‘Mo; SpaceShift; and Urban Growers Collective with Erika Allen. The full list is here.
Time To Fix The CTA, Says Crain’s
The CTA “should be an envy to other cities and a competitive advantage against Sun Belt towns but instead just can’t pull out of a horrible stretch that began with the COVID pandemic,” urges Greg Hinz at Crain’s. Mayor Johnson “has lots of things on his plate right now. Unfortunately, fixing the CTA needs attention, too…. Chicago certainly isn’t alone in its misery. Just look at San Francisco’s BART system, which… is carrying only forty-percent of its pre-pandemic number of passengers compared to the CTA’s sixty-percent or so… Quicker, faster progress is needed.”
CBS Sunday Morning Profiles Jeanne Gang
“Jeanne Gang, arguably the most important female architect working today, heads her own firm, Studio Gang, which is pushing the boundaries of the good that architecture can do, for connecting communities and for the environment,” features CBS Sunday Morning. Gang talked about “her most recent project, an expansion of New York’s American Museum of Natural History, and about the skyscrapers, airport terminal, and other civic spaces she has designed in her hometown of Chicago meant to transform spaces, outside and within.”
Visiting Chicago Architectural Photographer Orlando Cabanban
Lee Bey visits the eighty-nine-year-old photographer. “A licensed architect who switched to photography early in his career during the 1960s, the Chicago-born Orlando Cabanban was hired by top architecture firms to document their work,” writes Bey in his Sun-Times architecture column. “And while he didn’t become as well-known as architectural image-makers such as Hedrich-Blessing, or Ezra Stoller, his UIC work alone shows he could give them a run for their money. If you find midcentury images of signature buildings such as Marina City or Seventeenth Church of Christ, Scientist at 55 East Wacker, it’s likely Cabanban was behind the lens.”
Wisconsin’s Most Expensive Home: $35 Million In Lake Geneva
An eight-bedroom, sixteen-bathroom, 20,000 square-foot estate in Lake Geneva, built over 120 years ago for the Drake family, has been listed for $35 million, reports NBC 5. “Originally built in 1900 for the Drake family, widely known as the founders of the Drake and Blackstone hotels, [the house] has been restored ‘to the highest level of quality and perfection.'”
DINING & DRINKING
Reading The James Beard Media Winners
The voluminous list of James Beard Media winners is here.
Jason Melamed Opens Bucktown’s Allez Cafe
Jason Melamed, a cook who’s worked at three-Michelin-starred Alinea and West Loop settler Blackbird, has opened Allez Cafe, a coffee shop companion to his neighboring business, Ambrosia Foods, a caterer directed toward offices and workplaces, reports Eater Chicago.
FILM & TELEVISION
Tavi Gevinson: Auditions Are Work, Pay Us
“‘Gossip Girl’ actor and Rookie magazine founder Tavi Gevinson writes that too many in Hollywood—including herself until recently—undervalue a huge part of the profession: ‘I realized how little I knew about auditions’ value as not simply “opportunities” for us, but commodities that studios need,'” headlines the Hollywood Reporter.
Tentative Contract Between Directors Guild And Studios
“The Directors Guild of America said Saturday night that it had reached a tentative three-year labor deal with the Hollywood studios and streamers,” reports Variety. “The Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA congratulated the Directors Guild of America on reaching an agreement with the studios, but both groups stressed that the deal does not change their own goals,” the trade paper adds. Both guilds are “pushing back against ‘pattern bargaining,’ in which the terms of the DGA deal are typically applied to the WGA and SAG-AFTRA.” Posts showrunner Amy Berg, “Thrilled that the DGA was able to use the power of the WGA’s labor action to secure a deal that works for them.”
Sidetrack Doc “Art And Pep” On Peacock
“‘Art and Pep,’ a feature documentary about LGBTQ+ civil rights leaders Art Johnston and Pepe Peña, owners of the iconic Sidetrack bar in Chicago, is available now to kick off Pride Month. For more than forty years, Johnston and Peña have been a driving force behind LGBTQ+ equality in the heart of the country, with their bar fueling movements and creating community in Chicago’s Northside queer enclave.” More here. Stream here.
MEDIA
Sun-Times Sets “Right To Be Forgotten”
“At the Sun-Times, we don’t think it’s fair for stories about arrests to follow people around forever if they were never convicted or if charges were dropped or expunged. In recognition of the unintended harm that some of our work has caused, we want to be intentional about reviewing these articles and considering whether they should remain part of the searchable internet record,” writes Sun-Times executive editor Jennifer Kho. “We are launching a … ‘right to be forgotten’ policy to make it easier for people we’ve written about to request a review. In the past, the Chicago Sun-Times’ executive editor has handled these requests on a case-by-case basis. Moving forward, our goal is to partner with the community to help solve equity problems we are part of, rather than only reporting on them.”
A Scenario Of A Future Utopia For American Media
Hamilton Nolan is optimistic about a possible future for media: “Here is a fun scenario for what could happen next: We reach a critical mass of independent, reader-supported journalism, peppered across the nation. A bunch of those writers look around and say, ‘Hey, you know what we should do? Get together and make a publication.’ (This is not a new idea—ever since newly unemployed writers began migrating to Substack, they have dreamt of re-forming newsrooms.) Crucially, these groups of writers would already each have their own subscriber base, meaning that these new publications should, in theory, be financially viable from day one. And the most interesting part of this scenario—the reason it’s been kicking around my mind in the first place—is the fact that all of these new publications would be worker-owned coops… Rather than investors putting up a pot of money to hire journalists, you have a big pool of independent writers who already have their own subscriber bases mutually agreeing to combine forces.”
“In this scenario, there is no for investors—just subscribers. Each of these new publications will have cut the investor class out of the fold… The silver lining of the media’s most recent bout of creative destruction is that it’s laying the groundwork for a big flourishing of the most socially beneficial type of publications of all. This is not just a media story. It’s a labor story. Thousands of us have spent the past seven or eight years unionizing the media industry. Unions are great and necessary, but they can’t prevent the enormous technological and economic fluctuations that end up destroying the places where we all worked. Worker-owned coops are the next and final evolution of media unions. Instead of negotiating with the owners, the workers are the owners. I can also guarantee that these publications would suck less, because we could all write what we wanted.”
Chunks Of Reddit Shutting Down Over New Fee Structures
“Hundreds of moderators are shutting down their massive subreddits in protest of new fees that threaten apps like Apollo, Narwhal and BaconReader,” reports VICE.
MUSIC
Millennium Park Hosts Tribute To Ramsey Lewis
The many aspects of the long life of iconic jazz pianist Ramsey Lewis will be featured in the free “Tribute to Ramsey Lewis” on Thursday, June 22 at 6:30pm. “The program will acknowledge the enduring impact of his influence on future generations of musicians. The program will include appearances by numerous surprise guests that have performed with him over the years, and have been inspired by his extraordinary gift and touched by his compassion and benevolence.” More here.
STAGE
E-Waste Event From League Of Chicago Theatres
“If you are a Chicagoland theater, consolidate your accumulated E-waste and bring it to the Raven Theatre parking lot on June 8, where members of the Chicago Green Theatre Alliance will gather it for recycling between the hours of 1pm–6pm.” More here.
New York Experimental Theater Quaked By Shutdown
New York’s Public Theater has put the Under the Radar Festival of experimental theater on “extended hiatus,” reports Playbill. This “development is part of a disturbing trend, with producers of new work and experimental theater shutting their doors.” From the New York Times: “‘It’s entirely a financial decision,’ said Oskar Eustis, the Public’s artistic director. ‘This does not mean the Public is abandoning its relationship with downtown experimental artists, but we’re going to be looking for a new way of embodying that.'”
ARTS & CULTURE & ETC.
UChicago Announces Research Alliance With Japanese University
University of Chicago has a new quantum research alliance with Japan’s Tohoku University as well as a partnership with France’s flagship research institution, CNRS. “The dual announcements with nations on either side of the world are a signal of Chicago’s rising prominence on the global scientific stage,” relays the university. “The news comes shortly after the G7 Summit in Japan last month, where UChicago President Alivisatos met with President Biden and announced a plan to work with IBM and Google to build the world’s most powerful computer, and just three months after the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative announced that their first biohub outside of California would launch in Chicago.”
Norfolk Southern Says “Not Responsible” In Ohio Derailment
“After the disastrous train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, rail giant Norfolk Southern says it is not responsible,” reports the New Republic. “Norfolk Southern is seeking to shut down the case, which is… a consolidation of over thirty separate lawsuits filed against the railroad company. ‘The first car to derail did not belong to Norfolk Southern,’ the company’s legal team claimed in its motion to dismiss the slate of lawsuits… ‘Nor did Norfolk Southern construct the wheel bearing that allegedly “overheated” and “caused the train to derail.”‘” A hundred days on, In These Times talks to area residents whose lives have been wrecked by the catastrophe.
An Interactive Guide To How The Supremes Could Vote On Remaining Rights Cases
More decisions from the Roberts court are afoot in coming days. To chart which rights are at risk, “ProPublica scoured judicial opinions, academic articles and public remarks by sitting justices. Some justices, like Clarence Thomas, have had decadeslong careers and lengthy paper trails. By contrast, Ketanji Brown Jackson, the newest justice, has almost no prior record. We found dozens of rights that at least one sitting justice has questioned… We include federal legislation that’s been introduced to protect a given right, as well as lawsuits active in lower courts that could become vehicles for the justices to revisit existing rights in the future.”
Area’s First Cannabis Merchant Harshes Lincoln Park
“Ald. Timmy Knudsen is taking an ‘agnostic’ view of Marigrow’s plans to turn the former Salt ‘n Pepper Diner across from Jonquil Park into a dispensary,” reports Block Club.
Florida Relocates Migrants Again, Taking From Texas To Sacramento Church
“More than a dozen migrants from South America who were recently flown on a chartered jet from New Mexico and dropped off [without warning] in Sacramento were carrying documents indicating that their transportation was arranged by the state of Florida,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “The documents appear to show that the flight was arranged through the Florida Division of Emergency Management and that it was part of the state’s program to relocate migrants, mostly from Texas, to other states.” The contractor for the program “coordinated similar flights that took dozens of Venezuelan asylum seekers from San Antonio to Martha’s Vineyard last year.” Governor Newsom’s office is investigating. “Newsom’s administration and the California Department of Justice are working together to determine who paid for the travel of the migrants and whether they were misled, given false promises or kidnapped.”
Today In The Culture, June 16, 2023: No Wherewithall | Whither Thompson Center Art? | RIP Blackie Onassis Get daily culture news sent to your inbox every weekday morning. Subscribe to Newcity Today here. ART MCA Increasing Admission "A suggested-admission increase for the Museum of Contemporary Art was approved Wednesday by the Chicago Park District. The price change takes effect this month," reports the Sun-Times. "For Chicago residents, student and senior tickets will increase from $8 to $10, and…
