September 2022 Issue: Art 50 + Fall Arts (Print Edition)
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The Art 50 2022
Since the 2020 uprisings for racial justice, the art world has slowly started to remake itself. Institutions have begun to rethink old dynamics, such as DCASE, which increased arts funding on the South and West Sides, and art workers have begun to claim new power, as manifest as the victorious organizers of AICWU. This year’s Art 50 acknowledges the important work of the gallerists, collectors, administrators and more who make Chicago’s art world run, many of whom are working hard to make the arts ecosystem more sustainable and more equitable. (Kerry Cardoza)
Art Leader of the Moment
Fall Arts Preview 2022
Emergent Institutions
In refusal of the deteriorating political, intellectual and social conscience oft associated with the civilizing mission of “high art,” the many-sided Floating Museum opened "A Lion for Every House" at the Art Institute of Chicago, inspiring a discussion on the porousness of the institution and the archive as active agent in collective memory. By considering the institution as a collaborative partner, Floating Museum tests territorial borders in a process-centered exhibition presented in the Photography and Media galleries. (Pia Singh)
Fertile Ground
Initially planned for 2020 but deferred, like most things, by the first wave of COVID, MdW has returned with a scaled-up vision that maintains the scrappy spirit of the original. Skewing again the standard fair format of convention-center art malls, MdW Fair takes shape as an “Assembly” through local events at Mana in Chicago in September, an online atlas of texts and ephemera and “drifts” to areas across the Midwest organized by seven mostly artist-run spaces across the region… (Chris Reeves)
+ Can't Miss Fall Art Events
Meeting the Moment
“Elevate Chicago Dance” reboots October 13-15, spreading again across the city, with work by thirty artists presented in six venues. Planning for the massive series aligned with the exact moment CDF was going through a change in leadership. Joanna Furnans was settling in as executive director of the three-person organization in an unprecedented time for the field. (Sharon Hoyer)
+ Can't Miss Fall Dance Events
Vessels of Human Possibility
The book is framed around the idea of equity—what can architecture do to make cities like Chicago more equitable, serving all economic classes of people and not just the top one percent? Kamin asks the same question of the fields of transportation, urban planning and historic preservation. The book features striking black-and-white photographs of structures like “Cloud Gate” in Millennium Park and Lincoln Park’s “Nature Boardwalk” by Kamin’s friend and former competitor, Lee Bey. Bey is a member of the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board, who had been the paper’s architecture critic and now writes a monthly column on the subject. (Mary Wisniewski)
Ramova Redux
By the time the Ramova Theater closed in the 1980s, it had become a second-run movie house long past its prime. The Ramova Grill closed in 2012, and as much as we enjoyed the charm (if not so much the chow) of the old place, we were glad to hear that Kevin Hickey (Ritz Carlton Hotel, The Four Seasons Hotel Chicago, Allium) would be taking over the kitchen when the complex's grand reopening takes place in late spring-early summer.of next year. Hickey was in the vanguard of resuscitating the Bridgeport neighborhood with his Duck Inn, which was named one of the “Best New Restaurants in America” by Esquire and one of the “Top 10 restaurants in America” by USA Today. (David Hammond)
Beanie Babies Make The Multiplex
A24 just turned ten; it was founded in August 2012 by David Fenkel, Daniel Katz and John Hodges to release the kind of independent features that were cool yet commonplace at the turn of the century. The plan was to move beyond the mistakes that crashed earlier distributors they worked with. And they have made a mark in the past decade, at festivals and in theaters. This year's theatrical releases so far include "After Yang," "X," "Men," "Marcel The Shell With Shoes On," "Bodies Bodies Bodies" and the colossal and unexpected returns on the uplifting Michelle Yeoh-starring, tax-averse metaverse hallucination "Everything Everywhere All At Once." (Ray Pride)
Read the Memo
There are a handful of authors whose books I buy and devour the minute they come out, and high on this list is Christine Sneed, whose witty and wise first book, "Portraits of a Few of the People I’ve Made Cry," captured my attention about a decade ago. Since then, she’s published a second story collection and two novels, all of which display her remarkable ability to delve into the lives of her flawed characters—showing them at their best and their worst with equal pathos. Sneed’s books possess an easy elegance and a profound awareness of what it means to be human in the contemporary world.
+ Can't Miss Fall Lit Events
What is Chicago Talking About?
The incoming artistic director at Goodman Theatre is and isn’t wrapping things up at Atlanta’s Alliance Theater. Susan Booth, like Robert Falls, whose role she is taking at the Goodman, has shown how a strong, visionary director can keep a creative whirlwind in motion for decades. Over the last twenty-one years, she’s led Atlanta’s flagship theater in producing more than 200 shows, directing close to fifty of them. In Booth’s time there, the Alliance also premiered eighty-five new works, including six musicals that made their way to Broadway, and ran programs for young people that reached tens of thousands of students a year. In 2007, the theater earned the Regional Theater Tony Award. (Ted C. Fishman)
+ Can't Miss Fall Stage Events
Scenes From A Season
Walking out onto the stage last September, Riccardo Muti was receiving his first applause at Orchestra Hall in Chicago in over nineteen months. The celebrated Italian-born music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, who had turned eighty two months earlier, was clearly moved and stood motionless for a moment. What made the acclamation unusual was that, save for a handful of invited media, the hall was empty. The orchestra itself was providing heartfelt and sustained applause, greeting Muti at a morning rehearsal. (Dennis Polkow)
+ Can't Miss Fall Music Events
Arts & Culture
Reviews
Après ce, le déluge
Poetry
Carlos and Me: A new poem from Gregorio Gomez