David Hockney, 2nd May 2020 (2020) © David Hockney Studio/Image: Gray Chicago
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ART
David Hockney Was Eighty-Eight
David Hockney, “the English artist whose deftly designed and suavely colored paintings turned trans-Atlantic attention to figurative and narrative art beginning in the late 1950s and early 1960s after decades in which abstraction had dominated, died on Thursday at his home in London,” chronicles Holland Cotter in the New York Times (gift link). “A native of Yorkshire, Mr. Hockney lived for many years in Los Angeles, long enough to refer to himself as an ‘English Los Angeleno’ and to create images that, for many viewers, captured the sun-soaked atmosphere of that city as surely as Joan Didion did in prose. And although his art was conservative in an era that also gave rise to Conceptualism, he was progressive in at least one way: He was one of the first widely popular artists of his time to make work with undisguised gay content and one of the few to take a public stand against the censoring of homosexual imagery.”
“Britain’s most popular living painter has maintained an unfashionable commitment to optical delight,” wrote Simon Schama in a fine appreciation last year in the Financial Times. “His work is admired—loved is not too strong a word—by the millions who, worldwide, flock to see it because it presupposes an expectation of pleasure. No prior immersion in learned literature is required for admission to Hockney’s many gardens of visual delight.” The BBC’s eighteen-minute obituary is here.
Hockney’s Chicago Connections Include A Summer Show At Gray
Gray Chicago will exhibit “David Hockney: The Moon Room” from July 10-August 22, Hockney’s sixteenth showing with Gray. “Created in 2020 at his Normandy studio in France, Hockney used his iPad to make daily paintings of the surrounding landscape, working en plein air to capture the changing seasons as illuminated by moonlight.” The Art Institute’s extensive Hockney holdings are catalogued here.
The Lubeznik Center’s Summer Show Features Two Chicago Sculptors
Lubeznik Center for the Arts’ “Kindred Spirits: Margaret Wharton and Betsy Odom” opens July 3, reports WIMS Radio Valparaiso. “Curated by Whitney Bradshaw, ‘Kindred Spirits’ brings together Margaret Wharton and Betsy Odom, two celebrated Chicago sculptors separated in age by nearly forty years yet strikingly aligned in spirit. Born in Virginia and Mississippi respectively, both artists arrived in Chicago carrying sensibilities shaped by Southern histories of making, repair and resourcefulness. Across generations, they share a fascination with everyday objects.” July 3-October 25. More here.
Bringing Martin Wong’s Chinatown To Chicago
“Martin Wong: Chinatown USA” at Wrightwood 659 “is an eye-opening show by beloved New York artist Martin Wong, a self-taught artist of Chinese American descent who recorded a bombed-out Lower East Side and ‘heroized’ his Asian and Latino contemporaries who lived there,” writes ARTnews. The exhibition “also happens to include eleven never-before-exhibited paintings—a dozen if you include the never-before-seen back side of one large canvas. It’s a rare treat for lovers of the artist’s work. The first monographic Wong institutional show in almost a decade features over one hundred paintings, sculptures, drawings and photographs. It focuses on Wong’s investigations into the two Chinatowns he knew: San Francisco’s, where he was raised, and New York, where he lived from 1978 to 1994.” Read Elisa Shoenberger’s Newcity review of the exhibit.
Looking At The Obama Center Basketball Court Murals
“Dorian Sylvain of Hyde Park and Sam Kirk of Little Village say they can’t wait to see the public playing ball on Home Court,” pictures the Sun-Times. The artists “were asked to team up on a mural in the center’s basketball court,” though had to work on the art off-site. “Sylvain drew with colored pencil on tissue paper, Kirk digitized the drawings, added her own efforts and put the final work into a file that installers could blow up and reproduce to hang along the center’s Home Court gym floor. Then, they hoped for the best.”
DESIGN
Eleven Takeaways From Chicago Design Week
The recent Chicago Design Week “saw a thread of spirited innovation across materials, design and technologies,” records Dezeen. “Designers such as Yabu Pushelberg and Mark Grattan and architecture studios such as Foster + Partners and Fogarty Finger worked with contract furniture manufacturers across the world to debut collections of office seating and lounge furniture. An office chair by Foster + Partners Industrial Design made with reused fishing nets and lightweight aluminum benches designed by Naoto Fukasawa were among the objects.” The piece includes eleven highlights of the week picked by Dezeen editors.
Ross Barney Designs For Auburn Gresham’s “Main Street”
“Two large parcels of land along Auburn Gresham’s ‘Main Street’ had sat vacant for nearly ten years. Working closely with the community, Ross Barney Architects designed two residential buildings,” writes the Architect’s Newspaper. “Not only does it add much-needed housing and amenities but it demonstrates what is possible when architects work closely with the community to craft a unique vision of what a Main Street can be—not trapped in the past but open to a younger and more dynamic future.”
The State Of Transit-Oriented Development In Chicago
“Chicago has made substantial progress in encouraging more development near public transit in the South and West sides—five years after adopting a plan aimed to do just that,” reports the Sun-Times. There’s been progress “on more than half of the forty-two recommendations the city of Chicago laid out in its 2021 policy,” which includes “hiring a full-time manager focused on ETOD, allowing for more small-scale housing near transit zones and creating architectural design templates to streamline the approval process.” The city now has over one hundred transit-oriented projects in the pipeline, including “a growing number on the South and West sides, with many clustered around the Green Line and the Red Line Extension.” But “more work needs to be done, according to a May report from Elevated Chicago, a coalition of community-based organizations, artists, developers and civic leaders.”
Graham Foundation Announces Individual Grants
The Graham Foundation has announced fifty-four new grants to individuals for projects “that contribute new interdisciplinary ideas on architecture and design to publics around the world.” The Chicago-based grantees include Future Firm: Ann Lui and Craig Reschke for “The Stork’s Stair” and Norman Teague and Bernard Williams for “If Architecture Could Dance.” More on the grants here.
Nashville Entertainment Developer Has Eyes On Hard Rock
Nashville entertainment investor Josh Joseph has a contract to buy and redevelop the Hard Rock site in River North, reports CoStar. He’s “an entrepreneur who has opened entertainment venues in partnership with musicians Jon Bon Jovi and Hank Williams Jr. in Nashville.”
FILM & TELEVISION
Ninety Movies To See In Chicago Parks This Summer
“The Park District’s summer series brings free screenings to neighborhood parks through September 11,” tallies Block Club. This year marks the program’s twenty-second season. While the programming leans on family-friendly fare, there are screenings like “Casablanca” in Bartelme Park scattered throughout the schedule as well. View the full schedule here.
LIT
The Novel That Brings Chicago’s 2000s Music Scene To Life
“With ‘The Come Apart,’ Susannah Felts returns to the city where her writing career began,” reads Chicago magazine. “The novel, set in 2009-2010 Chicago, follows working musician Maggie Corbin. Her band, which she fronts with her romantic partner Matt Turkish, releases a promising debut album, receives critical acclaim from the local alt-weekly, and scores an indie label record deal. But a sophomore slump hits, streaming services alter the traditional process, and other ordeals derail Maggie’s plans. In addition to referencing music that was popular during the story’s setting, Felts’ novel shares descriptions that pull from her memories of living in Chicago, including sunrises on a frozen Lake Michigan and visits to Rainbo Club.”
MEDIA
Gawker Nemesis Peter Thiel Coming For Journalists Again?
“Prominent right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel,” who recently relocated to Argentina, “has reteamed with the legal strategist who helped him bring down Gawker to start an AI-powered appeals court for the rich and aggrieved,” writes journalist Gary Baum at the Hollywood Reporter. “Purdue Pharma heir Michael Sackler, a film financier and self-styled ethical investor, had paid a new tech startup—fittingly called Objection—to assess the legitimacy of a skeptical article I’d published about him and his business in The Hollywood Reporter five years earlier.” The Hollywood Reporter describes the effort as the work of a “Thiel-backed tribunal.”
STAGE
Why Megan Mullally Spent Twelve Years In The Embrace Of “Iceboy!”
“Although Megan Mullally has deep roots in musical comedies, the actress—best known for sitcoms such as ‘Will & Grace,’ ‘Parks and Recreation’ and ‘Party Down’—says that theatrical roles she finds truly funny are few and far between,” timelines Playbill. Now “she’s found the right fit with a new musical she’ll star in at the Goodman this summer: ‘Iceboy! The Musical, or The Completely Untrue Story of How Eugene O’Neill Came to Write “The Iceman Cometh.”‘ The world-premiere production, opening on June 20, marks Mullally’s return to the stage for the first time since 2014. ‘I’ve actually been doing workshops of [‘Iceboy’] for twelve years,’ Mullally said. ‘It’s really funny, but it’s also kind of weird, which is what I love. It’s just offbeat enough that it’s very different from anything else.'” At the Reader, Kerry Reid traces the Chicago storefront origins that led to this world-premiere production.
New Leadership At Chicago Dance History Project
Chicago Dance History Project executive director Michael McStraw has accepted the role as interim president and CEO of the Harris Theater. “With the institutional and historical knowledge of our talented staff, and the findings of the Advisory Council, the dedicated board of directors has assumed executive leadership during the transition,” says the organization. “We will continue executing our current programs, while embarking on a strategic planning process to review our first ten years of community service and assess our resources in order to inform our future work.”
ARTS & CULTURE & ETC.
The South Side, From Hyde Park Boulevard To The Midway Plaisance
“The Obama Presidential Center, opening on June 19, is poised to attract visitors to an often-overlooked area. Here’s what you’ll find in Hyde Park and beyond,” maps the New York Times (gift link) in a guide to the South Side focused almost entirely on one neighborhood.
History Rhymes: Recalling The Historical Objections To Jackson Park’s Creation
At the Sun-Times, Neil Steinberg recalls Frederick Law Olmsted’s efforts and local battles in realizing Jackson Park, considering how they mirror the construction of the Obama Presidential Center: “The parkland on which the center sits also had to overcome many hurdles before coming into existence. From the start, it sparked debate and litigation. Even the park’s name was once subject to ‘universal’ outcry.”
Pokémon Go’s Dark Military Secret
“A decade after the global craze for Pokémon Go peaked, an AI company has been using billions of real-world images captured by millions of players to develop navigation technologies for delivery robots and possibly military drones,” reports Ars Technica. “That represents an intriguing but potentially discomfiting legacy for an augmented reality mobile game that has incentivized gamers to capture short smartphone videos of physical neighborhoods and landmarks. The AI company, Niantic Spatial, was spun out of Pokémon Go game developer Niantic in May 2025, after Niantic separately sold its licensed games such as Pokémon Go to the Saudi-backed video game publisher Scopely. But before that deal, Niantic publicly announced plans to use scans from millions of Pokémon Go players along with data captured by users of the company’s Scaniverse app to train and develop a ‘large geospatial model’—a 3D model of the physical world trained on the geolocated images provided by app users scanning real-world locations.”
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