Newcity Chicago November 2021

—THE GREEN MILL safe spaces, this is the new vanguard. vide artistic education to youths, with THE PERSONAL BEST OF CHICAGO Throughout the pandemic and since they’ve now-famous outcomes including the Existing outside the usual parameters for provided the most essential support ser- Gang-Proof Suit project, Public School how we measure time and space, the vices to many of our city’s most vulnerable. and Urbs in Horto, among hundreds of Green Mill is also an island for pets and similar projects, establishing social settle- musicians, for the kind of musicality and —STOCKYARD ment e orts modeled on the works of Jane sense of community you don’t find any- INSTITUTE Hull, building thousands of relationships where else. It’s also the only place I’ve along the way to support lived practices. been o ered free shots for delivering “that I’d like to give something of a micro-critical magazine.” Maybe it’s nostalgia, or the rap- WHEN I THINK OF the best of Chicago, in port between two fading institutions, one word here: I think there has always been reflection on this assignment, I thought Al Capone’s former hangout, the other a frequently of Duignan, and so he should human being darting in from noonday traf- something salutary that I appreciate in the probably get the last word in this little list. fic to drop a bundle. Either way, I know “Build relationships first,” he advises in an where to go for my afternoon pick-me-up. work of the Stockyard Institute in its con- interview for the catalog. “For me this is the key and the foundation on which to —UNABRIDGED BOOKSTORE ception, and the social practice lineages it venture forward in any collaborative ven- ture. I hope we think about how we treat The only place in the city where I can find branches from. Open now at the DePaul one another and how we can better share Rain Taxi, a national review of books which resources. It is what I have seen in the art- I also write for and read religiously, the Un- Museum through February , , the ists and teachers and gra iti writers, and abridged Bookstore on Broadway in the growers, poets and designers, children, Northalsted neighborhood (formerly show shines a light on the long-running architects, and cultural workers I have known as Boy’s Town) supports the writing worked alongside.” and reading community as well as selling project of Jim Duignan and Rachel Harper. books. They also have a repository of great Wise words. So should we all aspire to LGBTQIA+ titles and a track record of over Technically a part of DePaul University, such fertile social circles as those we have forty years as a storefront. watered the seeds of ourselves. the Institute, according to curator Julie Ro- driguez Widholm’s catalog essays (her last curatorial project before taking over the UC Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive), is a “roaming, nebulous concep- tual space based on a clear set of princi- NOVEMBER 2021 Newcity ples rather than a well-defined space.” That has meant working in communities to organize pedagogical programming to pro- —57TH STREET BOOKS / POWELL’S BOOKS / MYOPIC BOOKS / THE BOOK CELLAR / WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST The University of Chicago and Hyde 51 Park neighborhood’s community book- stores, Wicker Park’s Myopic, Lincoln Square’s The Book Cellar and Ander- sonville’s Women and Children First all win this title equally; they’ve all been largely out of commission o and on throughout the pandemic drop-in wise, but there’s nothing like timing your route to catch a reading by just about anyone in the observable universe at any of these places. Really, I should just list all bookstores. —BRAVE SPACE ALLIANCE This spot isn’t on my drop list, but they should be and I’m including them any- way. If you’re a Chicagoan and haven’t heard about this important “Black-led, trans-led LGBTQ+ Center located on the South Side,“ you haven’t been reading the news about the incredible work they’re doing, from food pantries to mu- tual aid, to trans community gathering

THE PERSONAL BEST OF CHICAGO KEKELI RIGHT Green Mill Cocktail Lounge. Photo: Kenneth C. Zirkel Heron is responsible for one of the most SUMAH flipped and repeated lines in music: “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised”—a sin- gle phrase taken from his songs of the same name. I discovered “I’m New Here” at an excit- ing time in my life. I had just arrived as a new student at the School of the Art Insti- tute of Chicago (SAIC) in the summer of tions for a particular love interest. Al- , I was learning to explore the city of though I felt a little disappointed with the Chicago along with my own interests and stagnant and formulaic material on “Cer- taste in music. I fueled this exploration tified Lover Boy,” it’s songs like this that through an online radio station called make me wish Drake would simply take HEADKICK that I ran with my friend—Me- the leap and make a whole album or play- lissa Jean Birckhead—on SAIC’s Free Ra- list in the vibe of “Fountains”—because it’s dio platform. We played “dance music,” a WHOLE VIBE. AN ABRIDGED PLAYLIST which gave us permission to play anything With songs like “One Dance,” “Hotline FOR CHICAGO we wanted to and still call it a cohesive Bling” and now “Fountains” Drake would show. We had a lot of fun playing grooves be doing the Continent (i.e. Africa), the 2021 MARKS my twelfth year in Chicago, that were wild, experimental and slapped! Diaspora (i.e. African Diaspora) and the a city I have come to love and call my Although I love the original album, “I’m Caribbean a huge favor if he brought his own. The pandemic forced a reckoning on New Here” ( ), as well as Jamie XX’s voice and cadence to the Afro-inflected all of us—for me, that became a reflection interpretation, “We’re New Here” ( ) side of the musical landscape. Newcity NOVEMBER 2021 on the myriad ways the city has shaped I wanted to start this playlist with Chica- With Nigerian singer and rising star me as a person. go-based drummer, musician and produc- Temilade Openiyi, widely known as My contribution to this year’s Best of er Makaya McCraven’s vision of the mate- Tems, pining on this track, I’m immediate- Chicago is framed through a short play- rial in “We’re New Again” ( ). ly transported to memories of my home list—a musical journey through the years What I love about McCraven’s version country, Ghana. and highlights of my life in this city, along is how he contextualizes “I’m New Here” My first year as an undergraduate in with the places and institutions that have within jazz and blues, which is a context of Chicago was di icult. Everything was new, played an outsized role in it. Black music—and of dance music, the kind and I felt like a stranger. Going through cul- There is no prescribed way to enjoy this of dance music Scott-Heron would have ture shock, I missed home a lot, especially piece: you can listen to the playlist first, loved and felt comfortable in. It is an inter- my mom’s Ghanaian cooking. To remedy listen as you read or read before enjoying pretation rooted in history and in the that, Amy Smethurst—a Senior RA at my 52 the tunes. The only thing I will ask of you ongoing dynamic developments of jazz. dorm—encouraged and supported me in is to make sure that the playback setting Founded in , SAIC is an institution organizing my first on-campus event. on your Spotify or Apple Music has a with an impressive history, and an impres- Since I couldn’t go home, I brought a crossfade of at least five seconds to allow sive appetite for dynamism and experi- little bit of home to Chicago by bringing for a smooth transition between songs in mentation. In more ways than one, this people together to learn about and cele- the playlist. school dominated my Chicago experience, brate Ghanaian independence from British Thank you for listening and reading! shaping me into the multidisciplinary artist colonial rule. Together, Amy and I were and designer I am today. It’s where I met able to locate Grace African, a small fam- many lifelong friends, as well as my life ily-owned Ghanaian restaurant that 1. partner, Stephanie Lin-Sumah. catered my event, which ended up being “I’M NEW HERE” SCHOOL OF TH E A RT INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO, a huge success! BY GIL SCOTT-HERON MACLEAN CENTER, 112 S. MICHIGAN Since then, I’ve made many trips to & MAKAYA MCCRAVEN FREE R ADIO SAIC, FREER ADIOSAIC.ORG Grace African, introducing many a friend (“WE’RE NEW AGAIN— to the joys of jollof rice, fufu and light soup, A REIMAGINING” plantains and beans, and my personal BY MAKAYA MCCRAVEN, 2020) 2. favorite: banku and okro soup. “FOUNTAINS” The food is really good, but the estab- I was introduced to the work of Gil BY DRAKE FEATURING TEMS lishment has seen better days. Unfortu- Scott-Heron through his final album, “I’m (“CERTIFIED LOVER BOY,” 2021) nately the space has lost some of its shine New Here,” which was released by XL and coziness over the years. Nevertheless, Recordings in . I was moved by the “Fountains” is a beautiful piano-based if you’re craving authentic Ghanaian food album and in my exploration of his work R&B inflected Afrobeat song, where Drake and don’t want to make it yourself, this is came to realize and deeply appreciate his and Tems sing about their intense emo- the spot to go to. contribution and influence as a writer, a GRACE AFRICAN, poet and voice of protest across Black 4 4 0 9 N. B R O A D W AY, music and culture. Born in Chicago, Scott- G R A C E A F R I C A N R E STA U R A N T.C O M

THE PERSONAL BEST OF CHICAGO 3. Hyde Park Records is where I bought love, along with the tenderness present NOVEMBER 2021 Newcity “4FOURTH DIMENSION” my first vinyl record (Sade—”Promise,” in companionship and friendship. The BY JIMMY EDGAR 1985) and my first pair of turntables, a themes are deep and personal, as the 53 (“DREAMZ COME TRUE,” 2016) beaten-up set of Technics 1200 MK2s. album explores and embraces self-actual- Classic. Gramaphone Records helped ization and growth. Chicago reintroduced me to the wide and indulge my new love for the craft of under- wonderful world of electronic music, par- ground electronic dance music. And In the months of lockdown, like many of ticularly the niches that championed through my endeavors on Free Radio SAIC, us, I did a lot of thinking and reflecting. experimental, glitchy, noisy and esoteric coupled with a few DJ gigs here and there, Amidst the fear and anger, there was interpretations of familiar dance, funk, R&B, I developed a deep love for music and the space—a momentary respite—to ask the techno, house and hip-hop tropes. Jimmy art of DJing. bigger and driving questions of life, work Edgar makes music that is interesting, kind and relationships. Despite all that thought, of weird and off-kilter, albeit polished with HYDE PARK RECORDS I don’t have any concrete answers, just a glossy robotic sheen. 1 3 7 7 E. 5 3 R D ST, (7 7 3)2 2 8-6 5 8 8 feelings and the desire to nurture the meaningful relationships closest to me, Although born in Accra, Ghana, I grew GRAMAPHONE RECORDS whether they’re physically distant and in up in Vienna, Austria casually listening to 2843 N. CLARK, (773)472-3683 another country or around the corner in pop radio, trance, house and hard techno. my neighborhood. It wasn’t the music I chose, it was simply 4. another element in my environment. Con- “SAILOR’S Find this wonderful album on vinyl at sequently, when I first learned about the SUPERSTITION” Beverly Phono Mart—a cool new record Black and queer histories of house music BY SERPENTWITHFEET store opened by my friends Mallory in Chicago and techno music in Detroit, (“DEACON,” 2021) McClaire and Chantala Kommanivah. I was thoroughly blown away. I started Black and AAPI-owned, the space is warm scouring the internet for more and it wasn’t Josiah Wise, the artist behind the ser- and inviting, and features art by local art- long until I continued digging for music in pentwithfeet moniker croons beautifully ists alongside occasional DJ performances. record stores and buying vinyl records. and longingly on “Sailor’s Superstition,” Trust me, when I say that their record At the time and even to this day, some a serene blend of ecclesiastical R&B and selection is straight fire. Stop by and let independent artists only released their moody gospel. On “DEACON,” serpent- them know I sent you! music on vinyl. withfeet explores the world of Black gay B E V E R LY P H O N O M A RT, 1808 W.103RD IG: @BEVERLY_PHONO_MART

THE PERSONAL BEST OF CHICAGO 5. Music like this fueled feverish dreams “WURLITZER” and late-night working sessions, when I BY LEIFUR JAMES needed to buckle down and focus, even as (“WURLITZER,” 2019) every aspect of reality distorted around me. tage and talents after being exposed to This noisy and harsh drive felt like an an- artists like Tomeka Reid, Douglas R. Ewart This brooding piece by Leifur James starts them for the cloud of riots, violence, sorrow and Mikel Patrick Avery. out with light piano flourishes and chords and depression that punctuated the rising This luscious jazzy interlude by Zu- only to take a dark and deep turn as a COVID death toll, the deluge of conspiracy rich-based duo Okvsho is a sweet, soft synth lead pulses menacingly in the back- and misinformation surrounding the virus, and quiet counterpoint to Paula Temple’s ground. The anxiety and noise builds and the George Floyd protests, the January 6th “Raging Earth.” It’s the quiet after the storm. builds and builds, breaking momentarily at Insurrection and the Atlanta shootings. When I listen to this short piece, I’m trans- two-minutes-and-fifty seconds before div- This is not music for the faint of heart. ported back to Hyde Park and the days ing into a dark and dulled 4-on-the-4 beat In the past, I would dance to bangers I regularly attended the Hyde Park Jazz right after the three minute mark. like this at Smartbar—Chicago’s legendary Festival. Held over two days in September “Wurlitzer” is an aural metaphor for the independent nightclub for cutting-edge at the Midway Plaisance and other loca- days and moments leading up to pandem- music and the DJs that play it. All the tions in the neighborhood, the festival is ic hysteria: when people were hoarding greats have played here, including Frankie free to audience members, while providing toilet paper and drinking Hydroxychloro- Knuckles, Derrick Carter and The Blessed an amazing platform dedicated to the sup- quine in an effort to stave off disease. This Madonna. But like so many other sites of port, development and celebration of jazz was also met with increased aggression gathering, Smartbar had to close for most talent, particularly on the South Side. toward Asians and Asian Americans, par- of the pandemic; DJs could only connect In featuring music from Okvsho—two ticularly anyone who looked of East Asian with their audiences through online Hungarian brothers in Switzerland, con- descent. Chinatown became eerily quiet streaming platforms and technologies. We tributing to the development of jazz—I am Newcity NOVEMBER 2021 as people falsely feared and stigmatized were left to brood in isolation. reminded of the reach and inclusivity, not Chinese people as the source of the virus. Yet Smartbar remained a site of intima- only of Black music, but also of Chicago. Despite these dark and menacing times, cy and social liberation, even if only in con- After all, having spent most of my life my partner Stephanie and I still frequented ceptual terms. As a space that could con- outside of the United States, I know that one of our favorite restaurants in China- tain the mess of politics and difference, I’m new here. Yet I, too, have been em- town: Qing Xiang Yuan. QXY Dumplings even if only temporarily, I experienced braced, and my contributions to various are known for their delicious handmade Smartbar as a heterotopia—the Foucauld- forms of discourse have been appreciated soup dumplings. I’ve probably eaten there ian idea that describes certain spaces as and noted. And for that, I am thankful. over thirty times and can confidently say “other”: disturbing, intense, contradictory, THE GREEN MILL, that no other place makes better dump- transforming. This is a testament to the 4 8 0 2 N. B R O A D W AY, (7 7 3)878-5 5 5 2 lings in Chicago. At this point, it’s become power of dance and dance music. KINGSTON MINES, 54 comfort food for me. Whether it was Perhaps now, “Raging Earth” resonates 2548 N. HALSTED, (773)477-4647 through their online delivery service, pick- more as a cautious return to the normalcy HYDE PARK JAZZ FESTIVAL, up or in-person dining, we supported our of the dance floor, rather than as a siren H Y D E PA R K J A Z Z F E S T I VA L.O R G friends at QXY as a gesture of solidarity for the end times. Nevertheless, I still hear and shared humanity. And in turn, the in it, the distorted soundtrack for a pan- warmth of their service, the hospitality of demic apocalypse, even as those harsh their space and the quality of their food days off-gas into the atmosphere of our 8. became an ongoing reminder of the pow- collective past, as we draw nearer to the “ARITHMETIC” er of human connection. end—of 2021. BY PORTER RAY, STAS THEE QXY DUMPLINGS, 2002 S. WENTWORTH, SMARTBAR, 3730 N. CLARK, (773)549-4140 BOSS, THEESATISFACTION (312)799-1118, @Q X Y DUMPLINGS AND INFINITE (“WATERCOLOR,” 2017) 7. 6. “LUIS LEADS TO THE GALAXY” After the embrace I was able to find a “RAGING EARTH” BY OKVSHO retreat, to study and meditate. Retreat at BY PAULA TEMPLE (“KAMALA’S DANZ,” 2020) Currency Exchange Cafe was one such (“EDGE OF EVERYTHING,” 2019) place for productive thinking, where I Chicago is a major center for music in the found community in the solitude of reflec- This track sounds like what it looks like— Midwest, where distinctive forms of blues, tion. The introspective Afro-surrealist hip- a true and hard techno banger for the pan- house and jazz developed. Long before the hop of “Arithmetic” with its lyrics of divine demic and climate-change apocalypse in days of COVID-19, I enjoyed exploring his- mathematics and astral imagination trans- our future. The kick drums are hard, deep toric venues like The Green Mill and Kings- ports me back to sights of restored wood, and gloomy. Accompanied by menacing ton Mines. But it was during the years I the smell of coffee in the air, and the low risers and searching pads, “Raging Earth” lived in Hyde Park and frequented the hum of passing traffic on Garfield Boule- draws a dark and cinematic landscape fit Hyde Park Jazz Festival, that I came to vard weaving in and out of music playing for our reality. greatly appreciate the city’s musical heri- from the overhead PA system.

Sept. 22 - Dec. 5, 2021 NEA BIG READ Thinking about History RAPID with The Block’s Collection RESPONSE GWENDOLYN BROOKS YOUTH POETRY AWARDS MUSEUM ON MAIN STREET ENVISIONING JUSTICE PUBLIC HUMANITIES AWARDS THE ODYSSEY PROJECT COMMUNITY BE PART OF GRANTS THE HUMANITIES IN ILLINOIS TODAY FREE AND OPEN TO ALL ilhumanities.org blockmuseum.northwestern.edu Image: Victor Diop, Juan de Pareja, 2014, courtesy of the artist and MAGNIN-A, Paris

THE PERSONAL BEST OF CHICAGO Retreat at Currency Exchange Cafe— Since I couldn’t go home, I brought a little a coffee bar and creative space in the bit of home to Chicago by bringing people South Side of Chicago—was conceived together to learn about and celebrate and renovated by visionary artist Theaster Ghanaian independence from British colonial Gates in order to provide a platform for rule. Together, Amy and I were able to creatives in food, art, music and more. Cur- rently programmed by Baredu Ahmed, an locate Grace African, a small family-owned electronic musician and flutist, the Cafe has Ghanaian restaurant that catered my event, become a productive site for imagining what a post-pandemic future can look like. which ended up being a huge success! In addition to running operations and programs at the cafe, Ahmed makes sure music programming is on point through live music events, DJ performances and of course—a killer playlist. Come in the mornings for coffee or turn up on a Thursday night for happy hour, either way, you won’t be disappointed. RETREAT AT CURRENCY EXCHANGE CAFE, 305 E. GARFIELD, to the studio. He immediately agreed, ask- accompanies tragedy, “Dear Lord, make it @RETRE ATCURRENCYEXCH A NGECA FE ing when, to which she responded “to- alright / Nothing else ever feels right,” night.” “Better Than I Imagined” is the while reminding us of how devastating Newcity NOVEMBER 2021 9. result of that session. these last two years have been, as the “BETTER THAN I IMAGINED With the addition of acclaimed rapper, global COVID-19 death toll approaches five million. This makes “24” not only a trib- bassist and singer-songwriter Meshell (KAYTRANDA REMIX)” Ndegeocello, “Better Than I Imagined” is ute, but also a dirge for all the lives lost. BY ROBERT GLASPER set to appear on Glasper’s hotly anticipat- Most of us bore witness to this from the FEATURING H.E.R. ed “Black Radio 3” record, due out in 2021. confines or comfort of our homes, making & MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO This remix by KAYTRANADA transforms the home a charged and multivalent site. (“BETTER THAN the original piano-driven ballad into a soul- The home became a shelter, an office, a I IMAGINED,” 2020) ful and sultry, hard-grooving track daycare, a classroom, a studio, a prison, and RICH A RD H. DRIEH AUS MUSEUM, a hospice. In becoming everything, our During my time of retreat, of study and of 40 E. ERIE, (312)482-8933 homes blurred the roles and layers of our introspection, I found gratitude. Trust a VOLUME GA LLERY, 1709 W. CHICAGO, identities as: homemaker, worker, parent, 56 pandemic to help you reevaluate life and 2ND FLOOR, (312)666-7954 teacher, care provider, and everything else its priorities. I became grateful for the op- under the sun. With little space for transi- portunities I’ve had over the years to con- tion, the sudden collapse of distinction and tribute to the culture of this city: from the 10. separation between identities created a tear exhibitions I curated and the artist fellows “24” in the fabric of our mental and social health. I championed at the Richard H. Driehaus BY KANYE WEST Having gone through many such tears Museum, to the career opportunities I (“DONDA,” 2021) of his own, including but not limited to the helped foster for artists and designers at death of his mother, the death of his friend Volume Gallery, to co-editing a special is- “24” by Chicago’s very own Kanye West is Kobe Bryant, and a divorce from his sue of Newcity with my friend F. Philip a gospel tribute to the late basketball play- spouse Kim Kardashian, Kanye reminds Barash. For all this I’m grateful, even as I er Kobe Bryant, who tragically passed us “we gon’ be okay, we gonna be okay… look toward the horizon for more. away in a helicopter crash in Calabasas, God’s not finished, we gonna be okay.” It’s “Better Than I Imagined” by Robert California on January 26, 2020—a crash Released in 2015, Kendrick Lamar’s Glasper that seems to capture the seren- that also killed all nine members on board “Alright” became not only a rallying cry for dipity that comes with creative and cultur- the aircraft, including his thirteen-year old social justice protesters and activists, al work. The story goes that while at the daughter Gianna. but also a kind of comfort for people of New York premiere for “The Photograph” A collaboration with the Sunday Service color and other oppressed communities. (2020)—the Stella Meghie movie featuring Choir, this Gospel song is both lamentation Perhaps, “24”’s hopeful and spiritual mes- Issa Rae and LaKeith Stanfield—H.E.R. and celebration, employing the familiar sage about safety, security, and most turned to Glasper and suggested they go and affective tropes of Black spirituals: dra- importantly, love will become a comfort to matic church organ chord progressions, our hurting yet hopeful communities, as and powerful choral passages and chants. we run the course of 2021. Opening up the song with a chant: “Dear God, make it alright / Only You can HOME make it alright” the Sunday Service Choir give language to the hope and pain that WHEREVER THAT IS FOR YOU.

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THE PERSONAL BEST OF CHICAGO SHARON Necessary and sufficient HOYER infrastructure, as they say in math, creates the conditions for a thing to thrive, be it commerce, children, or the arts. It’s a thing we don’t think about until it’s broken or absent, mostly invisible when it’s working as it should. BEST OF CHICAGO DANCE 2021: IN PRAISE OF INFRASTRUCTURE As I reflected on the best of Chicago dance in a year of shuttered venues and artists grappling with life in a pandemic, I kept Newcity NOVEMBER 2021 coming back to infrastructure. Necessary and su icient infrastructure, as they say in math, creates the conditions for a thing to thrive, be it commerce, children, or the arts. concentrated in the Loop and North Side. Ginger Farley just announced she’s step- It’s a thing we don’t think about until it’s This is happily beginning to change; exam- ping down at the end of this year, leaving broken or absent, mostly invisible when ples are the opening of the Green Line Per- the organization in its strongest shape to it’s working as it should. In some ways, the forming Arts Center in and Red Clay date, if with giant shoes to fill. forced halt of the last twenty months gave Dance Academy this year. Chicago’s flour- A new sustaining financial source for our nation the opportunity to stop and take ishing dance scene is part “if you build it, historically sidelined companies was an- stock of things we don’t tend to notice they will come” and part “no one has built nounced by the Joyce Foundation and the when running around. The result was a here, so we’ll build it ourselves.” Logan Center for the Arts shortly before 58 collective head shake at the shabby con- And let’s not forget about funding. To be the pandemic: The Black Dance Legacy ditions of physical, virtual and economic clear, there’s not enough of this for artists Project, which provides multi-year funding, systems that keep society functioning. in the United States and dance artists least training and administrative support to Good infrastructure, where it exists, is a of all. But Chicago has a gem of a dance eight Black-led Chicago companies work- catalyst for human creativity. Chicago is a incubation nonprofit in the Chicago ing in African, contemporary, modern and standout in the performing arts on a world Dancemakers Forum, which understands jazz dance traditions. It’s an infrastructur- stage in no small part because of relative- that just because a stage is dark, it doesn’t al project bar none—a restorative invest- ly abundant and growing infrastructure. mean performers aren’t working hard and ment that will make Chicago’s world-class And I’m not just talking about the the- cooking up ideas. CDF has long supported dance scene even more abundant and re- aters—from storefronts and dance studios dance artists with substantial, no-strings flective of the cultural richness of our city. that double as performance spaces to mid- grants—meaning no final polished product From Night Out in the Parks, which hired sized black-box rooms to grand houses required, just resources to give artists the a hundred dancers, musicians, circus and like the Auditorium Theatre. These spaces key ingredient for creativity: Time and theater artists in to put on free outdoor are the most visible forms of dance infra- space to think, experiment, collaborate. performances in every corner of the city—a structure in the city—they’re also the most When the pandemic struck, CDF amped summer staple of accessible arts program- obviously inequitable in their distribution, up their e orts to get resources to artists ming before, during and after the pandem- who were continuing to make work. At a ic—to “Ground Cover,” artist Dan Peter- time when presenters were forced to re- man’s ballroom-sized open-air dance floor fund tickets and cancel performances that art installation made from post-consumer provide valuable revenue streams, CDF plastic and the site of SummerDance in added a new bucket of grants specifically non-pandemic times, Chicago has solid for video and online presentation. They and enduring performing arts infrastructure. also facilitated creative exchange between The artists, administrators and institutions ten Hubbard Street dancers and ten past that rallied to shore up resources, build CDF awardees; again, the intention was spaces and create abundance in lean times incubation. Founding executive director are the Best of Chicago.

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THE PERSONAL BEST OF CHICAGO SCOOP “Cheers” from being featured in Chicago JACKSON magazine in and claiming (because I’m from Chi) the world “ain’t never met a nigga like me” and spending the next twenty years working (often failing) to make that fact from having the No. Sun- Operation P.U.S.H. for breakfast from see- day sports show on radio in the city and ing Stevie Wonder and the Jackson Five never having it picked up by any other (with Michael) at the Amphitheatre on radio station or outlet once—and since— rd and Ashland during Black Expo from it ended from starting FlyPaper with Ray- hugging and consoling Father Pfleger mond O’Neal and the legendary Mic before he presided over Tyshawn Lee’s Shane from helping save Common’s music funeral from coming to my mother’s house career after The Source tried to low-key one evening to see her vetting a then- cancel it with a two-and-a-half star review young potential state senator named of his classic “Resurrection” album from Barack from Silas Purnell and Lou Palmer hearing the very beginnings of Ang , Ten and Dr. Conrad Worrill taking interest in Tray, Judgemental, Lupe, Twilight Tone, me from spending hours upon hours with Inf , NoID and Malik Yusef careers from Bernie Mac at Milt Trenier’s before “Def listening to Pink House on WHPK and Lou Comedy Jam” and “Kings of Comedy” and Divito and Peter Lewicky mixes on WDAI “The Bernie Mac Show” from the Bimp and from having both Sauer’s and Double Door Day-Day days from getting the nickname MY BEST experiences from drinking at the Godfather “City Hall” while working in City Hall from LIFE II with Congressman Gus Savage and him being on the set of “Soul Food” from see- Newcity NOVEMBER 2021 IN CHI: religiously forgetting his wallet so that any- ing “Cooley High” at the McVickers from AN one besides him would have to foot the tab never buying an R.Kelly record but still AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL from cutting cocaine for one of the biggest knowing every word to every song he ever JOURNEY drug dealers on the South Side while he recorded from knowing the steppin’ power helped give rise to The Charlie Club from of “Was Dog A Donut?” and “Pathway From being the firstborn son of the first hearing Steve Hurley and Jessie Sanders To Glory” from Mary Mitchell choosing me Black newspaper reporter in the city from spin in basements before they ever spun as a “Neighborhood Hero” in the Sun- growing up under the storied stories of my in clubs or produced a record from watch- Times in from being a am regular at Mom once getting arrested for driving ing Michael Jordan hoop for team Schlitz LaPasadita and a am regular at the orig- Huey P. and Fred Hampton during her BP Malt Liquor at Chicago State’s Summer inal Ms. Biscuit from sneaking (sometimes days from being one grade ahead of League from hooping at Navy Pier in the breaking) into University of Chicago’s 60 Michelle Obama at Bryn Mawr grammar eighties trying to play around that big-ass Regenstein and Harper Libraries to use school when she was in kindergarten and St. Bernard who would sometimes lay in their computer labs to start my business I was in first grade from getting suspended the middle of the courts from hanging out from teaching classes at City Colleges at Harvard St. George in sixth grade for at “Arnold’s” (McDonald’s on th) from from having Frontline Books publish my raising my fist during the National Anthem getting chased for being the wrong skin first book from going to the Mosque on from taking Ransom’s bus to Markham color in Bridgeport and in Marquette Park Sundays as a kid to hear Min. Elijah Roller Rink from the days of becoming a from working for the city during both Jane Muhammad speak from knowing that mild sauce sommelier from watching Isiah Byrne’s and Harold Washington’s reigns Marché was once just as amazing as Char- Thomas’ older brother break someone’s from having a crush on Jackie Grimshaw’s lie Trotter’s from knowing who Rich Gamble leg by punching him in the jaw during a daughter from Mark Aguirre being my is and knowing one of the greatest cocktails basketball game at a park across the street coach at basketball camp before he went in this city’s history was named after him by Austin YMCA when I was fourteen to DePaul from getting gallon “refills” at from still calling it “Comiskey” and still call- years old from spending summers on the Gil’s and Stroh’s six-packs at Al Par’s from ing the other “Sears Tower” from knowing West Side as a kid being around Bishop making “package” runs with The Noog the di erence between a real Harold’s and Don Juan only to grow up having him tell Man to the Best Motel parking lot on King a fake-ass, the “grease is too young” one me I was the one he wanted to ghostwrite Drive from learning to pitch pennies in before you order from “voting early and his memoir from the seven-year experi- front of Twin’s Grocery store on “the ” voting often” often from lying on the appli- ence that was S’s Lounge on st and MLK from watching women claim “sugar cation to say I was sixteen years old when when it literally was the Black version of daddies” upstairs at Poor Woods on th I was only fourteen years old to get a job on Wednesdays to learning “the game” at McDonald’s on th and Yates because from those same OGs during “club meet- my family needed the money from growing ings” at the -Yard Line on Saturday up on th & Luella knowing that the wom- afternoons from getting humiliated in an I’d marry and spend the rest of my life strikeout by Marvin Freeman in high with lived on th & Luella from knowing school in the parking lot of St. Albie’s from that Chicago concrete has its own color being sent to Operation Breadbasket at and is in my DNA.

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Art Newcity NOVEMBER 2021 Subject Hannah Wilke, S.O.S. Starification Object Series, 1974 Lifetime silver gelatin print 7 x 5 inches (17.8 x 12.7 cm) Collection of and Object Michael and Sharon Young, courtesy of Alison Jacques, London. © 2021 Scharlatt Family, Hannah Wilke Collection & Archive, Los Angeles / Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY Rethinking Feminist Icon also a reaction to the mechanical perfection in Jewish Currents, the diverse depictions of Hannah Wilke of the era’s Minimalism. Many critics have Wilke’s vaginas also seem to point to “the pointed to the gender essentialism at work in mutability of the vaginal motif” and “the By Kerry Cardoza Wilke’s focus on the vagina, which she linked constructedness of the organ and all that it to women. But, as Nina Renata Aron writes signifies.” Inside the entrance to St. Louis’ Pulitzer Arts Foundation, a quote from the late artist Hannah Wilke reads in bold red letters: “I have always used my art to have life around me. Art is for life’s sake.” The quote succinctly captures the ethos that drove Wilke’s career, which is stunningly portrayed in this retrospective, her first career-spanning exhibition in over a decade. The retrospective takes up the entire museum, with each gallery offering a concise selection of Wilke’s work, staged in roughly chronological order. The first gallery displays rarely shown drawings and clay sculptures made in the early-to-mid-1960s. In the drawings, bulbous shapes resembling body parts such as breasts and knees overlap and fuse together, often laid over more solid geometric forms. The drawings are made in light, almost pastel tones. The clay works in this room show the beginnings of Wilke’s use of the vagina motif. Using clay, Wilke would layer sheets of clay into a folded vagina rendering, or would some- times shape clay around a square or rounded base. In this postwar era, and as a Jewish artist, Wilke was set on making work that valued and affirmed life, which is evidenced in her use of earthy materials and her focus on sexual organs. The main gallery, also on the first floor, depicts Wilke’s further experimentation with clay. On the floor sit glass boxes featuring Wilke’s vagina-like sculptures, now in beautiful light shades. Wilke made these forms by hand, so no two are exactly alike. These differences not only underscore the unique beauty of the human body, but were 62

ART TOP 5 Hannah Wilke with Ponder-r-rosa 4, 1975. Photograph © 2021 Scharlatt Family, Hannah Wilke Collection & Archive, 1 Hannah Levy: Surplus Tension. Los Angeles /Licensed by VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), NY Arts Club of Chicago. Perilous-looking sculptures use the language of mid-century-modern architecture in this stunning solo exhibition. Through January 29, 2022 In the mid-1970s, Wilke used chewed gum complicated the ideas of free love and sexual 2 Amina Ross: Man's Country. to make tiny vagina sculptures, shown in a liberation, of body positivity and women’s Iceberg Projects. In a solo series of work in the next gallery. Here, the agency, often doing so in a self-deprecating presentation, Ross creates a three- folded gum, seen in various colors, some a way. Wilke even took other so-called dimensional animated model of the multicolored blend, recall the cutout feminists to task in a series of photographs, former Andersonville bathhouse,  photographs of butts in Chris Ofili’s iconic including one which warned: \"Beware of raising questions about masculinity “The Holy Virgin Mary”—to me another Fascist Feminism.\" This series was much and belonging.Through November 13 example of the changeability of bodies and deeper than critics gave her credit for, as she the ways they are represented. Also on view commented on women's diminishing societal 3 Sadie Laska: No Utopia for in this room are wall-mounted abstracted value over time, and the way women are You!. Soccer Club Club. The vaginas made out of latex. Wilke’s use of sexually and commercially exploited. In New York-based artist presents these materials, which were meant to “Hannah Wilke Can,” from 1978, Wilke’s sexy twenty readymade flags, reconfigured deteriorate with time, was purposeful, likeness is featured on a tin can with a slit in via collage and paint, poised to help referencing the vulnerability of life and the the top for donations. us think about a future world. inevitability of death as a part of the life cycle. Through November 5 Wilke continued to use herself and her life in During this period, Wilke also began using her work, including in a gorgeously poignant 4 Still Life. The Franklin. NOVEMBER 2021 Newcity photography and video, often using her own series about her mother, Selma Butter, who A satellite partner of the Chicago body as material, applying tiny vaginas to died of breast cancer in 1982. In black-and- Architecture Biennial: for this group herself and co-opting the language of fashion white photographic triptychs of Butter going show, seventeen artists were charged advertising. In her well-known, “S.O.S. about life—sometimes sleeping peacefully, with contemplating their surroundings. Starification Object Series,” a partially nude sometimes donning a wig, sometimes Through March 12, 2022 Wilke adopts the poses of a model, albeit mugging for the camera, Wilke shows her one with hairy armpits and tiny gum vaginas mother as deeply human. Below the photos affixed to her face, fingers and torso. The are abstract paper cutouts matched with gum looks like warts at first glance; accord- words such as “bond,” “foundation” and ing to the exhibition catalog, Wilke spoke “care.” Wilke continued to make clay vagina about the gum as scars that reference “the forms in this period, depicted in this gallery in marking and dehumanization of Jewish bright, lively colors, but began thinking of people during the Holocaust.” them as wombs or tombs. At the time, Wilke’s self-portraits were widely In the haunting “Portrait of the Artist with Her 5 Surplus: Sarita Garcia and dismissed by critics—some called them Mother, Selma Butter,” Wilke pairs a color Bobby T Luck. Roots & Culture. narcissistic, Phyllis Derfner said the work was portrait of her mother, topless and showing A two-person show that delves into “boring and superficial.” In a 1976 essay, Lucy her mastectomy scar, covered with sores, the richness of cultural diversity, using Lippard slammed Wilke for confusing “her with one of herself, also topless, her torso everything from mass media imagery roles as beautiful woman and artist.” Yet covered with small objects she had collected to the iconography of markets. viewing this work, which the artist called for her former partner, Claes Oldenburg. Through November 13 \"performalist self-portraiture,\" today, Wilke Wilke received her own cancer diagnosis in appears startlingly prescient. She brilliantly 1987. (She died of complications from 63

flower drawings, a coy video from 1975, as well as a colorful batch of clay sculptures, positioned like flowers in a green case on the gallery floor. Titled “Hannah Manna,” the sculptures are accompanied by a typed sheet of paper, signed by Wilke in 1986. It’s an etymology of her first name that morphs into a sort of prose poem, but it could easily be an artist’s statement. It reads, in part: “(Hebrew Hannah, grace. Japanese Hana, flower. Chaldean Ana, heaven. Sanskrit Ana, mother. Assyrian Anu, all-father... Womblike blossoms resembling Venus mounds, a centerfold evolving from a circular plane... Food from heaven, hence spiritual nourishment. Called angels’ food.” Hannah Wilke, Untitled, ca. late 1960s. Terracotta 31/2×91/4×111/4inches (8.9× 23.5 × 28.6 cm) Hannah Wilke Collection & By challenging the accepted norms of how Archive, Los Angeles. Courtesy Alison Jacques, London, and Marc Selwyn Fine Art, Los Angeles. Photo by Michael Brzezinski women artists—even beautiful ones—were supposed to work, Wilke helped to force non-Hodgkin lymphoma in 1993, at the age display the cohesiveness of Wilke’s oeuvre, open the strictures of the art world. Using of fifty-two). The “Intra-Venus Series,” her and its focus on affirming life, which Wilke her body, in states of both youthful vitality final works, chronicle that experience, with noted throughout her career, curator Tamara and disease, Wilke made herself vulnerable, Wilke posing in the phrasing of classical Schenkenberg fills the final gallery with works again a nod to the tenuousness of life. Wilke, artworks, unabashedly showing the realities on nature. In her “Gum in Landscape Series,” who was born Arlene Butter, renamed herself of her illness. Wilke’s gum sculptures were placed on Hannah. Did she realize its life-giving flowers, tree branches and rocks, like tiny connotations at the time, or did her work The exhibition doesn’t end here. In order to snails or sea shells. Also on view are simple naturally grow in that direction? Whatever the reason was, Wilke’s work was inarguably sensuous, full of life, spiritually nourishing. \"Hannah Wilke: Art for Life's Sake\" is on view at the Pulitzer Arts Foundation, 3716 Washington, St. Louis, through January 16, 2022. Nancy Rubins Ida Applebroog, MONALISA Sculpture & Drawing Oct 14–Jan 16 Newcity NOVEMBER 2021 OCTOBER 29–DECEMBER 18, 2021 Ida Applebroog, Monalisa, 2009. Detail. © Ida Applebroog. Courtesy the artist 64 and Hauser & Wirth. Photo: Emily Poole.

THE ARTS CLUB OF CHICAGO CHICAGO ARTISTS COALITION 201 East Ontario Street 2130 W. Fulton Street, Unit B 312 787 3997 312 491 8888 [email protected] / artsclubchicago.org [email protected] / chicagoartistscoalition.org Tues–Fri 11-1 | 2-6, Sat 11-3 (subject to change due to COVID-19) Wed–Fri 11-5, Sat 12-4 Sept. 30–Jan. 29 ���������� Hannah Levy: Surplus Tension Oct. 1–Nov. 11������������ Hatch | Deep Cuts Through March 2 �������� Garden Project: Chicago Mobile Makers Artist-in-residence Helen Lee and Nat Pyper THE BLOCK MUSEUM OF ART Curated by Joan Roach Oct. 1–Nov. 11������������ BOLT | A Form By Which To Be Possessed At Northwestern University Artist-in-residence Maryam Taghavi 40 Arts Circle Drive, Evanston, IL 847 491 4000 CORBETT VS. DEMPSEY [email protected] / blockmuseum.northwestern.edu Wed 12-8, Thurs–Sun 12-5 2156 W. Fulton Street Free and open to all - Check website for visitor info 773 278 1664 Sept. 22–Dec. 5 ����������� Who Says, Who Shows, What Counts: [email protected] / corbettvsdempsey.com Tues–Sat 10-5 Thinking about History with The Block’s Collection Oct. 16–Nov. 13 ��������� Celeste Rapone, Controlled Burn Sept. 22–Dec. 5 ����������� Sky Hopinka: Cloudless Blue Egress of Summer Nov. 19–Jan. 8 ����������� Rachel Harrison, Assorted Varieties CARL HAMMER GALLERY DAVID SALKIN CREATIVE 740 N. Wells Street 1709 W. Chicago Avenue, #2A 312 266 8512 504 228-7034 [email protected] / carlhammergallery.com @DavidSalkin / davidsalkin.com Tues–Sat 11-5 Please contact gallery for more information. Nov. 5–Jan. 7 ������������� IMAGINED LANDSCAPES: Francois Burland, DEPAUL ART MUSEUM Joseph Parker, Grace Graupe Pillard, David Sharpe, Hollis Sigler, Kahn and Selesnick, Mary Lou Zelazny At DePaul University 935 W. Fullerton Avenue CARRIE SECRIST GALLERY 773 325 7506 [email protected] / artmuseum.depaul.edu 900 W. Washington Blvd. Wed–Thurs 11-7, Fri–Sun 11-5 312 610 3821 Sept. 9–Feb. 13 ����������� Stockyard Institute: 25 Years of Art and Radical Pedagogy [email protected] / secristgallery.com Sept. 9–Feb. 13 ����������� Learned Objects: Studio Works by William Estrada, Tues–Sat 10:30-6 For entry, Directory: #201 Regin Igloria, Nicole Marroquin, and Rochele Royster Sept. 19–Nov. 13 ��������� Was/Is/Ought: Whitney Bedford, Antonia Contro, DOCUMENT Stephen Eichhorn, Brendan Getz, Diana Guerrero- Maciá, Anne Lindberg, Chuck Ramirez, Kay Rosen, 1709 W. Chicago Avenue Scott Stack, Dannielle Tegeder + Sharmistha Ray, 312 535 4555 Oli Watt and Augustine Woodgate [email protected] / documentspace.com Tues–Sat 11-6 CATHERINE EDELMAN GALLERY Sept. 7–Oct. 30������������ Claude Viallat Nov. 5–Dec. 18 ����������� Sara Greenberger Rafferty 1637 W. Chicago Avenue 312 266 2350 ENGAGE PROJECTS [email protected] / edelmangallery.com Open by appointment, Tues–Sat 10-5:30 864 N. Ashland Avenue Sept. 17–Dec. 4������������ Lea Lund & Erik K: Nomads 312 285 2998 [email protected] / aspectratioprojects.com Wed–Fri 12-6 (by appointment only), Sat 12-6 (no appointment necessary) Oct. 22–Nov. 27 ���������� Sharon Louden with Edgar Arceneaux, Hassan Elahi, Jean Shin, Melissa Potter, Miguel Luciano, Apesh Kantilal Patel, & Hrag Vartanian: Our Solo Exhibition

EPIPHANY CENTER FOR THE ARTS JEAN ALBANO GALLERY 201 South Ashland Avenue 215 W. Superior 312 421 4600 312 440 0770 [email protected] / epiphanychi.com/exhibitions/ [email protected] / jeanalbanogallery.com By appointment only. Email [email protected] to schedule. Wed–Sat 11-4 Sept. 17–Nov. 6����������� Take my Hand, Feel your Fantasy Slip Away Always by appointment Oct. 15–Dec. 11����������� Michelle Wasson: On Feronia Nov. 30–Dec. 5 ����������� Art Miami 2021 - Bonnie Lautenberg Oct. 29–Dec. 3 ������������ Tag, You’re It Nov. 5–Dec. 18 ����������� Group Show Nov. 6–April 9 ����������� Agave! Nov. 20–Dec. 31���������� Rod Slemmons: Negatives KAVI GUPTA GALLERY GALLERY VICTOR ARMENDARIZ Kavi Gupta | Washington Blvd., 835 W. Washington Boulevard Kavi Gupta | Elizabeth St., 219 N. Elizabeth Street 300 W. Superior Street By appointment only. Email [email protected] to schedule. 312 722 6447 [email protected] / galleryvictor.com 312 432 0708 Tues–Fri 10-5:30, Sat 11-5, Sun–Mon closed [email protected] / kavigupta.com Please contact gallery for more information. Visit online at website-kavigupta.artlogic.net/ Through Dec. 18��������� Surface Is Only a Material Vehicle for Spirit GOLDFINCH curated by Kennedy Yanko(Elizabeth St. | Floor 2) 319 N. Albany Avenue Opening Oct. 23���������� Jessica Stockholder (Washington Blvd. | Floor 2) 708 714 0937 goldfinch-gallery.com KEN SAUNDERS GALLERY, LTD Fri–Sat 12-4 and by appointment Nov. 14–Dec. 18���������� Mari Eastman, Gallery 1 and 2 2041 W. Carroll Avenue, Suite C-320 312 573 1400 GRAHAM FOUNDATION [email protected] / kensaundersgallery.com Tues–Sat 11-4 and by appointment 4 W. Burton Place Opening Nov. 6 ���������� Anjali Srinivasan 312 787 4071 Opening Nov. 6 ���������� Dante Marioni [email protected] / grahamfoundation.org Opening Nov. 6 ���������� Sarah Vaughn Visit our website for gallery and bookshop hours and information. Follow us on social media @grahamfoundation LOGAN CENTER EXHIBITIONS Opening Sept. 17��������� The Available City, Chicago Architecture Biennial University of Chicago at the Reva and David Logan Center GRAY 915 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637 773 834 8377 Richard Gray Gallery, Hancock: 875 N. Michigan Avenue, 38th Floor [email protected] / loganexhibitions.uchicago.edu Mon–Fri 10-5 Please check the gallery’s website for details on hours and procedures for visiting. July 17–Dec. 12����������� Carrie Mae Weems: A Land of Broken Dreams Gray Warehouse, 2044 W. Carroll Avenue Tues–Fri 10-5, Sat 11-5 LUBEZNIK CENTER FOR THE ARTS 312 642 8877 101 W. 2nd Street, Michigan City, IN [email protected] / richardgraygallery.com 219 874 4900 Oct. 22–Dec. 17����������� Alex Katz: The White Coat (Gray Warehouse) [email protected] / lubeznikcenter.org Mon, Wed–Fri 10-5, Sat–Sun 11-4, Tues closed HILTON | ASMUS CONTEMPORARY Please check LCA’s website for more details. Oct. 25–Feb. 25 ����������� Nature Now 716 N. Wells Street (River North) Mon–Sat 11-6 3622 S. Morgan Street – Morgan Arts Complex (Bridgeport) By appointment only 312 475 1788 [email protected] / hiltonasmus.com Through Jan. 22 ��������� David Yarrow: Changing Lanes (Bridgeport)

MADRON GALLERY POETRY FOUNDATION 1000 W. North Avenue, Third Floor 61 W. Superior Street 312 640 1302 312 787 7070 [email protected] / madrongallery.com [email protected] / poetryfoundation.org Mon–Fri 9:30-4:30, evenings and weekends available by appointment Opening Oct. 18���������� For And Nor But Or Yet So, Bob Faust Sept. 20–Nov. 24 ��������� William S. Schwartz: Color and Coloratura Installed on the exterior of the Poetry Foundation building McCORMICK GALLERY RHONA HOFFMAN GALLERY 835 W. Washington Boulevard 1711 W. Chicago Avenue 312 226 6800 312 455 1990 [email protected] / thomasmccormick.com [email protected] / rhoffmangallery.com Tues–Thurs 10-4 Tues–Sat 11-5 Through Nov. 6���������� Pooja Pittie: Nothing Gold Can Stay: new paintings Please schedule an appointment through Tock: Nov. 11–Jan. 8������������ Dusti Bongé: Southern Exposure: works from the estate exploretock.com/rhonahoffmangallery Oct. 29–Dec. 18����������� Nancy Rubins: Sculpture & Drawing MONIQUE MELOCHE GALLERY SMART MUSEUM OF ART 451 N. Paulina Street 312 243 2129 At the University of Chicago [email protected] / moniquemeloche.com 5550 S. Greenwood Avenue Tues–Sat 11-6 773 702 0200 Nov. 6–Dec. 18 ����������� David Antonio Cruz [email protected] / smartmuseum.uchicago.edu Nov. 6–Dec. 18 ����������� Introducing Ariel Dannielle Tues–Sun 10-5, Thurs 10-8 July 15–Dec. 19����������� Toward Common Cause: Art, Social Change, MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY PHOTOGRAPHY and the MacArthur Fellows Program at 40 Sept. 23–Dec. 12���������� Smart to the Core: Medium / Image At Columbia College Chicago 600 S. Michigan Avenue WESTERN EXHIBITIONS 312 663 5554 [email protected] / mocp.org 1709 W. Chicago Avenue, 2nd Floor Sun 12-5, Mon–Wed 10-5, Thurs 10-8, Fri–Sat 10-5 312 480 8390 Reserve tickets at mocp.org [email protected] / westernexhibitions.com Sept. 10–Feb. 20���������� American Epidemic: Guns in the United States Tues–Sat 11-6 Nov. 6–Dec. 18 ����������� Jessica Campbell: “Gigantomachinations” in gallery one THE NEUBAUER COLLEGIUM Nov. 6–Dec. 18 ����������� Dan Attoe: “Pandemic Paintings” in gallery two FOR CULTURE AND SOCIETY WOMAN MADE GALLERY At the University of Chicago 5701 South Woodlawn Avenue 2150 S. Canalport Avenue, Suite 4A3 773 795 2329 312 738 0400 [email protected] / neubauercollegiumgallery.com [email protected] / womanmade.org Open by appointment Thurs 12-7, Fri–Sat 12-4 Through Jan. 16 ��������� Ida Applebroog: Monalisa Oct. 7–Nov. 6 ������������� The 5th Midwest Open juried by Alison Wong Dec. 2–Dec. 20������������ Small Works Members show for WMG members PATRON GALLERY and supporters 1612 W. Chicago Avenue 312 846 1500 WRIGHTWOOD 659 [email protected] / patrongallery.com Tues–Sat 11-6 and by appointment 659 W. Wrightwood Avenue Sept. 18–Nov. 27 ��������� Carmen Winant: The Making and Unmaking of the World 773 437 6601 Sept. 18–Nov. 27 ��������� Melanie Schiff: Blind Spots [email protected] / wrightwood659.org Through Nov. 27 �������� Romanticism to Ruin: Two Lost Works of Sullivan and Wright Reservations Required. No Walk-ins. Tickets at wrightwood659.org

Dance Hubbard Street Dance Chicago in \"Jardi Tancat\" by Nacho Duato. Photo: Todd Rosenberg Photography. New Angles States had, at the time of this writing, never set foot in Chicago. When I speak with Hubbard Street Dance is Back on Stage in \"Re/turn\" Spivey, he is preparing to travel to the city to begin work with the Hubbard Street dancers By Sharon Hoyer on a new piece designed for them. Newcity NOVEMBER 2021 “I’m feeling like: Something old, some- Fisher-Harrell, whose credits include thirteen “I can’t believe I haven’t made it to Chicago thing new, something borrowed, something years dancing with Alvin Ailey American once before,” he says. “I’m happy I’m coming blue,” Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell tells me Dance Theater after a three-season tenure now and I’m happy it’s with Hubbard Street.” when I ask how she approached curating with Hubbard Street, stepped to the creative “Re/turn,” November 18-21 at the Harris helm of the company in 2021 as the first Fisher-Harrell has had her eye on Spivey for a Theater—the first live, in-person program for woman and person of color to serve in the long time. Both were graduates of the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago since the role, bringing both institutional memory and a Baltimore School for the Arts, though years start of the pandemic, and her first as artistic hunger to showcase the talents of choreog- apart, and crossed paths more and more director. “I’m looking at the company from so raphers as-of-yet unseen by Chicago often over the years at performances and in many different angles. First of all, from being audiences. One such artist on the program is classrooms. “I’ve been watching Jermaine a former company member, I know how we Jermaine Maurice Spivey, an emerging grow as a technician, an artist, a dancer, a used to impact audiences. I’m trying to bring choreographer who, despite having danced choreographer,” Fisher-Harrell says. “In the that back while meeting the company where and toured with numerous high-profile field, he’s highly regarded. He’s admired from they are as a leader in contemporary dance.” companies across Europe and the United how he views movement we all can’t get a grasp of. He knows his form. He knows all 68

Linda-Denise Fisher-Harrell. Photo: Frank Ishman. DANCE TOP 5 forms and he breaks all forms. He’s one of The new talents join longtime company 1 Re/turn. Harris Theater. NOVEMBER 2021 Newcity the first people I reached out to.” members whose power, precision and The aptly titled first program of versatility have come to define the Hubbard Hubbard Street's forty-fourth season Spivey is coming to Chicago with concepts Street ethos—extraordinary dancers who quietly announces the long-awaited for the commission, but has no predeter- get better at their craft every year. Several, lifting of the golden curtain on mined choreography. “It’s funny, making a namely Andrew Murdock, Kevin Shannon, Chicago's contemporary dance piece you kind of know what you’re trying to David Schultz and the transcendent treasure. November 18-21 make and at the same time you have no idea Jacqueline Burnett, have been with the how it’s going to turn out,” he says. “I want company for a decade or more. 2 XENOS. Harris Theater. to work with [the Hubbard Street dancers] Celebrated contemporary/ on something that feels community related— The interweaving of fresh and familiar will Kathak choreographer Akram their community, as a group. Their experi- be seen in the performers on the Harris Khan returns to the Harris in a solo ence within the piece, and the piece being stage and in the composition of the program. performance about the trails and about group exchange, about rhythms and Nacho Duato’s sweeping, pastoral-poetic torments of a shell-shocked Indian dynamics amongst groups and individuals “Jardi Tancat” from 1997 will be revived—the colonial soldier forced into service in within a group. I’ve been thinking about this “something old”—and the company has newly World War I. November 12 & 13 in terms of the world and the larger issues acquired Aszure Barton’s “BUSK,” which we’re dealing with. How do these groups Fisher-Harrell has wanted to bring to 3 The Yellow Wallpaper/ get formed and keep this rhythm going? Hubbard Street since she saw the Ailey The Attic Room. Ebenezer Why do some rhythms fizzle and end as company perform the piece in 2019. “I got a Lutheran Church. Claustrophobia, quickly as they begin?” good view of ‘BUSK’ up close and personal,” confinement and connection are she says. “I thought, ‘these dancers in the timely themes in remounts of The group in question has changed shape Hubbard Street need to be doing this two works by Chicago Danztheatre since they last appeared on stage. In April, movement.' They can bring an edge and a Ensemble and RE|dance Group, Hubbard Street held virtual auditions for four power to it.\" who split the bill for an extended open spots. Nine-hundred people showed run in the auditorium at Ebenezer up. “It’s a testament to the dance community Fisher-Harrell's philosophy of preserving the church. November 5-20 that 900 people showed up wherever they excellence of Hubbard Street, while were—their bedrooms, their kitchens, their connecting it more strongly to its history and 4 South Chicago Dance makeshift studio spaces—and had the seeking out new creative voices bodes well Festival. Various locations. courage to audition,” Fisher-Harrell says with for the company's return to live performance South Chicago Dance Theatre and enthusiasm. “It was an honor to watch them and the seasons ahead. \"It's incredible to Seoul-based Choomna Dance audition.” She saw all 900 applicants over the have a plan and see it carried out,\" she says, Company host workshops and course of three days, ultimately narrowing voice brimming with delight. \"We released performances across the South down the pool and hiring Alexandria Best, season forty-four and I chuckled. The dream Side, including a premiere at Hyde Michele Dooley, Michael Garcia and Simone is coming true! I want audiences to enjoy it.\" Park School of Dance on the 8th, Stevens to join the fourteen-member and an online Dance for the Camera company. “I couldn’t have made better \"Re/turn\" at the Harris Theater, 205 East presentation on the 10th. choices,” Fisher-Harrell says. “If I can feel Randolph. Thursday-Sunday, November November 8-12 your personality and dynamics online, 18-21. Info and tickets at hubbardstreet- imagine what it will be in person.” dance.com. 5 Chicago Avant-Garde: Five Women Ahead of Their Time. Newberry Library. Included in the Newberry's exhibition on experimental Chicago-based female artists of the early twentieth century are the great choreographers Katherine Dunham and Ruth Page. Through December 30 69

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Design Newcity NOVEMBER 2021Puttering Around Jobson and I met with Mark, Susan, and several other key organizers of the 1988 Par Excellence Redux: The Front 9 and The Back 9, Elmhurst Art MuseumPar Excellence Redux—The Back 9 Revives Artcourse. They shared stories about the Golf in Elmhurst course, its warm reception, and we asked their thoughts on what it might look like to By Vasia Rigou reimagine today. They originally held an open call, which made sense to us, too. Following \"Par Excellence Redux: The Tell us about the \"Par Excellence\" Front 9,\" the second half of the exhibition, exhibition, then (1988) and now? Christopher Jobson: One of the first times entitled \"The Back 9,\" pays homage to \"Par John McKinnon: I originally heard about I visited the Elmhurst Art Museum was to Excellence\" (1988), an artist-designed mini the show about five years ago from Mark see \"Kings & Queens: Pinball, Imagists and golf course created by sculptor Michael Pascale, a curator at the Art Institute of Chicago\" back in 2017. To see artwork from O’Brien and several other Chicago-based Chicago. He and his wife, Susan Matthews, the Imagists juxtaposed with playable pinball artists at the School of the Art Institute of made a golf hole and many other fellow machines struck me as a novel and fun way Chicago before it became a national artists came up with creative spins on the to stage an interactive art exhibition. Not phenomenon. Blurring the lines between art popular pastime. His telling of the original long after, I connected with John [McKinnon] and recreation, the eighteen-hole playable show was so infectious, I circled back a few for the first time and he mentioned \"Par work of art shifts away from a traditional years later. I learned more about the \"Par Excellence\"—it was an instant yes. The show museum visit, instead providing an experi- Excellence\" exhibition, which was started carries the torch across thirty-three years ence. Christopher Jobson, exhibition curator at the School of the Art Institute by artist from the Art Institute to the Elmhurst Museum and Colossal editor-in-chief and John Mike O'Brien, traveled to the Illinois State while honoring the curatorial vision of Mike McKinnon, executive director of the Elmhurst Museum in Springfield, and then O'Brien O'Brien along with feedback, inspiration, Art Museum, discuss the \"Par Excellence continued its run as a business called and help from several of the original artists. Redux\" exhibitions from concept, to design, ArtGolf for about four years. With the to execution. Elmhurst Art Museum in mind, Christopher Can you talk about designing the exhibition from a curator’s perspective? 72 What were the biggest challenges

DESIGN TOP 5 Par Excellence Redux: The Front 9 and The Back 9, Elmhurst Art Museum 1 Chicago Architecture Biennial: The Available City. North America’s largest international survey of contemporary architecture takes over the Chicago Cultural Center and the larger city. Through December 2021 you had to face? pandemic, but that didn't stop our staff, 2 Romanticism to Ruin: Two Lost CJ: Having never curated an artist-designed who self-produced videos all throughout Works of Sullivan and Wright. mini golf course, we were essentially starting 2020 and 2021 for our \"Museum From Wrightwood 659. Louis Sullivan’s from scratch. Luckily, the open call produced Home\" initiative. It didn't come to this, but Garrick Theater Building and Frank dozens of extremely original ideas, and we we were ready to instruct kids and adults Lloyd Wright’s Larkin Building are were able to reference both images of the on how to create their own homemade examined side-by-side. previous exhibition while exploring existing mini golf holes at home (admittedly I did Through November 27 work of participating artists to arrive with a that with my family when I was younger). selection of work we felt excited about. 3 Exhibit Columbus: New JM: The museum has faced numerous A golf course of playable works of art Middles: From Main Street challenges for this custom-made exhibition, is the perfect way to bring together to Megalopolis, What is the Future including a major postponement due to recreation and art but also to convey of the Middle City? Downtown COVID. The course was originally set to open more serious messages—themes range Columbus, Indiana. Speculating on May of 2020 and many artists stopped their from social justice to the occult. What the future of the center of the United planning process in March of that year. When are you hoping the viewer will take States and the regions connected forecasting for 2021, we ran several scenarios away from this exhibition? by the Mississippi Watershed. with our staff and the artists about possible CJ: At Colossal, and if I can speak for the Through November 28 protocol and logistics. One decision visitors Elmhurst Art Museum, we have a shared will see is the course split up into \"The Front 9\" mutual value of exploring what art can be— 4 Debbie Millman: Why Design NOVEMBER 2021 Newcity in the summer and \"The Back 9\" in the fall. how designers and artists manifest their Matters. Chicago Humanities \"The Front 9\" turned out to be a great way to perception of the world as architecture, in a Festival. The host of award-winning bring people back to the museum after we painting, a sculpture, a pinball machine, or podcast Design Matters discusses fully reopened! \"The Back 9\" includes more even a golf hole. I hope that by highlighting the importance of creative disciplines hands-on mechanical pieces, as well as more these unexpected and novel forms of with a focus on design. Saturday, group and family events. expression, we push viewers to do the same, November 6, 4-5pm to question how they can express their own The exhibition is the outcome of a ideas in new and unexpected ways. 5 Par Excellence Redux: The public call for proposals for local artists, Back 9. Elmhurst Art Museum. designers and architects. Can you talk JM: This participatory exhibit helps break Following their \"The Front 9\" exhibition, about the importance of engaging the down barriers we often face when seen Elmhurst Museum presents part two creative community especially at a time as a traditional museum space. Plus, the of a miniature golf course featuring of a global pandemic? artist-designed mini golf course is a playable works of art by local creatives. CJ: Many of the designs were partially if perfect reason to come together for a Through December 10 not completely built pre-pandemic, so the group activity—especially away from screens. Elmhurst Museum staff has essentially As people have adjusted their habits in produced this show twice now due to the the last year, they may not have visited a abrupt shutdown last year. To offer the museum in some time. So we hope this community a fun, safe, recreational activity show will reintroduce us in a strong way as respite from months of quarantine feels and really strengthen our position as a like an added degree of poignancy for cultural and community hub. the exhibition. Par Excellence Redux: The Back 9, JM: The designs were selected before the through January 2, 2022. 73

D&rDininkiinngg Brian Duncan. Photo Tom Gavin Somme Wisdom “Honor the guest’s experience,” Duncan says. “You need to start where people are; then you Brian Duncan Inspires Us to Care About Wine do guided experiences. I'll give you an example. A very good friend of mine had a By David Hammond wedding in Napa. My gift to him was to do a guided tour and at the first place we stopped, Newcity NOVEMBER 2021 Brian Duncan, recognized by Newcity in I said to Duncan that I thought most somms everybody ordered glasses of sparkling wine, 2020 as “The Best Man to Tell You What Wine have the goal of making wine more accessible and there were several people who literally to Drink,” was one of the founders of Bin 36, and approachable for the general public, and drank the wine right down. So, I had to guide Chicago’s legendary wine bar. Duncan was he replied: “A lot of them would say that. At them through how you can get more out of named Gourmet Wine Cellar Wine Director of Bin 36, though, our whole concept was the experience, how to look at the wine, how the Year, and he garnered four James Beard designed around approachability, which to hold the glass, where to hold the glass, nominations before opening Down to Earth requires you to educate not only your team, the color, engaging all the senses, how to Concepts, which specializes in interactive wine but also your guests.” smell. And then I had them, at the count of and food seminars. Recently, Duncan came on three, take a sip of the sparkling wine, and as sommelier of Michael Lachowicz’s George So, how do you make wine more approach- they weren't allowed to swallow it until I told Trois Group. able and accessible? them. Then we talk about what’s happening in each part of their tongue, during the 74

tasting process, what they perceive in certain a cold stiffness. I’m just not made that way. When you come into my dining room, I've places. When you do an exercise like that, it absolutely changes the person for the rest of already been waiting for you and expecting their life. You begin to understand why things you. And I'm wanting to garner as much taste the way they do, the textures. Then you about you as I can, certainly without being TDORPIN5KING & DINING move into the realm of food and wine pairing intrusive, so that I can sense your needs techniques, strategies that people can apply and where we're going.” to their everyday lives. Slowing down and taking time to think about what you're eating Because people sometimes lack confidence in their wine-tasting abilities, they may be 1 Whisky Fest Chicago. and drinking is a good general rule for Hyatt Regency. If you’re into hesitant to tell you they really don’t like a wine fruits and grains, you will want to everyone. Don't eat or drink too fast. Take attend Whisky Fest Chicago, an that they’ve been served. Does that happen opportunity to check out as many of your time. Think about it.” the 350 whiskies—including some very often? rare pours—as you responsibly can. November 5 I was curious to know if his approach to “Often guests tell me in advance what they 2 Bao Eating Contest. Water wine selection changes from restaurant to Tower Place. Ten competitors, restaurant, or if general principles apply across don't like, but one evening, I had a guest that two minutes, and the chance to win seemed disappointed in a white burgundy. She a year’s worth of Chinese dumplings. the board. “Wines may work in one environ- November 6, 1pm-2pm had sipped the wine right after it was poured; ment better than in another. The wines at 3 Festival of Barrel-Aged Beer. Aboyer and George Trois follow Michael's food. she didn't allow the wine to open up. Just a Credit Union 1 Arena. North few minutes later, the temperature came down America’s largest and most That's appropriate, and the food provides a prestigious barrel-aged beer festival, great guidepost for creating a wine program. on the wine and she said, ‘It’s gorgeous!’ FoBAB, featuring brews that have And as the menus evolve, and dishes begin to Sometimes the wine simply hasn’t evolved spent time getting familiar with their change, I see some opportunities, but the food enough in the glass.” wood. November 12-13 is always the guiding principle. So that lady was just not taking the time to 4 Christkindlmarket. Daley Plaza. There are a lot of unusual “And what a wonderful platform to work let her glass of wine come alive. That was gifts of German origin at this annual event, but we go for the festive from! What I’ve missed most about the a mistake, and maybe she learned from it. Glühwein, sausages and specialties from many regions of Germany. restaurant industry was not the ninety hours Are there any common mistakes people November 19-December 24 I worked every week; it was the interaction make when ordering a wine or pairing it 5 ZooLights. Lincoln Park Zoo. Watch and—after a few frosty with guests. That's what I was missing with specific foods? Some people choose beers and cocktail specials—maybe talk to the animals at this annual more than ever. I was producing wine in to drink their favorite kinds of wine—like, nighttime extravaganza. November 19-January 2 California and some other places, and say, a Cab or Pinot Noir—with whatever selling it around the country, but I wasn’t food they order. getting the same overall satisfaction as I got “There are some bad reactions you can have from interacting with guests. with wine and certain kinds of chili peppers. “I'm there to convince our guests to play along If you have wines that are highly tannic, the tannins can act like gasoline, and with the with us; they trust us with the food, so they alcohol, the heat has fuel. The tannins, can trust us with the wine. Pairing is a lock and key situation. The wine should make the which create that mouth-puckering feeling, release more heat.” food taste better, and the food should make the wine taste better. And so, with the limited Everything Duncan was saying made a lot amount of time I have with guests, I instill of sense to me, and I wondered aloud if just confidence in my decisions. What usually anyone could be a sommelier, or if an happens is after they've had the first or outstanding sommelier really needs to be second wine, they’re on board.” born with innate abilities to discern flavors in There’s a stereotype of the sommelier as wines and create a perfect pairing. NOVEMBER 2021 Newcity being a pretentious, fancy-pants snob. “Can people learn to be better tasters? Yes,” Duncan is clearly none of those things. Duncan confirms, “and over the years I’ve “People appreciate authenticity,” Duncan had the privilege of educating countless says, “and in multi-course dining situations, numbers of people, Many of those people it can be somewhat intimidating. I used to today have their own wine careers, they call such restaurants 'culinary houses of have their own restaurants, they have worship,' where everything is very stiff and positions of influence in the wine industry. It reverent. Neither the guests nor the servers all depends upon how well you’re able to are being authentic and relaxed, and there’s inspire people to care.” 75

Film \"Bad Luck Banging\" Knowing Obscenity outrages that pile up are parallel to the esthetic incitement of the films of the \"weird\" era of filmmaking in Greece. (That country's Bad Luck In Bucharest northern metropolis of Thessaloniki is only 500 miles from Bucharest.) By Ray Pride The country's post-dictatorship cinema came A sex video, shown in explicit detail, dismissing, which she refuses. Emi's to life from exceedingly modest means that could be the least provocative element of annoyance, then anger, and her refusal to were fully exploited by its filmmakers. From Radu Jude's bristling comedy-drama-es- bow takes up the first part of Jude's film, about 2005, writer-directors such as Cristian say film \"Bad Luck Banging, Or Loony followed by a dictionary of obscenity, in which Mungiu (\"4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days,\" Jude courses in an essay in definition form \"Beyond The Hills\"), Corneliu Porumboiu Porn,\" which seethes explosively despite (\"12:08 East of Bucharest,\" \"Police, Adjective,\" through the history of hypocrisy and the poker-faced calm of its visual style. \"The Treasure\"), Andrei Ujica (\"The Autobiogra- oppression in Romania and Europe. This Barbed, funny, and at times offhandedly passage is filled with the kind of bitter, biting phy of Nicolae Ceausescu\"), Cristi Puiu savage and brutal, the movie is in control epigrams that a friend would snap or a (\"Aferim,\" \"The Death of Mr. Lazarescu,\" yet also at wit's end. There’s an air of stranger would tweet: at moments, it's \"Aurora\") and Radu Jude (\"I Do Not Care If We resignation from its characters, not so breathtakingly harsh, direct, and gravely Go Down in History as Barbarians\") made Newcity NOVEMBER 2021 much bitterness but irritation, and funny. This passage is like a rapid-fire, rancid movies with exceptionally long takes, with exhaustion from one rude disappointment daydream, as if the movie or the country muted drama or simmering modesty or after another, decade after decade. itself fell asleep in the middle of the twentieth quietly contained sarcasm in a country that \"Bad Luck\" opens with the playful but sloppy century and is still tossing and turning had shuttered its movie theaters. video of relations between schoolteacher with horrors. Romania, in a heyday of elegant, restrained Emi (Katia Pascariu) and her irresponsible dramas had few, if any screens: they had husband Eugen (Stefan Steel), shown in the Many Romanian protagonists are already bonkers, but the pandemic has even all been run down or closed after the failure center of the screen, bordered in pink. passersby in \"Bad Luck\" ready to explode of the post-Ceausescu economy and before Somehow, the video is uploaded to the from behind their masks. (Jude shot during Western powers had brought their invest- internet, taken down, uploaded again, and Romania's second wave of COVID-19.) The ments to that Balkan land of under the parents of her students demand her 76

FILM TOP 5 1Bad Luck Banging Or Loony Porn. Opens Friday, November 19. The Romanian cinema: so it’s come to this! No other national cinema combines comedy and drama in such an understated and fulfilling way. 20,000,000 consumers. Filmmakers set up each other in poetic ways—understanding 2 Licorice Pizza. Opens Friday, November 26. Paul Thomas traveling cinemas to bring their world-class 'poetic' according to Malraux’s definition: Anderson with another Southern California coming-of-age phantasmagoria??? Let's get down to the record store and see if they've got it yet! work to local audiences at first, like how 'Without doubt all true poetry is irrational in 3 C’mon, C’mon. Opens Friday, November 19. Mike Mills goes villagers get movies from the outside world in that it substitutes, for the ‘established’ black-and-white with a road trip relation of things, a new system of relations.'\" with an uncle (Joaquin Phoenix) and Ghana. But in the outside world, the nephew (Woody Norman). There’s supposed to be some “This American Romanian new wave found favor (and finance). The relations that Jude describes are relayed Life”-style noodling, but it’s sure to be all Mills, after addressing his father There was a commonplace about American in a very direct approach as the camera in “Beginners,” his mother in “20th stands at mute at distance and watches his Century Women,” turning, symbolically, low-budget movies in the 1990s, of Sun- to the common oddity of fatherhood. dance-branded movies not limited to \"Clerks\": schoolteacher protagonist as she swims upstream against the city. Along with Emi's The cheapest production value is dialogue. confrontation with the parents (whose many The Romanians knew that, but also about vile prejudices are peeled away along with inexpensive virtues of the persistence of observation: there's an old man neglected by their sexual sanctimony) in a socially distanced, outdoor courtyard setting, the the healthcare system (\"The Death of Mr. camera settles into a topographical musing Lazarescu\")? Keep your eye on him for two-and-a-half hours. Watch the EMTs, the about the country, its commerce, its hospital workers, even the angels prepared citizenry, via the streets of Bucharest. Emi to swoop him away once the world fails him. walks down the choked, busy streets and sidewalks, and the camera follows her, after 4 House of Gucci. Opens Wednesday, November 24. Sir Jude's impulse to make \"Bad Luck\" came a fashion. The widescreen image goes Ridley, at the age of eighty-four, takes the loupe to the dangerous extremities from conversation, which its discursive style drifty-dreamy, moving away from her with of another murderous alien lifeform: the same steady moves in each shot to the sociopathic very rich. betrays. \"The film first appeared out of long survey the streets she traverses from one discussions with friends. On a few occa- humiliation to another, surveying storefronts sions we discussed real-life stories from as she passes, but also detaching from her Romania and other countries, of teachers point of view to a gander at higher stories, being expelled from schools where they billboards and statuary, to look upon the were teaching because of what they were 5 Chicago Critics Film Festival. NOVEMBER 2021 Newcity doing in their private lives: live-cam sex chat ghost traces of shuttered buildings, the Music Box, November 12-14. ironic remnants of weather advertising. Early look-sees at some of the most or posting amateur porn recordings on the highly awaited attractions of the The sound of the city continues, a matrix of season: among them, Jane Campion’s internet,\" he says in the film's press notes. “The Power of the Dog”; Maggie fumes and fuming: just about everybody is Gyllenhaal’s “The Lost Daughter” \"The discussions were so heated, it made and Sean Baker’s “Red Rocket.” ready for a fight, and several erupt around me think that although the topic seems trivial and shallow, there must be a lot more her. There’s a lot of commonplace architec- ture that resembles that of other countries behind it if reactions to it are so powerful. in the region, as well as commonplace Then I decided to make a film—so now I disrepair and abandonment. Voices bark. have the last word in front of my friends, Threats rise. Tempers simmer and erupt. they cannot come up with something like that! The film has three parts which engage It's a fucking disaster! 77

Lit Jonathan Franzen Anne Elizabeth Moore Photo: Greg Martin Newcity NOVEMBER 2021 No Such isolation, depression and an impossibly LIT TOP 5 Thing as a accumulating water bill. Anne Elizabeth Free House Moore’s memoir “Gentrifier” is the result 1 Rochona Majumdar. of the catastrophe that was a free house. University of Chicago. An Interview with The historian and film scholar Anne Elizabeth Moore The most American places are the ones where discusses her book, “Art Cinema things are jammed in as tight a space as and India’s Forgotten Futures: By Joshua Bohnsack possible, full of contradiction and kitsch and Film and History in the Postcolony.” ego. When I connected with Moore, she tells November 1, 5pm What’s the cost of a free house? For Anne me about her current home in New York State Elizabeth Moore, it started with the price where the village abolished police over ten 2 Jayne Kelley and Paul of publicity; appearing on news, television years ago, where they house the nation’s Preissner. Columbia College spots and in local media to be the face of a largest manufacturer of opiates, and where the Student Center. The editors fellowship. When a Detroit charity and arts central celebration is a sausage festival put on discuss their new architecture organization granted Moore a home, based on by the firefighters. It’s a very American place. book, “American Framing,” as an application she forgot she had submitted, part of the Chicago Humanities it seemed perfect. She loaded up her cats, Moore tells me Detroit is a very American Festival. November 6, 11am Thurber and All Girl Metal Band, and left place, as well. “Detroit is one of those cities Chicago for her new home in a majority- where there are enough creative people, 3 Teju Cole. Reva and Bangladeshi neighborhood in Detroit. However, enough engaged people, and there’s enough David Logan Center. the cost evolved into maintenance and hefty jerks, particularly in city government, with The essayist discusses his art repairs like a faulty roof, and furthermore, competing agendas. It’s even fascinating exhibition and subsequent the way neighborhoods happen there, where collection of writing, “Black Paper,” there can be… a vibrant strip of commercial with Amanda Williams as part of businesses down the street, next to sixteen the Chicago Humanities Festival. burned-out houses that haven’t been fully November 13, 10:30am torn down. To me, that’s what the complexities of this country are about.” 4 Angela Jackson. Reva and David Logan Center. The Illinois Poet Laureate is celebrated in an afternoon of readings as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival. November 13, 1pm 5 Nikole Hannah-Jones. Symphony Center. The journalist who led the landmark “1619 Project” for the New York Times discusses her new book of the same name, as part of the Chicago Humanities Festival. November 20, 1pm 78

There are many intersections in that follow. In structuring the Virtual with The Book Cellar the arts communities between manuscript, Moore points out, Detroit and Chicago. People “You can’t just drop a police procedural into a book of jokes.” Book Cellar Book Club discusses Pigeon Panel with commute between the two “Hamnet” by Maggie O’Farrell Rosemary Mosco “A Pocket Guide When Moore showed the November 3, 7pm CST constantly, but Moore did to Pigeon Watching: Getting to Know manuscript to lawyers, to Celebrate beloved Chicago the World’s Most Misunderstood Bird” not account for the societal author Greg Borzo and his new Kathleen Rooney “Cher Ami distance of such geographically validate she had the correct book “A History Lover’s Guide and Major Whittlesey” information, she was sure to to Chicago” Matthew Gavin Frank “Flight close cities. In the book, she November 4, 7pm CST of the Diamond Smuggler” ask if they also found it funny. November 16, 7pm CST writes, “There is much talk in A virtual wine tasting with And while the lawyers who sommelier Kara Joseph celebrating Enjoy a cooking demonstration and Chicago of the meaning of her new book “If Wine Could Talk” “tastes” from Joanne Molinaro’s new book community, and through these signed off on the legal aspects November 10, 7pm CST. Tickets for the “Korean Vegan Cookbook” failed to nd the humor in it, wine tasting portion are $15. November 17, 7pm at the Snaidero showroom, conversations I come to nd 210 West Illinois. Ticket includes a book, $47. my own communities through Moore, herself, certainly enjoys Mindie Barnett shared interests in art, books, the irony of home ownership. “You Don’t Need To Be a Bitch Adam Fine and Benjamin Van Rooij to Be a Boss” discuss their book “The Behavioral Code” social justice, and research… November 11, 7pm CST November 18, 7pm CST But in Detroit, I am adrift. Local As we’ve seen in the past year- acquaintances fail to evolve into and-a-half, home ownership A craft project Evan Moore and housing individuals have with the Girl Scouts “Game Misconduct” friendships; the strong focus November 13, 10:30am-noon November 22, 7pm CST become crucial, yet there are on building traditional nuclear Lucy Adlington families seems to curtail a larger systems at play making it “Dressmakers of Auschwitz” sense of community sustainabil- dif cult. “For the most part,” November 23, 3pm CST ity.” Part of the reason for this Moore says, “I think the thing that is clear about Detroit is that rift is Detroit’s intentionality in setting itself apart from Chicago. the city works really hard to suppress and oppress people This is why Detroit is in the who live there for a long time. Eastern Time Zone, aligning itself with New York in the early Even though I didn’t stay, I do twentieth century (the creation think that is observable.” Go to our website for virtual event details, of time zones being a subject While it seems bleak, Moore book clubs and more! Moore has previously written believes the solution is evident. Your Independent Book Store in Lincoln Square! about). “Detroit wants to 4736-38 N. Lincoln Avenue, Chicago distinguish itself from Chicago,” “To a degree, if we can nd a 773.293.2665 • bookcellarinc.com Moore tells me, “I think for very way to get nancial resources good reason.” She goes on to and cultural resources into that say, “People often leave Detroit city, let the people who are already living there and working rather quickly,” compared to there and doing stuff distribute Chicago where people leave MAKE THE MOVE TO and come back, while in Detroit, it themselves…” ACUPUNCTURE & HERBAL MEDICINE “when they leave, they leave Although she pointed out the One of the most more permanently.” dif culty to nd a sense of an rewarding and flexible careers Moore started writing sections artistic community while living you can have is in a city with too many other in healing and of what would become this holistic medicine factors at play, she was book as jokes. And by jokes, not altogether deprived of I mean anecdotal set-up and punchline: jokes. It’s a structure community. The teenaged girls in Moore’s majority Bangladeshi that lends itself to be con- neighborhood become central sumed. I moved through the pages waiting to see how the characters in the book, as over jokes transform from humorous, time they cared for each other to fascinating, to devastating, through the cultural exchange of zine-making lessons for halal taking the reader back and forth in time to get a full scope meals, and questioning the of her experience. When I ask concept of “American-ness.” “There’s something special about the structure, Moore about these people and the says, “Working in comics for a long time allowed me to gure way they cared for me,” she says when I ask what she Learn how you out how vast leaps in logic misses about the area. “You can find a work on the page.” program you love don’t just get to meet people in this field NOVEMBER 2021 Newcity The heart of the book is in who are that amazing.” American bureaucracy, failing In an oppressive, broken bureaucracy, in a system set housing system, Anne Elizabeth up so nobody can succeed, Moore’s “Gentri er” serves as College and Clinic Location: 8950 Gross Pointe Rd., Suite 400, Skokie, IL 60077 while the people who are the guide for how to laugh at succeeding bypass the bureaucracy altogether. Down the absurdity of bureaucracy. CALL TODAY to the illegality to which the “Gentri er: A Memoir” Midwest College of Oriental Medicine organization purchased the by Anne Elizabeth Moore, house before awarding it to Moore and the court systems Catapult, 272 pages Acupuncture.edu 800-593-2320 79

Music Guided By Voices. Photo: Terri Nelles Seen But Not Heard On Not Listening to Chvrches and Guided By Voices By Craig Bechtel Newcity NOVEMBER 2021 It’s oft-remarked, and as recently as albums, whereas GBV formed in 1983 and that permeates the struggle to prove sexual May in these pages, by me, that one of have released thirty-four albums, not including assault allegations. “California” is the fifth- the hoariest clichés of music criticism is that Pollard’s too-numerous-to-count-unless- largest economy in the world on its own and writing about music is like dancing about you’re-obsessed (and many are) side projects home to millions of people, and vastly different architecture, and so on this occasion I’ve and solo albums. landscapes and environments, so assessing endeavored to avoid writing about music at the music of the song without listening to it all. Such music-writer clichés are so indelibly Rather than listen to “Screen Violence,” which would be a fool’s errand, but it has historically spray-painted upon the flying buttresses of Chvrches released in September, or the new been the home to America’s moviemaking gothic dance halls in Uptown and stickered GBV record that came out last month, I’ve machinations and machinery (including the on the mirrors in the bathrooms of revival punk chosen to seize upon this occasion to further pornography depicted in “Boogie Nights” and clubs of Pilsen, it could drive a skeleton crew advance the technique of criticism by title, perpetuated by such bastions of depravity of of masked and vaxxed antiseptic-spraying in which I argue that, just as there is an artistic the Playboy mansion), and when followed employees beyond distraction. But there I go, relationship between the title of a piece on the track listing by “Violent Delights,” one performing the three-girl rhumba espousing of poetry or fiction, painting, sculpture or wonders if indeed the milieu being evoked is the brilliance of brutalist bricks again. photograph and the work itself, there is also of the horror movie creators, along with the a poetic relationship between the music of seedy, violent dark side of the Sunshine State No, the real thrust of my proscenium is to a recording artist and what they choose to that brought to life real life monsters like the share that I am enthused about the latest call that recorded music. Manson family and the Hillside Strangler, offerings from the Scottish trio Chvrches and fictional avengers embodied by Steve and the pride of Dayton, Ohio, “Uncle Bob” From the album title “Screen Violence,” I McQueen and Clint Eastwood in “Bullitt” Robert Pollard’s Guided By Voices. But I have can extrapolate that while this may not be a and “Dirty Harry” movies, respectively. deliberately avoided, to the best of my ability “concept record,” the position of Chvrches as a at least, listening to either of their new albums. gothic electronic trio whose lead singer, Lauren The darkness that permeates these titles is Mayberry has become a spokesperson for enough to make one wonder “How Not To Before continuing I should make it clear, feminism and has fought back against sexist Drown,” and Robert Smith’s guest vocals assuming their gigs go on as planned, given trolls online, there may be a throughline of (and his remix of the track on the Japanese the uncertainties of the pandemic, the Delta horror/anti-horror and anti-misogyny philoso- version of the album) provide an unlikely variant and whatever other horror show phy coursing through the new record. “Asking response, given the leader of The Cure has October brings, I highly recommend seeing for a Friend” highlights the anonymity that can been known to wallow in his lullabies of both Chvrches on November 19 at the both protect and offend online thoughts that self-pity and homesickness from time to Uptown echo-chamber Aragon (allegedly should require policing, whereas “He Said She time, most egregiously on 1989’s classic if you stand in the middle of the floor and Said” is not a Beatles parody but the dialogue gothic rock masterpiece, “Disintegration.” have the right audio engineer, the sound isn’t that bad) and Guided By Voices on November 12 at Thalia Hall in Pilsen, a more reasonably sized venue for a more reasonably sized following who have the patience to wade through the group’s recorded output. Chvrches have celebrated their ten-year anniversary as a band with four released 80

Smith is also a co-writer of the track, so his in 2004, reunited in 2010 and broke up again advice on keeping one’s head above water in 2014 and then brought it back in 2016 should be extra salient, if not necessarily saline. (after which his henchmen have been stable, including Doug Gillard, guitar, Kevin March, That song is followed by “Final Girl” and drums, Mark Shue, bass and Bobby Bare, Jr., “Good Girls” and it’s not hard to imagine that guitar). The title alludes to GBV being the the word “girl” is being used ironically, given “supermen” of indie rock, and while Pollard’s publishing name was inspired by an early band that it’s often employed as a diminutive reference to the female gender. The word “final” name The Needmores, Needmore Songs might be the last survivor of the horror movie has come to reflect a philosophy of plentitude, serial killer or the last avatar to be played in a which at its best boasts more Who-inspired sexist video game (akin to the female version hooks than a Pete Townshend deep sea fishing trip and which at its worst provides of Ryan Reynolds’ “Free Guy”). Of course, MUSIC TOP 5 what critic Jim DeRogatis has dubbed song- what constitutes a “good girl” is also the 1 Chvrches. Aragon Ballroom. writing diarrhea the likes of which would be The synth-pop trio from subject of debate. Is a “good girl” someone Glasgow, like many bands, recorded akin to the way a Dave Matthews Band tour its latest album (“Screen Violence”) who stays quiet and accepts a pat on the in isolation, which ratcheted up the bus mishap would dampen a sightseeing boat intensity and drama. November 19 head after being abused? Is a good girl someone who does what her male boss tells excursion on the Chicago River. 2 Nick Lowe. Park West. The show billed as “Nick her to do, even if it’s unethical and immoral? Because Pollard’s writing (and he is the lyricist Lowe’s Quality Rock & Roll Revue” finds the indie demigod teamed with Is a good girl someone who saves herself most of the time) can be highly impressionistic, the band Los Straitjackets, his collaborators on his most recent EP, for her wedding night? Or are “Good Girls” not to say seemingly nonsensical and nonsequi- 2018’s “Tokyo Bay.” November 20 women who stand up for themselves, fight torious, the new record features tracks that, 3 The Magnetic Fields. City Winery. Stephin back and don’t acquiesce to the demands when employing a titular analysis, seem very Merritt’s indie-pop outfit gets to tour at last with its latest album, of the institutionalized patriarchy? I would “Quickies” (released in 2020 just argue that the latter are a better representation “of a piece” with the majority of the GBV output. as the pandemic hit), which of what “good girls” can and should be, and Thus there are song titles like “High In The features twenty-eight tunes of I know Mayberry would agree. She would also Rain,” “Dance Of The Gurus” and “Flying sometimes breathtaking brevity. Without A License” near the beginning of the November 16-19 agree, I bet, that I would be remiss if I didn’t record, employing psychedelic frameworks 4 Genesis. United Center. mention, at least in passing, that although Apparently dinosaurs still (and the Dayton denizens continuing their walk the earth; though that’s not she is the lead singer and focal point, Iain really a fair label here, because obsession with flight), as his infatuation with unlike the dinos, Genesis survived Cook and Martin Doherty are the other by evolving. In its first tour in thirteen collections of 1960s “Nuggets” compiled years, we’ll see whether it still is. two-thirds of the trio Chvrches, and all three November 15-16 share writing credits on each of the ten cuts. by Lenny Kaye is regularly exhibited. Both “Psycho House” and “Maintenance Man Of 5 Circuit des Yeux. Thalia Hall. At press time, “-io,” “Lullabies” comes up next, and I’m willing to The Haunted House,” which follow, tell very the latest album by the alternately adventurous and lavish Circuit des bet that this isn’t your mother’s “My Bonnie different stories rooted in similarly constructed Yeux (a.k.a. Chicago’s Haley Fohr) had not yet dropped, but the first Lies Over The Ocean,” especially given that houses. “Razor Bug” and “I Wanna Monkey” single, “Vanishing,” is a legitimate stunner. November 21 the next song in the sequence is “Nightmares.” continue Pollard’s obsession with insects and odd animals, although it’s hard to know if he Clearly those lullabies must not have been very soothing, given the nightmares that follow, has caught a bug for razors and if he sincerely but what do Chvrches see in their nightmares? “wants a monkey” or he “wants to monkey,” as Is it the gothic horror of “The Omen” or Freddie in some primate inspired dance. “Black And White Eyes In A Prism,” “People Need Holes” Krueger’s glove of metal claws? Is this the and “The Bell Gets Out Of The Way” continue “violence” we find on the “screen” or are we supposed to be “screening” for, or screening the altered states of consciousness on parade. If a prism creates colors, what do we see out, this violence? One thing’s for sure, just when we see black-and-white eyes? Or what as it doesn’t belong on a submarine, this is do the black-and-white eyes see? Do they clearly not the place for a screen door. see colors? Pollard is not only a great song- “Better If You Don’t” could be about horrible writer (for the most part), but he’s also a gifted jokes in music reviews, but more likely it’s collage artist, having created many album about someone telling someone else it would covers for bands real and imagined, including Guided By Voices. Are these holes that he be better for them if they didn’t go there, let claims that people need the same holes that sleeping dogs lie, let the abuse of the past and the offenses of the future go unreported The Beatles used to fill the Albert Hall on and unstopped. Ten songs later and just under “A Day In The Life?” If a bell gets out of the forty-three minutes, “Screen Violence” is what I way, doesn’t that cause it to toll? Are these expect to be a harrowing journey through what the same bells of St. Clements that XTC it’s like to be a twenty-first century feminist in a referenced in their psychedelic masterpiece digital age of few consequences for incel trolls “Oranges and Lemons”? Will actually listening to the record answer any of these questions? lurking under drawbridges. NOVEMBER 2021 Newcity Next up in the church of immaculate disco- “It’s Not Them. It Couldn’t Be Them. It Is Them!” very is the new album by Guided By Voices, concludes its fifteen tracks with “Chain Gang ironically entitled “It’s Not Them. It Couldn’t Island” and the early single “My (Limited) Be Them. It Is Them!” This is ironic because Engagement,” which I must admit I have heard, this is the second album GBV has released and is the typically strong “rock and roll” for this year and their eighth full-length in the last which GBV has become known. The title three years, after leader and sole original alludes to more irony afoot, given that Pollard member Robert Pollard (vocals, guitar) almost has toyed with “limiting” the band in the past pulled the plug just before their 1994 break- but in recent years has apparently concluded through “Bee Thousand,” retired the moniker that there are no limits to Guided By Voices. 81

Stage Front, left to right: Hailee Kaleem Wright, Karen Burthwright and Sidney Dupont; Back, left to right: Chloé Davis, Sir Brock Warren, Jamal Christopher Douglas and Jacobi Hall in Paradise Square at Berkeley Rep. Photo: Alessandra Mello, Berkeley Repertory Theatre Newcity NOVEMBER 2021 The World It’s a warm fall Saturday morning complex set. “It will take them another According in downtown Chicago. Horns week to fully load in,” volunteers the to Garth are blaring. Pedestrians scurry by. assistant. A cast member introduces Few notice that the rolling lights of himself and talks about the dance Returning to Chicago the marquee of the Nederlander warmups needed for the show. with Paradise Square, Theatre are on so early in the day, “You’re COVID-free!” comes the verdict. a Pre-Broadway impressively illuminating the Race Musical “Paradise Square” moniker. Descending deep within the bowels of the building, a small elevator takes By Dennis Polkow In the alley behind the theater, us, it is said, to the lowest level of huge, isolated pieces of black the theater. Large, colorful framed 82 scenery temporarily block easy posters of past productions line the passage, gleaming in the bright light basement walls. of day. Escorted through the stage door, a production assistant guides Entering the large rehearsal room, anyone entering, whether cast, crew it is surprising that it is so jam-packed or curious critic, to the COVID test with people for such a remote and station. A quick, long swab up isolated part of the building. Cast each nostril; results in ten minutes. members are standing, but relaxed in places marked by masking tape of Going into the theater while waiting multiple colors. A dozen seated people for results, a crew is onstage putting surround them on two sides, some together pieces of what is obviously a writing on notepads, others typing on

Front: Jacobi Hall; Back, left to right: Garrett Coleman and Jason Oremus in Paradise Square at Berkeley Rep. Photo: Alessandra Mello, Berkeley Repertory Theatre laptops. Two black spinet pianos and a The premise of the show is a pre-Civil War integrity of the population, I think, is at hand. drum set take up the far wall. Every person in Irish and African-American neighborhood I love this city. You know, I would move here the room is masked, including cast, until or that existed in New York prior to the 1863 in a second. If there was any other city I would unless someone has a line or a song lead. Draft Riots. live in North America [aside from Drabinsky’s native Toronto], it would be Chicago. Even with a mask, producer Garth Drabinsky Kaufman warns the cast of a “director cry at a table in the center of the room is clearly alert.” “I can’t get through the finale without “The Irish and African-American history here recognizable with his bushy hair, now gray. crying.” When Joaquina Kalukango movingly and the demographic of the city is incredible We share a quick hello since we had done an starts into the show’s climactic number a and perfect for the show. I don’t know of a interview in this same building twenty-three few feet in front of us, Drabinsky turns and better city to reflect what the show is about years earlier for the opening “Ragtime,” which whispers, “She’s Juilliard-trained.” than Chicago. Drabinsky produced, and he also oversaw a $30 million restoration of this theater. He As lunch is called, we head to Drabinsky’s “Chicago popped up in ‘Show Boat.’ The NOVEMBER 2021 Newcity invites me to join him, next to a production dressing room. The familiar cane he used in the Palmer House and this and that. It just had assistant taking copious notes by hand on nineties due to childhood polio has since given a history. The two years I did ‘Joseph and everything that is transpiring. way to a walker. An assistant is nearby but the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” here Drabinsky takes every deliberate step himself. with Donny Osmond. ‘Aspects of Love’ at The stage manager calls order and director A steaming bowl of soup served in patterned Lyric Opera. All of that and then doing ‘Show Moises Kaufman begins energetically china is waiting for him with a few crackers. Boat’ at the Auditorium Theatre. walking the cast through the final scene of “This is my only chance for sustenance.” Drabinsky’s new show, “Paradise Square,” “I used to own the Chicago Theatre when it verbally dissecting every element. The dialogue “It’s still a work-in-progress, but hopefully was a movie theater, because I used to own between the Black and white cast is some- you get a sense of it,” says Drabinsky, settling two-thirds of the movie theaters in Chicago. times volatile but the working atmosphere in. “There is another ending that we had that’s Cineplex Odeon and I bought Plitt Theaters. is collegial and familial. Cast members raise just as emotional.” Has a final decision been My history with this city goes back to 1985.” issues and make suggestions. Egos are made about which to use? “No.” left at the door. Lines viewed as extraneous When asked about what else has changed are cut. When meaning is unclear, lines are Has Chicago changed, I wondered, since since Drabinsky worked here regularly, changed. Show composer Jason Howland Drabinsky was last here in the late 1990s, Drabinsky takes a deep breath. I thought is accompanying the cast at the piano and laying the groundwork for what became he might address how the rather public fall of thanks an ensemble member for a sponta- Broadway in Chicago? his once mega-company Livent or his 2009 neous suggestion tried and adapted about conviction and subsequent prison time for paring back the chorus for one verse of a “The city is still architecturally glorious, the fraud and forgery had changed him, but he song to heighten the buildup of the next verse. people are still Midwestern-hospitable. The cast his net more widely. 83

“America has changed. The world has Garth Drabinsky. changed. America has gone through Photo: Hudson Taylor incredible turbulence since I cornered the rights to this piece in 2013. Photography “No one could have been prescient enough to see the immigration formula blow up and see America turning deaf ears on immigrants during the Trump era. “Then to see the hideousness of racism raise its profile and to watch the aftermath of George Floyd as if it was 1965 again with protests and marches in the streets such as leading up to 1968 in Chicago. I had lived through that experience in my lifetime and thought I would never have to live it again. But there it was. Newcity NOVEMBER 2021 STAGE TOP 5 “And then the pandemic. You know, to the historical struggle of the evolution of I’ve lived through bank failures, I’ve culture, the evolution of a population.” 1 Paradise Square. James lived through wars. But I hadn’t lived M. Nederlander Theatre. through the world shutting itself down. When workshopping “Paradise Square” in See the most-anticipated new And all that did was bring up for me, early 2019 in Berkeley, California, Drabinsky Broadway musical before Broadway the world that I had to live through when says the Shubert family came to see it and does. Opens November 2 I was a young kid when I had polio. wanted to bring it to New York. “We made plans to do that in spring 2020 but then, 2 Remember This: The “And to hear the insanity of the rightwing boom. The pandemic hit. Not knowing Lesson of Jan Karski. response of ‘No vaccination! No vaccination!’ when Broadway was going to reopen, I said Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Are you kidding me? God has allowed a maybe we should be coming to one other Award-winning actor David Straitharn vaccination to materialize in such a short place before New York. I remembered the plays the Holocaust messenger time to heal the world, and you’re turning embrace of the city of my work in the past whom the White House failed to your backs on that? When I lived in a polio and thought, what about Chicago? What heed. Opens November 3 isolation hospital when I was three-and-a-half, about my theater? I made the decision to where I lived with kids in iron lungs who were come to Chicago in December of last year 3 Bug. Steppenwolf. Carrie being wheeled out every night three, four, and then the Barrymore Theatre opened for Coon and Namir Smallwood five at a time, dead the next morning? And us around June. So really Chicago predated star in a revival of Tracy Lett’s creepy you are even questioning for a millisecond the final opportunity to come to New York.” classic. Opens November 11 whether or not you are going to be blessed with getting a vaccination? The insanity of Given all that has transpired, what was it like 4 Her Honor Jane Byrne. that is simply incomprehensible. for Drabinsky to return to a theater he restored Lookingglass Theatre. twenty-three years later? Remember when Chicago’s mayor “What has changed? The entire population moved into the city’s worst seems to have changed. That’s what has “It was a completely surreal experience. What public-housing project? Writer- changed. There has been an attempt to rip can I tell you?” Did Drabinsky have to pinch director J. Nicole Brooks does. down the entire fabric of the country. Nothing himself? “Yeah. Beyond. I said to my cast the Opens November 11 left standing. When you start dealing with first day that it’s very seldom that a cast gets voter rights legislation and are not able to get to work with a producer who also built the 5 Florencia en el Amazonas. unanimity on legislation for the basic tenets theater. In this day and age, that doesn’t Lyric Opera. Lyric’s first of life when there is such economic disparity happen very often. mainstage Spanish-language opera in the country. To watch this country come follows a diva on a magical realist to the precipice of anarchy, to the precipice “And the diversity of this show, its scope, its journey into the Brazilian jungle. of losing its hard-fought democracy. Having drama, its intensity, its emotion: everything that Opens November 13 lived so much in America over the years and ‘Ragtime’ was, this is as well. This is the most watching it happen from outside the country powerful show that I have had my name on. 84 just tore my heart apart.” It’s certainly of the same genre as ‘Ragtime.’ I think it will go down in that same legacy of A key change and culprit in assisting all of show. I can’t say more than that until you see this, as Drabinsky sees it, has been social it. But I think you’ll feel it.” media. “There is so much more to life than a phone, than a computer screen. Sitting in “Paradise Square” runs November 2- a concert hall and listening to the majesty of a December 5 at the Nederlander Theatre, symphony orchestra is worth a year of being 24 West Randolph, broadwayinchicago.com. on Facebook. This manipulation of a popula- tion of kids who don’t know how to communi- cate anymore, who can’t talk to each other. This is what pushes me to want to produce theater to get people to think, to reflect. To be provoked to conversation into change, into understanding where they are in respect

eviews Interior Garrick Theatre during demolition, 1952. Photo: Richard Nickel, Ryerson & Burnham Libraries, Art Institute of Chicago Installation view, “Reproductive: Health, Fertility, and Agency,” Museum of Contemporary Photography 2021. 85 NOVEMBER 2021 Newcity

Review Art Maybe we surpass the limitations of greet you when you come home; shared experience in the moments someone who will stay by your side Friend Zones where we are in on the joke. Tita when you are sick. Being there may A Review of Smashing into my Cicognani’s video tracks a zombified be cruel, passive, erotic, funny, perfor- Heart at the Renaissance Society heroine’s long crawl of desperation mative, loving, friendly and everything and desire along a desert island terrain. in between. But being there, in the Friendship happens in the space Saturated with cultural references space between you and me, is some- between you and me: two beings from the late nineties and early 2000s times all we need. (Alexandra Drexelius) poised at the edge of themselves, and accompanied by the effervescent acknowledging that they mean some- drone of a trance anthem, this video “Smashing into my heart” is thing to each other. Friendship lets may mean more to you if you grew on view at the Renaissance Society, me be real with you. But what does up with Shakira, the bend-and-snap 5811 South Ellis, through November 7. it mean to be a real friend? Do we and “Mean Girls” quotes, but at its ever truly cede ourselves to someone core, the video is about getting it. It Rethinking Exhibition Making else’s company? enacts a sense of collective compre- A Review of Mike Lopez at Material hension and speaks to the kind of Myriam Ben Salah’s inaugural friendship that is both embodied Somewhere in the last decade or so, curatorial project at the Renaissance and performed through shared tastes between the ubiquity of social practice Society, “Smashing into my heart,” and touchstones. art, the brief du jour of relational scrutinizes the intricacies and incongru- aesthetics, assemblages and totalizing ities of our attachment to others, A counterpoint to the allure of universal objects, to say nothing of a pandemic through the work of thirteen artists. kinship arises in Park McArthur’s and a far-right turn in the United States, As a format, contemporary group inkjet-printed correspondence with art has increasingly concerned itself shows can make for terrible friendships. Ben Salah. McArthur’s email, with with the revealing of systems. Be it Often divorced from a historical subject line “Involuntary Questions,” questions and ideas around individual trajectory and loosely tethered to a inquires, “What kinds of arrangements complicity, structural inequity or simply theme, group shows are latent sites would you not even have to think about institutional critique, this contemporary for clutter, clumsiness and conflict. at all / What kinds of arrangements compulsion to pull back the curtain has, if not always successfully, elucidated its political ambitions, at least given us some exciting and novel approaches to what constitutes art, exhibition making and authorship. In “Dealer’s Choice,” the deceptively simple exhibition from Mike Lopez at Material (as part of the 2021 Terrain Biennial), the artist uses the occasion as a solo show, complete with (mostly) new work, almost as a pretense to highlight the liminal space of art handlers and preparators in exhibition making. Newcity NOVEMBER 2021 Rather than narrate a tale of unlikely cannot be described.” Juxtaposing Lopez’s works in this exhibition are affinities that coalesce into a succinct the privilege of being effortlessly a baffling, Wunderkammer-evoking and mellifluous ode to companionship, understood and the simultaneous collection of sculptures. Brightly colored Ben Salah shrewdly leverages the impossibility of being understood at religious iconography mingles with inadequacies of the group-show format all, she interrogates the ways that care (figurative and literal) phallic shapes, to trace the uneasy contours of spaces can fall apart when we presume we while transparent boxed assemblages where friendships end and begin. The know what someone else desires. with various materials share equal artworks on view are at odds with one space with finely crafted figurative work. another. Their spatial rapport is uneven— But knowing someone intimately The anachronistic pairings almost read some works take up too much space is about more than gratification. as a crash course in sculptural variety, while others hide in a corner. Some Casting aside the lachrymose and a fact only offset by the irreverence works are doubled, placed on opposite saccharine, friendship can be about and playfulness that these works sides of the gallery, cutting across being someone’s someone. Dispersed evoke. While great care and thought space and talking over one another. throughout the exhibition, Hervé is clearly put into each sculpture, there Vying for attention, the artworks Guibert’s intimate black-and-white is no sense of preciousness, nor a express relationships through their photographic prints from the eighties request for veneration. These are deficiencies—to be a friend in this space offer tender vignettes of the moments works that literally avoid being put is to be everything and never enough. where friends come through: someone on a pedestal, presented instead on to bum a smoke off of; someone to crude pallet-like displays. This latter point—Lopez’s seeming indifference toward the art object’s highfalutin’ character—gets to the crux of the exhibition itself. Upon my visit to the first of three iterations of “Dealer’s Choice,” (paid) art handlers (also curators, educators and artists) Maggie Wong and Isaac Vazquez were hard at work constructing a display. After an hour or so (and lunch), Wong 86

Reviews and Vazquez took to choosing which In a note from Wong and Vazquez bring “the essence of these two titans of modern American architecture to of Lopez’s works, all laid out on the left for the art handlers for the show’s life.” Both feature striking digital video re-creations of the demolished buildings floor for the viewer to see, to put on second iteration, a series of additional alongside extensive photography, architectural renderings, correspon- said display. Not content to just be an ideas for display were presented, dences, original furniture and beautifully exercise in subjective curating, Lopez some straightforward, some cryptic. articulated didactics. My favorite reads simply “What else?” gave his art handlers a paper fortune Larkin: A Modern This is an ambiguous question that not Cathedral of Commerce teller or “cootie catcher” with cryptic only leaves room for art-object-display The Larkin Administrative Building instructions such as “make it sing” was designed and built at the turn consideration, but one that guides of the twentieth century to serve as and “highest, lowest?” to guide their the headquarters of the Larkin Soap decisions, an exercise in collaborative the locus of the exhibition. What Company, a mail-order conglomerate other possibilities for collaboration based in Buffalo, New York. The chance operations. construction marked a significant shift and working together might coalesce in Wright’s architectural practice from domestic to commercial structures. Shifting the focus of the art exhibition if we were to just simply provide such The building was expensive and showy yet imbued with a humble to the labor that crafts it into being opportunities? (Chris Reeves) and utilitarian work ethic. There was a conservatory on the top floor, and isn’t a particularly new idea. Yet, in the the building boasted numerous technological innovations including intimate—both in scale and network— “Dealer’s Choice” is on view a mechanism for melting snow off of the roof in the winter. feel of a space such as Material, this at Material, 2025 West Belmont, Katz uses the Larkin as a case study move has a particular force, almost through November 7. for his conception of “Protestant Modernism,” which essentially means as if to say that even in smaller-scale Design motivational architecture. He writes that the building celebrates “the marriage spaces and exhibitions, systems between Arts-and-Crafts ideologies of power could stand to be better [simplicity, utility and beauty] and new technologies during a time of increasing illuminated. Such a move doesn’t dilute Reviewing Romanticism to Ruin industrialization.” Katz situates Wright the overall playfulness and generous Two Lost Works of Sullivan idealism of “Dealer’s Choice,” but rather, and Wright in its minor gesture of art labor recali- bration, crafts and proposes a model Dual exhibitions have opened at one of for conditions for the occasion of art to Chicago’s newest venues for socially be something truly shared, more open engaged art and architecture, Wright- and without the hierarchies so often NOVEMBER 2021 Newcity wood 659. In these tandem shows, the demanded through market impositions. no-longer-extant buildings are the main characters while the architects and preservationists play supporting roles. left: Installation view, “Smashing into my “Reconstructing the Garrick: Adler & heart,” 2021, The Renaissance Society at Sullivan’s Lost Masterpiece” curated by the University of Chicago/©Renaissance John Vinci with Tim Samuelson, Chris Society at the University of Chicago/Photo: Ware and Eric Nordstrom, and “Re- Useful Art Services imagining the Larkin: Frank Lloyd above: Larkin Administration Building Wright’s Modern Icon” curated by demolition, May 1950 Jonathan D. Katz, jointly endeavor to 87

Review “Dune: Part One” Newcity NOVEMBER 2021 as a pragmatic and utopian architect, World’s Fair came to Chicago. Originally evolved in unfortunate ways that did viewing buildings as a means to better conceived as a German opera house— not respect the architectural integrity the lives of those it serves. Katz posits or was it a hotel?—the hotly contested of the building.” that the Larkin building itself was but poorly archived edifice was lauded ideologically imbued with work ethic for successfully fusing technological Curators call the 1961 razing of the as part of a company culture that utility, and beauty and creativity—or, Garrick a turning point for Nickel, nurtured productivity. Motivational text as Sullivan famously called it, form but the term “breaking point” is more was inscribed on the wall in triplets, and function. accurate. The ill-fated struggle to save espousing values such as “generosity, the Garrick hardened him, leaving altruism, sacrifice” and “imagination, If the story of the Larkin is one of him cynical and reckless. Nickel died judgement, initiative.” Wright, opines productivity, the story of the Garrick is in 1972 when Sullivan’s Chicago Stock Katz, believed that “a building could be one of obsession. The Garrick is widely Exchange collapsed with him inside. a mechanism through which you could considered patient zero of the modern He was forty-three years old. Nickel’s achieve your highest potential.” historic preservation movement, with ghost looms like a specter over the the building’s long-suffering proponent exhibition, haunting the darkened In addition to providing a home base and preservationist—Richard Nickel— hallways and instilling in the viewer the at the forefront of luxury and technology, serving as its patron saint. Nickel sense that when the Garrick came the Larkin company championed what devoted his life to the documentation down, both a building and a person we now call “perks”—quality-of-life and preservation of Adler & Sullivan were destroyed. (Erin Toale) benefits for its workers. The coffee buildings. Exhibition curator Vinci break allegedly originated at Larkin, protested on behalf of preservation Film which also featured an in-house alongside Nickel. In addition to picket- restaurant where meals were served ing, Vinci aided Nickel in his relentless Conversation Usually Follows at cost. This was somewhat cheekily salvaging of the building’s ornamenta- A Review Of Dune: Part One described by curators as the equivalent tion—scavenging chunks of marble of ping-pong tables at modern Google and terra cotta displayed at Wright- Denis Villeneuve’s painstakingly facilities, in the same breath as describ- wood alongside reproductions and parceled “Dune: Part One” is an art ing Larkin as “the original Amazon.” other ephemera. Their work led to the installation inspired by the first half of Wright’s fatal design error was custom- 1968 passing of the Chicago Landmark the 1965 novel as well as the matrix izing the building to a fault; considered Ordinance. The field of conservation of inspirations behind Frank Herbert’s too specific to be repurposed, it was remains indebted to them. work. The IMAX screen serves as a demolished in 1950. vitrine for immersion into sensation and Vinci, aided by Tim Samuelson (the allusion. We begin in media res with The Life and Death people’s cultural historian) and exhibi- the merest signposts of the battle that of the Garrick Theater tion designer Chris Ware (renowned these clans war eight-thousand years graphic artist) have created a living, from now in a mystical, dynastic age of The second and third floors of Wright- breathing exhibition in memoriam. telepathy. We’re right there in the thick wood 659 are dedicated to a theatrical, The first floor of the show reanimates of things, backstory limited to characters immersive installation historicizing the dramatic, moody colors originally greeting each other by name in fellow- Chicago’s Garrick Theatre (fka Schiller used to produce an enchanting effect well-met fashion. With each movie, Theatre), designed by Dankmar Adler on theatergoers, while the second Villeneuve is more daring about implica- and Louis Sullivan. The pair had made floor is elegiac in black-and-white. tion and ellipsis: there are no clumps a name for themselves pioneering the The exhibition is speculative at points, of specialized knowledge in his quarter- building structure that came to be as the Garrick was both poorly docu- billion-dollar adaptation. Should the known as the skyscraper. The Garrick mented and constantly altered when experience require familiarity with the opened in 1892, the year before the extant. Samuelson laments that “it text? Villeneuve appears to think not. 88

As spectacle, “Dune: Part One” Readings of and readings into “Dune: Zoom meetings on TV at night. Reviews Shteyngart reimagines the uncertainty betrays a mighty appreciation for Part One”: this stuff’s a delight, such of those early days, and also adds context and clarity, even as we remain brutalist architecture exploded across as from Haris Durrani: “I find the in the midst of pandemic life. A Russian books’ engagement with Islam to novelist by the name of Sasha Sen- millennia. The royals whose wealth derovsky has invited his friends to transcend linguistic wordplay and join him and his wife and child in the exceeds imagination are cloistered country to wait out the pandemic in obscure intertextuality. After all, relative safety. The grounds hold small in bunkers that belong in a Francis bungalows where the friends can Coppola Belizean spa, at least before Herbert was fascinated by linguistics work and sleep, and they meet in the and believed words shape substantive evening on the large porch of the main pandemic demolished that industry. house, separated and sanitized, at least meaning. The use of ‘Voice’ by the in the beginning. The guests are two It’s a very cool hotel to check into for of Senderovsky’s friends from high Bene Gesserit, an order of imperialist school, Karen Cho, the creator of a a few minutes. popular app called Tröö Emotions, and superhuman female breeders, is a Vinod Mehta, a struggling writer. Ed Kim, also an old friend, is someone “Dune: Part One”‘s story, amid battles prime example of this, as is the saga’s Senderovsky is desperate to impress, and explosions, is of Paul Atreides, a running obsession with symbols and Dee is a young protégé who has recently published a successful book curly-haired ephebe of fifteen or sixteen and myths. As these semiotic tools of essays. Finally, there’s a famous actor wield tremendous power within the who’s meant to star in an adaptation (Timothée Chalamet), hardly weighty of Senderovsky’s last book. He is enough to stand a sandy breeze, who ‘Dune’ universe, Herbert’s references mainly referred to as “the Actor,” is presumed to have gained messiah- likewise generate a profound ‘Muslim- leaving the reader the pleasure of ness’ that goes beyond mere orientalist casting the leading man of their choice. like identity after generations of Shteyngart portrays the characters’ aesthetics. (This is not to say that the insecurities with his hallmark wit, purposeful breeding. He could be sending them to ridiculous lengths to the “Kwisatz Haderach,” but is teased ‘Dune’ novels are not orientalist in other appear more wealthy or admired than by characters as being more of a “Baby ways, which I have detailed elsewhere.) they actually are. After Vinod admits Spice.” There are ready contemporary Dune does not cheaply plagiarize from to having seen the actor in an “avant- metaphors: the “spice,” melange, that Muslim histories, ideas, and practices, garde version of ‘The Cherry Orchard,’” all seek as fuel for interplanetary travel but actively engages with them.” he replies, “When I was much younger. I played the actual orchard, if I remem- (and is also a potent psychoactive Most munificent is the Tim Grierson ber correctly. Or the personification of it.” and later, “I’m just a vessel. drug), is ready reminder of the oil that Chekhov was the genius?” enriched the cruel kingdoms of MENA reading of the movie’s proud trudge: “‘Dune’ Is the Pretentious Big-Screen (Middle East-North Africa) for over a Movie We Need Right Now.” “You century, as well as the intoxicating might be on the wavelength of Denis power of visions and the potential of Villeneuve, a director whose films delusion. The shadow of climate are spectacularly pretentious. But change falls across the terrain that is despite their eye-rolling excesses and uninhabitable by day. lumbering sense of significance, his The beauty in its floating slabs of movies have finally worn down my airborne warships, its landscapes defenses. His are the kind that you like ruins of battle and flying vehicles need to see in a theater—anything resembling most vulnerable dragonflies smaller would be insufficient for their thematic and visual hugeness.” nears abstraction; Greig Fraser’s Grierson continues: “The guy is cinematography often labors in fool enough to believe that a large near-darkness, given to halation or percentage of the population still fuzziness even when sand is on the cares enough about theaters to ground instead of filling the sky. The mount such overblown spectacles. armature of the whole on a big, big screen with Hans Zimmer’s busy, loud, ‘Dune’ is his latest, and it very much plans to crush you under its boot,” largely indifferent score is akin to a fire-flamed sculpted metal bush upon Grierson writes, “merging impeccable which to hang tags of what one knows style with a lethal amount of chin- stroking self-regard. He doesn’t make or cares about the doings onscreen: empty-calorie blockbusters, you see— BYO text and intertext and subtext and deeply personal slumgullion. I liked he’s making Important Statements.” a small, twirling metal sculpture of a bull and a fighter; in the book of “Dune,” Conversations usually follow: Symposia, panel discussions, prophetic screeds his grandfather is killed by a bull, but of high hallucination, bring them on. it is also reminiscent of the origami unicorn of “Blade Runner.” Allusions to I’ve seen the thing, now I want to read other bits of text and other movies and more pieces like Grierson’s. (Ray Pride) works of art will be footnoted for some Lit time to come. Can the elliptical “DPO” be an involving Cherry Orchard Living NOVEMBER 2021 Newcity narrative to the uninitiated, that is, A Review of Our Country Friends most of the world’s potential theater- goers in dark times? Or is it a vessel Gary Shteyngart’s latest novel, “Our to pour one’s specialized erudition or Country Friends,” is perhaps one of lifelong fixations? It’s eminently diverting the first “pandemic novels” to emerge. to slip into a piece about the “Muslim- It’s greatly preferable to any “pandemic ness” of Frank Herbert’s work, or to TV” that first assaulted us (except read someone whose life was trans- for “Superstore”) and certainly most formed in so many ways by the man’s “pandemic movies.” There’s nothing work. Experts on language and MENA worse after sitting in Zoom meetings cultures weigh in. all day than watching people have 89

Review The character of Senderovsky is forges on even as the proverbial cherry spot on. One other surprise is that this unabashedly similar to Gary Shteyngart orchard is chopped down around them. pastoral paste-up spins not “Strawberry himself, who was featured in the real As in any good Chekovian story, a Fields Forever.” It’s nothing to get hung estate section of the New York Times metaphorical gun has been introduced about; we still get to marvel at two a few years ago in his own country in the first act, and it must go off in the creative forces separated in life by three villa (although with only one guest second. What might have begun as centuries, but knit together by their gifts cottage). In that article, he boasts that silly and satirical veers toward heartfelt to turn phrases, poetical and musical. he can write much more quickly than and meaningful as the COVID-19 virus in New York, perhaps one of the makes its way into their secluded and As in a more standard version of the reasons his pandemic novel is one pampered lives. (Kelly Roark) comedy, wrestling plays a role at the of the first to emerge. However, “Our start. In this version, we’re taken to Country Friends” feels anything but “Our Country Friends” by Gary a 1960s pro wrestling ring, where the rushed. It has the leisurely quality of Shteyngart, Random House, 336 pages future wooers and lovers fall for, and on, one another. The actors don’t go full Rosalind (Lakeisha Renee) find that love Dick the Bruiser, but the spoof of the is all she needs in Chicago Shakespeare sport has plenty of faux body slams and Theater’s production of “As You Like It.” moonsaults. There’s lots of non-Shake- spearean banter in the scene, so we are Photo: Liz Lauren clued in that we’re going somewhere new. The square ring belongs, of course, to Duke Frederick, the power usurper— Kevin Gudahl as a sleazy swinger à la Penthouse founder Bob Guccione, circa 1969—who peers down on the mayhem as punches fly and band plays. Dukes, pro wrestlers, a rock band? O Jupiter, it’s a duke-box-musical! The rest of the cast includes some of Chicago Shakespeare’s, and the city’s, best actors. They mostly give the Shakespearean bits their proper, comprehensible due. The mode of comedy, and clever choreography, is broad. It sometimes borders on the old-school-but-now-cringeworthy, particularly in overuse of childlike, doe-eyed and dewy, milksop schtick Stage between the play’s lovers. The excess a, yes, Russian novel with a wide of cartoonish fluster robs the comedy cast of characters both rich and poor, of what can be a bubbling hot sexual youthful and desired, aging and desiring. Shteyngart captures the Fields of Love energy. But, this production is arguably odd way time moved during the early days of the pandemic, how, despite A Review of “As You Like It” at a musical above all and in musicals the our isolation, we were bound by fear and confusion. Everyone was obsessed Chicago Shakespeare Theater playing’s the thing. And the singing. with the same shows on Netflix, everyone looked askance at what other On that score, it is a success. The people considered safe practices. While this book couldn’t be any more A pastoral comedy is just what the wonderful Heidi Kettenring, as Phoebe, relevant today, it seems very likely that it might come to represent this moment doctor ordered to ease our way out offers a beautifully moving version of in history—although very much through the perspective of privileged people of our recent confinement. Chicago “Something” that is, well, something. who can afford to move away from their homes and jobs for months. Shakespeare Theater obliges with its Is there anything in the play that Austin Senderovsky and his friends may bright, energetic tale of souls fleeing Eckert, new to Chicago Shakes, cannot be moderately safe in “the familiar environment of the covered porch, death and duplicity and finding peace do? A lovely singer, he’s a master on the bourgeoisie pleasure dome of their and love in the woods, “As You Like It.” guitar (in a Hendrix wig) and as Amiens, elaborate meals,” but they live in uneasy gifts us with “While My Guitar Gently distance with some of the locals who But it’s not all Shakespeare. This frighten them with displays of domi- Weeps.” Lakeisha Renee has a sweet, nance, whether by aggressive driving production is a mingled yarn of the or white power slogans. Although the compelling legit voice that brings neighbors with their pickup trucks Elizabethan comedy classic and and blue flags and the liberals at twenty-four songs by The Beatles. The new meaning to several songs, most Senderovsky’s retreat are indicative of action still takes place in the enchanting penetratingly in “You’ve Got to Hide Your the greater reckoning America contin- Forest of Arden, although the enchant- Love Away.” Deborah Hay’s searing, ues to have, this cast of characters ment this round is the Magical Mystery haunting “The Fool on the Hill” nearly pushes The Beatles version out of mind. variety, complete with a flower-pow- dered VW bus and a Peter Max-colored Lechrisa Grandberry is a stunning singer Newcity NOVEMBER 2021 who has performed widely in Milwaukee stage. The main props on stage are and in this production has the secondary tree trunks, so magic mushrooms must be near. Like the verse in the play, role of Audry. Hopefully Chicago will see, the selection of Beatles’ songs mostly and hear, her more often. Several of the ply the fields of love, but stray, too, to band members ably double in the action other topics, such as money, sunshine, on stage. So much for them being loneliness (banishment) and foolishness. merely players in this playful show. You can guess the tunes. Here’s a small (Ted C. Fishman) hint: One of the band members plays “As You Like It” at Chicago Shakespeare trombone. The songs slot into the action well, and are often surprisingly Theater, through November 21 90

Annie Leibovitz December 7, 2021 at 7:00pm Live at the Harris Theater for Music and Dance You know her portraits, now hear from the legendary photographer herself. Join Annie Leibovitz for an exclusive event to mark the publication of her latest collection, Wonderland—a series of photographs chronicling her encounters with fashion over the years. Get tickets and explore the fall lineup: chicagohumanities.org

UP NEXT: ON VIEW NOW: TALK: ANDREA BOWERS ANDREA BOWERS BANI ABIDI: THE MAN WITH LUCÍA SANROMÁN, NOV 20, 2021– WHO TALKED UNTIL HE MICHAEL DARLING, MAR 27, 2022 DISAPPEARED AND CONNIE BUTLER Experience the first career THROUGH JUN 5, 2022 NOV 19, 6–7 PM retrospective spanning more Pakistani artist Bani Abidi Join artist Andrea Bowers than twenty years of artist uses humor and absurdism in in conversation with a panel Andrea Bowers’s practice, her video, photography, and of renowned curators in a which is rooted in activist sound installations to critique discussion of her mid-career efforts. Reserve tickets in those who hold power—and retrospective exhibition. advance. the many ways they wield it. PHOTO: Andrea Bowers, Step It Up Activist, Sand Key Reef, Key West, Florida, Part of North America’s Only Remaining Coral Barrier Reef (detail), 2009. Charlotte Feng Ford Collection. Photo: Courtesy of Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York. MUSEUM OF For more information, CONTEMPORARY ART scan the QR code or visit CHICAGO mcachicago.org/look.