Chicago Avenue, November 21, 2024/Photo: Ray Pride
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ART
Toledo Museum Of Art Sets Reinstallation Plans
The Toledo Museum of Art has announced the hire of “three design partners for the comprehensive reinstallation of its galleries it first announced in late 2023—Michael Maltzan Architecture, Once-Future Office and Studio Zewde,” reports The Blade. The reinstallation will launch next year and be completed in 2027 and “will involve every space on the museum’s vast campus, including the Edward B. Green Building, the SANAA Glass Pavilion, and the Georgia and David K. Welles Sculpture Garden.”
Osage Nation Takes Partial Ownership of Sugarloaf Mound
“The Osage Nation and the arts organization Counterpublic announced that ownership of part of the historic Sugarloaf Mound—the last remaining Native American earthwork in the city of St. Louis—will be transferred to the Osage Nation,” reports The Art Newspaper. The land transfer is of “the second of three tiers of the mound, which had… been privately owned.” Also, “a first-of-its-kind resolution made by the St. Louis Board of Aldermen and the mayor’s office acknowledges the tribal sovereignty of the Osage Nation and their ancestral rights to this sacred site. This work is part of broader ‘Land Back’ initiatives aimed at returning sacred lands to Indigenous stewardship.”
DESIGN
GSA Calls For Proposals For State Street’s Century And Consumers Buildings
Developers are asked to submit proposals for the Century and Consumers Buildings and adjacent properties on State Street by January 31, 2025. The materials include security criteria and potential incentives. The documents are here.
King Living Opens Showroom
Australian furniture designer-manufacturer-retailer King Living, known for its modular design, is opening its second U.S. showroom in Lincoln Park, at 909 West North Avenue within the interior design district. The showroom opens at the end of November, followed by a launch event in early 2025. The 9,990 square-foot showroom “is designed to create an immersive journey for customers, showcase the King Difference via every touchpoint, and spark creativity within the district’s collaborative interior design and home maker community. The Lincoln Park Chicago showroom will allow customers to experience firsthand the King Living collection of sofas, living, dining, outdoor, and bedroom furniture, as well as rugs and lighting.” More King here.
Oak Park Village Hall Remodel And Police Station To Be Designed By Johnson Lasky Kindelin
Oak Park trustees have directed village staff to negotiate an agreement with Johnson Lasky Kindelin Architects, Inc. to produce a schematic design for a Village Hall remodel and new police station on the existing site, reports Wednesday Journal. The village “plans to renovate the historic building and build a new police facility rather than redeveloping the entire site. So far, the work with architectural firms has been conceptual.”
Plan For South Side Quantum Computing Campus Advances
“The Plan Commission approved the project to transform the former South Works steel mill into a multibillion-dollar quantum park. Some neighbors want the developer to sign a community benefits agreement,” reports Block Club. “The Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park, anchored by Silicon Valley tech startup PsiQuantum, is planned for the former U.S. Steel South Works site in South Chicago.”
Apartment Conversion Approved For Historic 65 East Wacker
“The Chicago Plan Commission has approved the residential redevelopment of the historical office building at 65 East Wacker Place,” reports Chicago YIMBY. “Located next to the Carbide & Carbon building near the Chicago River, the project was initially revealed this summer as developer Mavrek Development began the approval process… Built in 1928, the twenty-four-story and 295-foot-tall high-rise was originally known as the Millinery Mart Building, becoming home to a majority of the city’s best hat makers. Since then it has pivoted into an office building with longterm tenant Morton’s The Steakhouse on the ground floor.”
Craig Newmark Earmarks $100 Million Against Cyberthreats To Infrastructure
Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, reports Yahoo, “through Craig Newmark Philanthropies, has earmarked $100 million to help defend the country’s critical infrastructure from things like cyber attacks. The latest giving comes alongside ongoing contributions to trusted journalism platforms and veterans.”
DINING & DRINKING
Former Heartland Café Site Houses Athena Board Game Café
“After outgrowing its space on Howard Street, Athena Board Game Café is scheduled to reopen Black Friday. Patrons can shop for games, or bring their own,” reports Block Club. “Gonzalez is reopening Athena at 1412 W. Lunt Ave., at the site of the former Heartland Café, which closed in 2018. The restaurant building that previously occupied the corner of Lunt and Glenwood avenues was demolished in 2019 to make way for an apartment building.”
Ty Fujimura And Brian Paul Launch Restaurant Resource Site, Cover
A Chicago restaurant veteran is launching Cover, a subscription-based platform to help restaurants with labor and other subjects. “The founders are Ty Fujimura and Brian Paul. Fujimura has been divesting from the restaurant industry in recent months, closing lauded sushi restaurant Arami and Michelin-starred Entente, while selling SmallBar in Logan Square. He continues to co-own Lilac Tiger in Wicker Park. Paul’s background is in tech, having worked for Cisco Systems, Whirlpool, and SAP,” Eater reports. “Membership will allow users to browse and put up full-time, part-time and gig job posts; share recipes, and connect restaurant owners with experienced chef consultants to eliminate routine challenges that organizers say have plagued the industry.
“If restaurants want to find staff to hold a special holiday brunch, Cover should help them. If workers are traveling for an extended period and want to pick extra shifts or learn a new skill—like butchering or cooking fish—Cover should help them. Workers and operators will have separate subscription options. Pricing wasn’t disclosed.”
The Post-Ozempic Junk Food Landscape
“As revolutionary new weight-loss drugs turn consumers off ultraprocessed foods, the industry is on the hunt for new products,” reports the New York Times (gift link). “Ozempic users… aren’t just eating less. They’re eating differently. GLP-1 drugs seem not only to shrink appetite but to rewrite people’s desires. They attack what Amy Bentley, a food historian and professor at New York University, calls the industrial palate: the set of preferences created by our acclimatization, often starting with baby food, to the tastes and textures of artificial flavors and preservatives.”
FILM & TELEVISION
Columbia Mentor And DoP Adam Jones Passes
“Beloved faculty filmmaker Adam Jones, friend of students and alumni of Columbia College, passed away” in mid-November, the department of Columbia Cinema and TV posts on Instagram. From Cody Jacobs, camera and electrical department: “More than anything I appreciated how sincere Adam was and how much he cared not just about his students but about the work itself.” Hundreds of friends and colleagues remember Adam Jones on Instagram here. “He was genuinely one of the funniest and kindest professors I ever got to work with,” posts Guillermo Frausto. “I’ll never forget how much he supported me during my practicum course it meant so much. He had this way of making everyone feel comfortable and seen, and his sense of humor always made the tough moments easier.”
Posts Lorin Ruttenberg, “Knowing Adam Jones changed my life. We made a 35mm twenty-eight minute film together in the mid-nineties, literally for pennies. I didn’t have directing experience, but I had moxie. We trusted each other deeply and he figured he could teach—which he did. We basically cut open our bodies and gave our blood and guts to complete that film. Making that film defined my life.”
Wayfarer Studios To Release Sports Drama
Wayfarer Studios, the independent studio behind the $350 million-grossing “It Ends with Us,” has set a March 2025 nationwide theatrical release for Rod Lurie’s sports drama “The Senior,” starring Michael Chiklis, through Allen Media Group’s Freestyle Releasing. Wayfarer Studios is a film and TV studio founded in 2019 by Paylocity founder Steve Sarowitz [Newcity Film 50] and Justin Baldoni. It is the sister company to Wayfarer Theaters, which operates in downtown Highland Park. More Wayfarer here.
LIT
Passages Wine And Books Opens In West Town
Passages Wine and Books has opened on Chicago Avenue and will stock fiction, romance, mystery and other genres. “Owner Amanda Sadowski is finalizing licensing with the city to sell wine and other beverages, plus small bites,” charts Block Club. Passages Book Store is “the passion project of owner Amanda Sadowski, a former social worker who fostered a love for literary fiction, romance and other genres—as well as wine—as a way to unwind from her demanding career.”
National Book Ban Legislation Likely
“Congressional Republicans have shown increased interest in the possibility [of national book ban legislation], with House members recently hosting a hearing on the topic and Project 2025 laying out how a national ban could work,” reports WGN-TV.
A Look At Chris Ware’s Third Novelty Notebook And Works-In-Progress
Chris Ware’s “visual language is sublime complexity,” writes Steven Heller at Print. “Ware is one of the most beloved comics artists of our time, and his recently published ‘Acme Novelty Datebook Volume Three,’ spanning the years 2002-2023, is a must-have for fans like me who are mesmerized by how he does what he does. Drawn from the sketchbooks of the creator of ‘Jimmy Corrigan,’ ‘Building Stories’ and ‘Rusty Brown,’ ‘Acme’ offers a rare chance to get to know the artist behind such an incredible body of work.”
Along with generous samples of the work, Heller and Ware gab: “Even though Frank Lloyd Wright was one of America’s biggest jerks—an arrogant philanderer who designed a logo for himself and buried his initials in the name of one of his best-known designs (Falling Water)—he was also an indisputable genius who regularly reinvented himself and so avoided staleness and sterility,” says Ware. “I think about his relentless ‘doing the opposite of what he’d done before’ and I worry I don’t have the fortitude, intellect or self-confidence to follow his example—but I try. I doodled a little strip about this in this last datebook, including Scott Joplin and Beethoven in the list of artists who regularly re-thought themselves up to their final moments. Theirs is a tough model to follow.”
What’s next? “Well, aside from simply trying to get better, I’m working on three graphic novels, as well as the occasional New Yorker cover, and continue to make sculptures and paintings; also, I’m helping to design the exhibitions for a traveling retrospective of my stuff that began in the Pompidou in 2022 and went through other European venues, which will end in Europe next year at the Centre de Cultura Contemporània in Barcelona and then, finally, at the Billy Ireland Museum in Columbus, Ohio, in 2026.” Much more at the link here.
MEDIA
Trump Orders Senate Republicans To “Kill” Bill To Shield Journalists
Trump has “instructed congressional Republicans to block the passage of a bipartisan federal shield bill intended to strengthen the ability of reporters to protect confidential sources, dealing a potentially fatal political blow to the measure—even though the Republican-controlled House had already passed it unanimously,” reports the New York Times. The PRESS Act “would codify protections against federal investigators seizing reporters’ records. It is now less likely the legislation will clear the Senate before the current session ends.”
STAGE
It’s Thirty Years And SPLAT! For Blue Man Group
“Blue Man Group, the dialogue-free, three-blue-faced-persons show combining music, mime, art and audience participation—not to mention a whole lotta Cap’n Crunch cereal, PVC piping and marshmallows—is ending its historic run in Chicago,” reports the Sun-Times. “The show made its home exclusively at the Briar Street theater for the duration of its residency… The company will be remounting a residency in Orlando in April with the opening of a new Blue Man Group production in a new, state-of-the-art theater.”
ARTS & CULTURE & ETC.
How Incoming Administration Could Hack Your Phone
“Western democracies have been roiled by controversies in which spyware has been used, apparently by defense and intelligence agencies, to target opposition politicians, journalists and apolitical civilians caught up in Orwellian surveillance dragnets,” reports Ronan Farrow at the New Yorker. “Privacy advocates have been in a state of high alarm about the colliding political and technological trend lines. ‘It’s just so evident—the impending disaster,’ Emily Tucker, the executive director at the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law, told me. ‘You may believe yourself not to be in one of the vulnerable categories, but you won’t know if you’ve ended up on a list for some reason or your loved ones have. Every single person should be worried.'” (Farrow’s “Surveilled,” a documentary on the same reporting, is on HBO. Details here.)
Laid-Off Howard Brown Workers To Be Paid $1.3 Million
Healthcare nonprofit Howard Brown “agreed to pay $1.3 million to settle charges that it violated federal labor law,” reports Bloomberg Law. “Howard Brown Health will pay the sum to settle a complaint from the National Labor Board’s Region 13 office, alleging the company threatened and surveilled workers, refused to bargain in good faith, and unlawfully laid off fifty-five workers… The company is to pay $1 million in back wages, $48,000 in retirement fund reimbursements, and $60,000 in other compensation for the laid-off employees.”
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