Glenn Davis and Namir Smallwood in Steppenwolf’s “Topdog/Underdog”/Photo: Sandro Miller
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ART
Hyde Park Art Center Will Honor Candida Alvarez And Nora Daley At Gala
Hyde Park Art Center will host its 2026 gala across the entire building on Saturday, November 14. This year’s event honors American painter Candida Alvarez and Chicago arts leader Nora Daley. “Interactive Artist Interventions have been a highlight of past Art Center galas, where guests were engaged in inventive interactions, such as getting inked by a tattoo artist and eating cake off a wall. This year’s participating artists will be announced soon.” The gala will be “packed with hands-on art activities, commissioned performances, open studios, art auctions and DJs from Lumpen Radio.” Tickets here.
Detroit Institute of Arts’ Public Art Program Debuts Painted Barn
“A horse named Champagne is the star of a new public mural in Michigan commissioned by the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA). Wrapping around two exterior walls of the mane-tenance barn in the animal’s home in Waterford Township, ‘Champagne’s Chateau’ was commemorated on Saturday, August 22, with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and meet-and-greet with Champagne herself,” reports Hyperallergic. “One of eight murals that will be debuted across the Detroit metro area this year as part of the DIA’s Partners in Public Art Program (PIPA), the work is installed in Waterford’s Hess-Hathaway Park, a 165-acre community park comprised of trails and an ‘animal exhibit farm’ housing horses, chickens, goats, sheep, peacocks and bunnies.”
DINING & DRINKING
Chef Todd Stein Opens Juniper In Highwood
Chef Todd Stein has opened North Shore eatery Juniper, a modern American restaurant, in downtown Highwood. Juniper blends Stein’s innovative takes on classics with an expertly crafted sushi program. Stein has more than three decades of culinary experience, previously leading the kitchens of acclaimed Chicago restaurants and hospitality groups including Formento’s, the Bristol, Ballyhoo Hospitality and mk the restaurant. “I’ve watched the North Shore’s dining scene evolve for decades now, and I’m always excited to be able to bring something personal to it,” says Stein. “With Juniper, I wanted to create the kind of restaurant I always wished we had in the neighborhood, a place I’d like to hang out in.” More Juniper here.
FILM & TELEVISION
Music Box Showing 35mm Paul Thomas Anderson Concert Film In December
This winter, Janus Films and Criterion will tour Paul Thomas Anderson’s new concert film, “Cameron Winter At Carnegie Hall,” including a 35mm screening on December 4 at the Music Box. The concert film captures the sold-out solo performance of the Geese frontman in December of 2025. Paul Thomas Anderson shot the concert on 35mm and 16mm film. The prints will be made by Fotokem in Los Angeles, supervised by the filmmakers.
LIT
Young Writers Feeling Extra-Discouraged
“As more professional writers lean on ChatGPT and other AI platforms to write stories for them, young people entering the field are beginning to lose faith in the industry as a whole,” writes Fast Company. “Thanks to AI, young writers are left in limbo. They’re simultaneously struggling to figure out if they need to use AI to keep up in today’s competitive industry—or eschew it altogether in order to maintain trust. (Em dashes and all.)”
MEDIA
Meta To Pay Up To $17.1 Billion Over Social Media Addiction
Social media giant Meta “settled with forty-seven states, the District of Columbia and U.S. territories, and agreed to make major changes to its products over claims its platforms endangered children,” reports the New York Times (gift link). “The full value of Meta’s payout depends on whether other social media companies also settle with the states and agree to financial penalties and product changes. Meta will initially pay about $12 billion. It will pay an additional $5 billion if Snap, TikTok and YouTube also settle with the states and agree to financial penalties and product changes.”
Beyond the payout, “the company agreed to interrupt endless scrolling and to impose two-hour daily time limits on Instagram and Facebook. To avoid addictive use and sleep interruptions, the company will limit usage between midnight and 6am and silence notifications during school hours of 8am to 3pm. Meta will also limit features that psychologists link to negative social comparisons, such as beauty filters and a tallying of the ‘like’ button clicks. It will also strengthen age verification tools and parental controls.”
MUSIC
The Goodness Of Dolly Parton
The New York Times has prepared a special section on the passing of musician-actor-philanthropist Dolly Parton (gift link): “From her hardscrabble beginnings to glittering stardom, Ms. Parton’s life was the stuff of make-believe. With her voluptuous figure, sparkly stage costumes and blond bouffant wigs, she was likened by the writer Chet Flippo to the Big Rock Candy Mountain, the Depression-era symbol of abundance. Her songs spoke to millions, confronting privation and loss even as they radiated possibility and hope.” In Chicago, fans are “mourning the passing of Dolly Parton by laying flowers at an Edgewater mural and planning tribute nights at local bars,” reports Block Club. Chris Jones reflects on his fifty visits to Dollywood at the Tribune.
Rebecca Solnit calls her “our goddess of kindness.” “Never forget that Dolly Parton wasn’t just a singer, songwriter and philanthropist. She took stands, often in her own country way, trying to avoid what might seem like partisanship (especially since Reagan, country music has swung right and so have a lot of its audiences) and yet speaking up against racism and, in the summer of 2020, for Black Lives Matter, for queer and trans people, for women’s rights. ‘If I hadn’t been a girl, I’d have been a drag queen,’ she famously said.” Parton twice turned down the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Trump. Parton’s family requests donations to her Imagination Library, which has sent out as many as 300 million books to children since 1995.
Blues Label Alligator Records And Exceleration Music Make Moves
Alligator Records president-founder Bruce Iglauer and Exceleration Music have restructured the celebrated Chicago-based blues and roots label. “As Alligator’s day-to-day operations further integrate into Exceleration Music, Iglauer will continue in a critical creative and A&R capacity, driving new signings and furthering artist relations while working closely with the Exceleration team. Of Alligator’s eleven-person staff, seven longtime members will conclude their celebrated careers, while four will make a transition to new roles.”
Mike Reed’s Separatist Party Announces New Album
“A recording assembled over years of sessions, rehearsals, false starts and renewed approaches, ‘Sing the Color Blue’ became a document of both persistence and transformation,” label Thrill Jockey writes of the new album from Mike Reed’s Separatist Party. Of the album title, “Reed has said the phrase grew partly out of a friend’s critique of his nearly all-blue wardrobe and his longstanding attraction to Bauhaus aesthetics. He was also struck by a phrase from a documentary in which a historian described people being instructed to ‘dance the color blue.’ Reed reshaped that line into ‘Sing the Color Blue,’ a title that suggests synesthesia, instruction, abstraction and also a subtle relation to the blues and to Chicago’s musical history.” Out October 23.
Upcoming Metro Shows The Last For Cabaret Voltaire In Chicago
“Last year, Chris Watson, Stephen Mallinder and Ben ‘Benge’ Edwards (one of Mallinder’s frequent collaborators) teamed up to honor Richard H. Kirk’s legacy with Cabaret Voltaire with several British performances,” sounds Steve Krakow at the Reader. “The trio have embarked on what they’re calling the final Cabaret Voltaire tour. No new recordings will be released under the name, but a glance at their recent set lists shows that the fearless band have been digging deep into their back catalog. I was thrilled to see ‘Nag, Nag, Nag,’ the droney ‘Landslide’ (off 1981’s ‘Red Mecca’), the pulsating fourteen-and-a-half-minute ‘Taxi Music’ and the synth-pop triumph ‘Just Fascination.’ Cabaret Voltaire say farewell to Chicago with two shows at Metro.” Tickets here.
STAGE
Steppenwolf’s Fifty-First Season Opens With “TopDog” Revival
Steppenwolf Theatre Company will launch its fifty-first season with Suzan-Lori Parks’ Pulitzer Prize-winning drama “Topdog/Underdog.” The production will be directed by Tony Award winner Kenny Leon, who is returning to Steppenwolf following his hit production of “King James.” Ensemble members Glenn Davis and Namir Smallwood star in the play, which is being revived more than two decades after the company’s 2003 production. “Topdog/Underdog” will play a limited engagement September 17-November 1 in Steppenwolf’s Downstairs Theater. Tickets here.
Robert Falls Goes Back To The Storefront
“Robert Falls is returning to directing in the Chicago theater, this time not at the Goodman, his artistic home for decades, but at Redtwist Theatre, a tiny venue” with fewer than fifty seats, scoops Chris Jones at the Trib (gift link). “‘It’s my return to the Chicago storefront,’ a typically ebullient Falls said, noting that his new show will follow his restaging of the Mozart opera ‘Don Giovanni’ in June at the Lyric Opera—which has single rows of seating bigger than the entire capacity of Redtwist. The show, a world premiere by Chicago’s L.C. Bernadine, is called ‘Flying Monkeys,’ and it follows two agents in the so-called ‘troubled teen’ transportation industry, wherein teenagers are whisked away from their families, sometimes in the dead of night.” December 6-January 17.
Manual Cinema Returns To The Fine Arts Building
Manual Cinema is bringing two of its acclaimed live-action productions back to the Studebaker Theater at the Fine Arts Building, “where audiences can witness Manual Cinema’s handmade magic created before their eyes with performers, musicians and hundreds of puppets.” “Frankenstein,” their adaptation of Mary Shelley’s horror novel, returns for four performances (October 30-November 1), while “Manual Cinema’s Christmas Carol,” their unique take on the Charles Dickens classic, plays during the holiday season (December 18-27). Tickets here.
Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project Coming To Harris Theater
“Ten dance companies, a one-night performance. That’s the math that brings performers from the latest cohort of the Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project to the Harris Theater for Music and Dance,” reports the Trib. “Artists from notable local Black dance organizations such as Chicago Multicultural Dance Center, Deeply Rooted Dance Theater, The Era Footwork Collective, Forward Momentum Chicago, Joel Hall Dancers & Center, M.A.D.D. Rhythms, Move Me Soul, Muntu Dance Theatre, NAJWA Dance Corps and Praize Productions will bring their genre of repertory performance (African, traditional, contemporary modern, ballet, jazz, tap and more) to life under the theme ‘Dancing the Archive: Embodied Histories, Collective Power.'”
“Downstate” Headed To Great White Way
Bruce Norris’ “Downstate” will play a limited engagement this fall at Broadway’s Booth Theatre. The production will be directed by Joe Mantello (“Death of a Salesman”) and produced by Scott Rudin, reports the Trib (gift link). “The brilliantly written and inevitably controversial play, set in a home for sex offenders, will have a cast that includes the Chicago actors Francis Guinan and K. Todd Freeman, although this will be a separate production from the one seen in 2018 at Steppenwolf in its world premiere.”
Kennedy Center Finances Fall Off Cliff; Trump Proposes Demolition
The Kennedy Center’s “budget and meeting documents show ticket revenue and fundraising plummeted even as leaders publicly touted a financial turnaround,” reports the Washington Post (gift link). “Ticket sales had already dropped in the ten months following Trump’s takeover, but both ticket sales and donations plunged after the Trump-led board of trustees voted in December to rename the center after him and put his name on the front of the building, according to the records.” Meanwhile, an attorney for the Trump Department of Justice made the case for digging a hole instead: “Without those efforts, the Center will deteriorate further into an unsafe, decrepit structure that will be required to be taken down, with a determination to follow on what to build on the site, such as a large outdoor amphitheater overlooking the Potomac River that has been proposed, by some, for many years… structurally unsound, fundamentally unsafe, and embarrassing to the Nation’s Capital.”
ARTS & CULTURE & ETC.
High Concept Labs Names Executive Director
High Concept Labs, the Chicago-based arts service organization and artist incubator, has appointed Elise Butterfield as its executive director. “Butterfield is a curator and arts administrator working at the intersection of performance and exhibition-making. Trained as a dancer, she has spent over a decade supporting artists and organizations in the creation and development of new work.” Most recently, Butterfield was curator of exhibitions at the Chicago Cultural Center through the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. More here.
Shedd-Rescued Beluga Whale Dies
Peekachu, a twenty-three-year-old female beluga whale brought to the Shedd aquarium two weeks ago from Canada, died Tuesday, reports WBEZ. Peekachu was one of eight beluga whales recently brought to the Shedd from a closed aquatic park in Canada. “This is not the first time a Marineland beluga has died after being flown to a U.S. aquarium.”
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