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ART

Ari Emanuel Maneuvers To Buy Frieze Art Fair

Agent Ari Emanuel, brother of Chicago’s former mayor, is working to buy live-entertainment concerns, including divisions of his Endeavor company, Frieze and the Miami and Madrid Open tennis tournaments, reports Bloomberg. “The CEO of Endeavor Group Holdings Inc. has already raised more than $100 million from backers, including alternative asset manager Apollo Global Management Inc.”

Ignite Fund Announces Artist Grantees

The Ignite Fund, supporting the creation and public presentation of new visual arts-based projects by Chicago-area artists and artist-led collectives, has announced its 2024 grantees. Seven artists and three artist-led collectives will receive a combined $60,000 to support the creation and implementation of new, public works. Included: AfroDisco Social Hour: “Communion—A Gratitude Dinner and Public Art Experience”; barber, “More Life”; Jordan Barrant: “Sisters and Spirit: Pat McCombs”; Cris: “No Me Voy A Olvidar de Ti”; Linye Jiang, “Picking a Fruit”; Laboratory of Material Slippage: “Hanging Garden of Midsummer’s Feast”; Miguel Limón: “Ink & Impact”; Farah Salem: “Wisdoms & Endurances: A Sequence of Ancestral Invocations” and Sinag Arts Collective: “Celebrating Filipino Heritage: A Collaborative Mural at the Rizal Community.” More on the projects here.

Can Kehinde Wiley’s Career Survive Allegations?

“Kehinde Wiley built an empire out of painting young Black men into art history,” observes Vulture. “Can it survive accusations of sexual assault?”

Someone Pays $1 Million For AI-Produced Work At Sotheby’s

The artwork “A.I. God. Portrait of Alan Turing” (2024) by “the humanoid robot artist Ai-Da sold for $1,084,800 during the auction house’s Digital Art day sale,” reports ARTnews. There were twenty-seven bids for the object. “This auction is an important moment for the visual arts, where Ai-Da’s artwork brings focus on artworld and societal changes, as we grapple with the rising age of AI,” art dealer, gallery owner, and robot creator Aidan Meller said in a press release. “The artwork ‘AI God’ raises questions about agency, as AI gains more power.”

DESIGN

Art Deco Behemoth Joins Growing Ranks Of LaSalle Street Conversions

The Field Building, a 1934 Art Deco landmark designed by Graham, Anderson, Probst & White, will receive $98 million in funding to subsidize a proposal to convert “624,000 square feet within the tower, preserving upper level office spaces while adding a few terraces on its setbacks.” Plans for the  converted space include 386 apartments and 92,000 square feet of retail space, with the goal of adding a grocer to the central Loop.

The landmark previously acted as the city’s hub for Bank of America until the opening of their new Goettsch-designed tower at 110 North Wacker. This conversion joins four previously announced Financial District projects receiving funding to transform sections of prewar office buildings into apartments.

Chicago Architecture Center President Explores Centre Pompidou’s Preservation

Next month, Alliance Française will host a symposium on the upcoming preservation of the Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano-designed contemporary art museum in Paris. The major renovation project includes plans to close the institution from September 2025 through the first quarter of 2030. The symposium will feature Chicago Architecture Center president Eleanor Gorski exploring “how the French approach historic architecture preservation of unprotected landmarks.”

AI Safeguards Will Be Abandoned

“Trump plans to repeal Biden’s AI Executive Order from October 2023 and levy tariffs on GPU imports,” reports ArsTechnica. “Biden’s order established wide-ranging oversight of AI development. Among its core provisions, the order established the U.S. AI Safety Institute and lays out requirements for companies to submit reports about AI training methodologies and security measures, including vulnerability testing data. The order also directed the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology to develop guidance to help companies identify and fix flaws in their AI models.”

DINING & DRINKING

Sideshow Gelato Sets The Clock

“Most new businesses will be closed within the first three years of operation,” writes Jay Bliznick, owner of Sideshow Gelato in Lincoln Square on Instagram. “We always knew we were not like most but there [was] a perfect storm of problems with the city, inflation and consumer confidence that brought us to where we are now. We… have run out of money… Our last hope is to see what sort of interest we can garner in the next month-and-a-half to keep the lights on and the shows going. If you have been putting off seeing a show here or having our dairy or vegan gelato (I still contend it’s the best vegan ice cream you will ever eat) come on in and witness it before it’s gone.”

Adds Block Club, “The business has Penn Jillette’s backing [and] has three stages for performers,” with magic acts and sideshow performances. Bliznick says obstacles include inflation, overhead, a summer slowdown and “navigating the city’s licensing [to become] a public place of amusement.” Says Bliznick, costs “for a fifty-pound bag of dextrose [began at] $70 a bag. Now I’m paying close to $130 for it. We had to raise our costs from $7 to $8 for a small gelato. Some people balk at it, and I think that hasn’t helped us any.” The Sideshow Gelato site, with a countdown clock at forty-nine days, is here.

Mapping Chicago’s Best Bars And Restaurants With Fire Pits

“Bars and restaurants throughout Chicago offer a last chance to spend time outside before the temperatures really plunge, warding off the evening chill with fire pits,” maps Eater Chicago. There are “rooftop bars for taking in skyline views from a fire table, casual neighborhood spots that provide the feel of hanging out in a backyard, and restaurants where the chance to cuddle up near a fire is just part of the romance.”

Long-Lost Son Takes Reins At Give Me Some Sugah

“Vamarr Hunter was a customer for years, but after he started looking for his biological mom, he realized she was in his neighborhood all this time. Now, mother and son work together, with Hunter recently taking over the business his mom built,” reports the Sun-Times. “When Hunter first walked into Give Me Some Sugah bakery in South Shore fourteen years ago, he immediately felt at home… The owner, Lenore Lindsey, would come up and tell them, in a motherly way, that they were eating too much. That didn’t stop them. Little did Lindsey and Hunter know that there was something to their easy rapport—Hunter is the son she gave up for adoption at age seventeen. It wasn’t until a few years ago that they discovered their connection.”

FILM & TELEVISION

“The Bear” Returns To The City To Complete Season Four

Rumors hold that shooting of the fourth and likely final season of “The Bear” isn’t finished, and the series will resume filming in February, reports Screen. “Around half of Season Four [may be] left to shoot.” Shooting is expected to wrap in early May.

Studio Trade Organization And Censorship Board MPA Salutes Trump

“The Motion Picture Association, which represents seven major entertainment studios, congratulated Trump on his victory,” reports Variety. “We look forward to working… on a wide range of important issues for the film, TV and streaming industry… We commend everyone who worked this year to ensure fair elections and preserve our nation’s legitimate democratic processes.”

LIT

Times On Zehme On Carson: “A Memorial Of The Monoculture”

“A new biography about an old reliable, Bill Zehme’s ‘Carson the Magnificent’ harks back to an era when doom and scroll were biblical nouns and Carson’s ‘Tonight Show’ was a clear punctuation mark to every twenty-four-hour chunk of the workweek—less an exclamation point, maybe, than a drawn-out ellipsis,” elongates Alexandra Jacobs at the New York Times. “[Chicagoan Bill] Zehme, a journalist known for his chummy celebrity profiles, struck a book deal almost immediately but struggled to get purchase on his subject—’the ultimate Interior Man,’ he despaired to a source, ‘large and lively only when on camera.’ … Short but florid, ‘Carson the Magnificent’ is a memorial of the monoculture; a steady parade of mostly men chatting companionably to one another on a padded sectional.”

MEDIA

Majority Of American Counties Lack Local News Sources

“An uptick in newspaper closures this year has left more than half of the nation’s 3,143 counties—or fifty-five million people—with just one or no local news sources where they live,” tallies Axios. “The rapid rise of digital local news sites isn’t enough to offset the dramatic rate of newspaper closures. Digital news outlets also tend to serve urban and coastal communities, which are less likely to become news deserts.”

Guardian Describes Plans For Next Four Years

“The president-elect has made his disdain for journalism clear. His second term is a risk to a free press in the United States and beyond,” writes Guardian editor-in-chief Katharine Viner. Earlier, “throughout those tumultuous four years we never minimized or normalized the threat of Trump’s authoritarianism, and we treated his lies as a genuine danger to democracy, a threat that found its expression on January 6, 2021… With dramatic implications for wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the health of American democracy, reproductive rights, inequality and, perhaps most of all, our collective environmental future, [we will] redouble our efforts to hold the president-elect and those who surround him to account.”

MUSIC

Peso Pluma Will Headline Sueños

“The Latin music fest will return to Grant Park in May with larger festival grounds and a second stage,” reports Block Club.

ARTS & CULTURE & ETC.

What Will An Agriculture Import Trade War Look Like?

“The president-elect has threatened sixty-percent tariffs on goods from China at a time when U.S. producers are already struggling with slowing exports and falling prices,” reports Agriculture Dive. “China remains the largest export market for U.S. farmers, and tariffs reduced agricultural exports by $27 billion in the eighteen months or so following the start of the trade war in mid-2018.”

“You Come For My People, You Come Through Me”: Pritzker Speaks Out

Governor Pritzker, reports Politico, says “he expects to work with the next administration, but he issued a warning. ‘You come for my people, you come through me,’ Pritzker said, referring to the minority and underserved communities of Illinois who remember the ‘chaos, retribution and disarray radiated from the White House the last time Donald Trump occupied.’”

Mass Deportations Will Affect One In Twelve Americans

“Roughly one in twelve people in the United States would be [affected] by mass deportations, either through actual deportation or separation from family,” tweets journalist Alisa Zaira Reznick, citing CBS News immigration reporter Camilo Montoya-Galvez. The incoming administration has “the sense they now have a mandate—given the rightward shift in public sentiment on immigration.” “A seismic shift in… immigration policy is expected” as Trump has “vowed to conduct the largest mass deportation in U.S. history; end birthright citizenship; militarize the border; enact ideological screenings for legal immigrants; end several Biden administration programs that have allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to work here (CBP One, parole and TPS); revive the Remain-in-Mexico border policy; reinstate and expand the infamous ‘travel ban,’ which mostly affected Muslim majority countries; penalize ‘sanctuary’ cities [such as Chicago] that limit cooperation with federal deportation agents” and more.

A Cautionary Tale As Sports Betting Rages In Brazil

“Just six years after sports betting was legalized in Brazil, gambling addiction has taken hold in the country,” reports Semafor. “The sports betting market recorded $21 billion in transactions last year, up seventy-one percent from 2020. Brazil is now the third-biggest market in the world for sports betting, following the United States and U.K. … Many Brazilians have turned to loan sharks, while the soaring rates of addiction has also fed a wave of demand for Gambling Anonymous. The global sports betting market is forecast to grow at an annual rate of more than ten percent through the rest of the decade, as countries ease restrictions on the industry.”

Americans Stockpile Medications

“Healthcare providers report unprecedented demand for reproductive and gender-affirming medications,” reports the Guardian. Rebecca Gomperts, “the founder of Aid Access, the number one supplier of abortion pills by mail in the United States, was huddled in [an] apartment with her team of eight American physicians and fifteen support staff. The group—which usually operates remotely, shipping out more than 9,000 abortion pills a month—had convened in person before the election, knowing they might have to spring into action… As news of Trump’s victory spread, the website received more than 5,000 requests for abortion pills in less than twelve hours—a surge even larger than the day after Roe v. Wade fell. ‘I can see all the new requests ticking in as we’re talking,’ Gomperts said in a phone call on Wednesday afternoon. ‘We’ve never seen this before.’”

Expert On Tyranny Timothy Snyder Speaks

“With billionaires on bended knee and criminal charges vanishing, America’s strongman era begins. How can you react?,” asks indispensable Philadelphia Inquirer Will Bunch (gift link). “On Tyranny” author Tim Snyder tells Bunch that “the most important thing for the moment is to avoid isolation and be around other people. ‘They want you to be alone,’ the historian said of autocratic governments because isolation feeds the sense of powerlessness that allows the regime to do its dirty work unimpeded. ‘Nobody is going to fix this alone. That’s not how this works.’”

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