May 2024 Issue: Ramberg (Digital Edition)

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The Other Oregon Trail

Searching for Familiarity, Old Friends and Lorado Taft, Forty Years Later

"My fondest childhood memories are set in White Pines State Park. Setting out from Chicago, I loved our two-hour drive from the city to Oregon, Illinois because I could see the countryside go from prairie flat to hilly. And I loved the cabin in which my family stayed, one of thirteen that had been built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s; they were constructed with massive logs, and inside each cabin was a fireplace and comfortable bed." (Natalia Nebel)

The Magus of Masonite

Inside Christina Ramberg's retrospective at the Art Institute

One of those two was Christina Ramberg, whose wedding was, no doubt, a portent of her artistic output: she’d make a habit of invoking solemn beauty where it’s least expected. The retrospective of her work at the Art Institute—the first since the University of Chicago’s Renaissance Society in 1988—is sure to inspire young artists possessing the creative fervor that she had." (Charles Venkatesh Young)

When He Grooved in Chi

How the city shaped the writing and worldview of Terry Southern

"In early 1947, Terry Marion Southern, a slim, twenty-two-year-old Texan with thick dark hair and a courtly manner, came to Chicago to finish his college education. His time in the Army in Europe during World War II had given him a more cosmopolitan outlook, and he no longer wanted to finish a pre-med degree at Southern Methodist University. The racism in Texas appalled him. So he headed north, covering up his accent." (Mary Wisniewski)

An Unforgettable Discovery

The story behind the Nat King Cole Live at the Blue Note Chicago tapes

"The historic 1953 Chicago sessions would not be heard today if club owner Frank Holzfeind had not kept a Chicago-made Webcor reel-to-reel player in his back office. He taped ten hours of Cole’s six-day residency that included 220 takes." (Dave Hoekstra)

Florence Price Goes to Vienna

A forgotten Black Chicago composer shines in the music capital

Not so for Florence Price’s Symphony No. 3. When Muti began the opening of the Price piece, there was much anticipation. No one knows music like the Viennese, but few in the music capital knew this piece by the early twentieth-century Black female Chicago composer whose First Symphony had been the first by a woman composer of color performed by a major American orchestra. That was more than ninety years ago when the CSO and then-music director Frederick Stock premiered it in 1933 to great acclaim. (Dennis Polkow)

Arts & Culture

Art: A consideration of Mina Loy at the Arts Club

Dance: Cerqua Rivera Dance Theatre is still peeling the onion after twenty-five years

Design: Assaf Evron's layered visions inhabit the Farnsworth

+ Mood: Bath

Dining & Drinking: On the verge of a chili moment

Film: Why "Dark Matter" matters

Lit: A conversation with Miranda July on “All Fours”

Music: Jason and Alison are back together after thirty years

Stage: How “The Thanksgiving Play” will have you rethinking your favorite holiday

Reviews

The culture just keeps on turning and churning, thankfully.

Poetry

Portrait as Landscape: Seam: A new poem by Simone Muench and Jackie K. White

84 pages

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