May 2026 Issue: Art + Water (Print Edition)

Dispatches from Diaryland

Betsy Rubiner looks at the hows and whys of journaling

"Revisiting that diary many years later, Rubiner found a page labeled “IDENTIFICATION,” with fill-in-the-blank lines for name, address, phone and so on. One blank was for weight. There was a scribble on the line, followed by “59” written in pencil. Looking closer at the scribble, Rubiner found that she had originally written “60” and crossed it out. “I smile, recognizing my lifetime habit of fudging my weight,” Rubiner writes in “Our Diaries, Ourselves.” “This is me.” (Mary Wisniewski)

Dear Mary, For Chicago, Sincerely Nathaniel Mary Quinn

The artist explores his public housing heritage

"On the corner of Taylor and Ada Street where the very last portions of the historic Jane Addams Homes stand is the permanent location of the National Public Housing Museum. A product of remodeling by the museum’s architect Peter Landon and his team, the institution is a sprawling series of histories on a single site." (Lucas Gómez-Doyle)

Art Buzz

Museu Vassouras restores the glamour to the town once known as Brazil’s Coffee Princess

"In the heart of Brazil’s historic Vale do Café (Coffee Valley), cultural energy is stirring, led by a new museum and one of the country's most compelling teams. Thirty-three-year-old Catarina Duncan, a graduate from Goldsmiths, University of London, and a rising star on Brazil’s art circuit, has traded the metropolitan galleries of MoMA and the São Paulo Biennial for a project with deep territorial roots: the artistic directorship of Museu Vassouras, inaugurated in August 2025, in the town with the same name." (Cynthia Garcia)

Signs of Life

Artist Donnie Carter's seventy years of being a tourist in Chicago

"Donnie Carter is an eighty-six-year-old artist and sign painter who is always on the move. He lives in a small, one-bedroom apartment in the Chicago Housing Authority’s Mahalia Jackson Apartments, 9141 South South Chicago. His dimly lit living room is filled with his colorful work: kids with balloons, a nude black velvet piece from the 1960s, and posters of a painting he created of Dr. Margaret Burroughs, one of his teachers. It is challenging for visitors to find a place to sit down." (Dave Hoekstra)

Lake Effect

Exploring the maritime wonders of Chicago

"It’s as blue and vast as the Atlantic or the Pacific. It’s so big that you can’t see to the other side. When people look at Lake Michigan for the first time they can be surprised by its vastness. More than a few doubt that it is even a lake. “Are you sure it isn’t an ocean?” someone once asked me. They can be excused for their confusion.  Lake Michigan is the second largest of the five Great Lakes by volume and third largest by surface area. Its deepest spot is 923 feet; it is 307 miles long by 118 miles wide. Hydrologically speaking, Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are the same body of water—really one big lake—and, thus, the largest freshwater lake in the world. Of the five Great Lakes, Lake Michigan is the only Great Lake located entirely within the United States." (June Sawyers)

Arts & Culture

Art: Chelsea Bighorn on earrings and architecture
+ Christine Sun Kim transforms language at the Walker Art Center

Dance: The evolution of Chicago Danztheatre's “Architecture of Memory”

Design: Noel Mercado's time travel at Farnsworth
+ Mood: Planters

Lit: Rachel León and “How We See The Gray”

Music: Gia Margaret is “Singing” again

Stage: TimeLine makes a future in Uptown

Reviews

It's a great time in the art world, at least

Poetry

"News Sonnet Report": A new poem by Ed Roberson