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ART

Evan Maurer, Seventy-Nine, Made Minneapolis Institute of Art Free To All

Evan Maurer: “He was remembered as the director who made Mia free at the beginning of his tenure, and by the time he stepped down, he was Minnesota’s highest-paid arts and culture director,” reports the Star-Tribune. “Maurer, a visionary who radically expanded Native and African art at Mia, led the $30 million Target Wing expansion and a $50 million expansion and renovation project… Maurer came to Mia in 1988 and opened the African art gallery that year, a dream for him after many years of scholarship. The gallery housed 300 pieces, including African sculpture, royal regalia, ceremonial weapons, textiles and housewares. He also gave then-aspiring curator Joe Horse Capture an internship at the museum in 1990 and later hired him as an assistant curator. There had never been a curator of Native art at the museum.”

DESIGN

Clybourn Corridor Could Get 396-Unit Residential Tower

“Georgetown Co. wants to build a high-rise apartment building next to the shopping center it owns in the busy retail district” near the intersection of North and Clybourn, across from the Apple Store and the Red line stop, reports Crain’s.

Skokie Swift Still Shut Down

“More than two weeks after the mid-November crash on the tracks, the three-stop line that runs from Rogers Park to Skokie, also known as the Skokie Swift, remains closed as federal regulators investigate CTA equipment design and outside conditions, and the CTA reviews operations on the line,” reports the Trib. “The closure has frustrated commutes for riders trying to get to their homes, work and school, who instead must rely on the free shuttle buses the CTA is running to replace train service, or find other transportation. And it has left questions for riders and those who were injured about why the train failed to stop before slamming into a snowplow on the tracks, and whether the crash could have been prevented.”

Graceland Cemetery Open For Business

For 160 years, reports WTTW,  Graceland Cemetery has been “one of Chicago’s great green spaces…The cemetery’s trustees are leaning into Graceland’s use as a public park—a use that came to the forefront in the early part of the pandemic—and are… throwing open the gates, debuting a new entryway designed to draw people in rather than keep people out. The uninviting asphalt driveway and parking areas that formerly discouraged curious passersby have been replaced with a cheery pedestrian plaza, plantings and a soaring iron gateway arch.”

Still Not Enough Bus Drivers For Chicago Public Schools

“More than three months into the school year—as freezing temperatures and snow descend on the City—5,500 Chicago Public Schools students are still being denied bus transportation and are having to take the CTA or find another ride to school,” reports WGN 9. “General education students who attend selective enrollment and magnet schools and were previously given bus transportation are now offered free CTA passes… Even those who do receive bus service are enduring increasingly long commutes.” CPS “has only been able to hire fifty-five percent of the school bus drivers it needs.”

Historic Stockyards Bank Offered For Redevelopment

“Made available through the Department of Planning and Development’s ChiBlockBuilder website this month, the ninety-eight-year-old, city-owned Stockyards Bank includes an adjacent one-acre lot at Halsted and Exchange streets. Built for stockyards businesses as a larger-than-life replica of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, the 45,000-square-foot building is valued at approximately $1.9 million with the adjacent land, though would-be developers can propose projects that revitalize the former bank exclusively.” The city acquired the structure in 2000, coordinated landmark status in 2008 and performed $1.5 million in stabilization work.

Studio Gang’s Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival Renderings Shown

“The first images for the Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival by Studio Gang have been unveiled,” reports Wallpaper. “Its flowing, timber structure underpins the project’s ambition to be the very first purpose-built LEED Platinum theatre in the U.S.. At the same time, the scheme, located in Garrison, New York, and with a site plan and landscape architecture by Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, aims to become not just a hub for the local performing arts community, but also a key cultural draw for the entire Hudson Valley.”

Oak Park’s New Builds Cannot Have Gas Stoves

Oak Park’s new building code “requires new construction to be full electric with no natural gas hookups,” reports Wednesday Journal. “The ordinance requires any new building constructed after January 1 to be fully electric… The goal of the ordinance is to help Oak Park achieve its climate action goals laid out in the Climate Ready Oak Park Plan. The objective of this plan is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the community by sixty percent by 2030 and achieve net zero emissions by 2050.”

CHA Leaves Hundreds Of Homes To Rot During Housing Crisis

“The Chicago Housing Authority is supposed to provide affordable homes for those in need. But the agency has nearly 500 scattered-site units that are vacant—many causing problems for their neighbors,” reports Block Club and the Illinois Answers Project. “In all, the CHA owns about 2,900 scattered-site residences dispersed through dozens of neighborhoods. But one out of every six of the homes is empty, and dozens of them have been unoccupied for years, records show.”

Study: Demolishing Public Housing Increased Inequality

“Starting in the 1990s, the federally funded HOPE VI program provided hundreds of grants to tear down distressed public housing in many U.S. cities, with the premise of revitalizing neighborhoods and settling residents into better, safer homes. But a study by Chicago Booth’s Milena Almagro, University of Texas’ Eric Chyn, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s Bryan A. Stuart of what happened in Chicago, home to one of the country’s largest public-housing systems, finds that demolishing public housing increased inequality. The city had pledged to create mixed-income housing in the affected neighborhoods, but officials failed to meet these stated goals. As a result, longtime low-income residents of what were predominantly Black neighborhoods were priced out as households with higher incomes moved in. Even a moderate increase in publicly built housing units could reverse the negative effects of the demolitions.”

Jeff Bezos-Backed Company Buying Up American Single-Family-Homes

Arrived, a real estate company backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, has announced its entry into single-family rental unit funding, reports Yahoo Finance. Arrived “operates a fractional real estate investing platform that has attracted nearly a half-million retail investors since its launch in 2021. The platform allows investors to purchase shares of single-family rental properties with as little as $100.”

DINING & DRINKING

Daisies Aligns Chefs For Holiday Cookies For A Cause

Top Chicago chefs have prepared seven holiday cookies in one gift box for Cookies For A Cause, with a portion of proceeds benefitting Pilot Light in its work to provide food education for youth. “Spearheaded by Daisies’ executive pastry chef and partner Leigh Omilinsky, Cookies for a Cause brings the most cherished personal cookie recipes from heavy hitters in Chicago like the Gluten-Free White Chocolate Cherry Cookie from Paul Kahan of One Off Hospitality, a family recipe from his sister-in-law who makes ‘cookies by the millions’ around the holidays and Omilinsky’s Chocolate Peppermint Crinkle Cookies, an homage to her favorite holiday flavors.” Cookie recipes for the boxes were provided by Kahan; Stephanie Izard of Girl & The Goat;  Sarah Grueneberg of Monteverde; Meg Galus of Good Ambler; Natalie Saben of avec and Publican; and Mindy Segal of Mindy’s Bakery.  Each box is $30 and can be ordered on Tock.

City-Owned Grocery Stores Face High Hurdles

“In September, Mayor Johnson’s administration announced it planned to explore the possibility of opening a municipally owned grocery store to help improve food access on the South and West sides. A feasibility study launched by the city is expected to be completed and released to the public early next year,” reports the Trib. “The grocery industry is a notoriously challenging business; stores operate on razor-thin margins and operators must manage a highly perishable inventory. In interviews with the Tribune, industry and economic development experts expressed skepticism that the city, which is facing a $538 million budget gap next year, could effectively operate its own traditional supermarket.”

The Menu Of Sixteen Chicago Spots Taken To Flavortown

WGN 9 has the rundown from “Diners, Drive-Ins And Dives”: “The Mayor of Flavortown himself, Guy Fieri, has featured dozens of Illinois restaurants on his hit Food Network show, ‘Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.’” The total includes “Chicago locations frequented by Fieri at least once across the forty-five seasons of his show”: La Scarola; Del Seoul; Saucy Porka; The Original Vito & Nick’s Pizzeria; Kuma’s Corner; Smoque BBQ; DMK Burger Bar; Irazu; Garifuna Flava; Hopleaf Bar; MFK.; Manny’s Cafeteria and Delicatessen; Sun Wah BBQ; Taste of Peru; Tufano’s Vernon Park Tap and White Palace Grill. Fieri faves since closed include Cemitas Puebla, The Depot Diner, Glenn’s Diner and Galewood Cookshack.

FILM & TELEVISION

Ebert And Siskel As The “Talmudic Scholars” Of Their Time

“As a film aficionado, I always admired the thoughtful movie reviews of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert. I regularly watched their conversations on television and devoured the new book by Matt Singer, ‘Opposable Thumbs: How Siskel and Ebert Changed Movies Forever,’” writes Rabbi Herbert J. Cohen at The Forward. “Celebrated for their honest and stimulating critique of films, their debates reminded me of the arguments between two of the Talmud’s foremost scholars, Hillel and Shammai. Like them, Siskel and Ebert were contrary personalities. Perhaps due to their varied life experiences, they saw things differently when it came to evaluating movies. However, in spite of those differences, they respected one another’s viewpoint and carefully listened to each other’s arguments. Ego alone did not drive the conversation. Artistic truth did.”

MSNBC Cancels Show Of Least-Conservative Host; Backlash Follows

As the 2024 election heads into its last eleven months, news networks continue to shift their coverage, with MSNBC cancelling the weekend show of expert interviewer Mehdi Hasan, reports Semafor. “Over the past several years, Hasan became a cult favorite online for his tough interview style and impassioned monologues. But these never translated to ratings successes on the weekends or during fill-in appearances on primetime shows.” “MSNBC faced a blizzard of backlash Thursday after announcing that popular liberal host Mehdi Hasan would lose his Sunday-night show as part of a broader restructuring of the network’s weekend lineup,” which includes former Republican party chairman Michael Steele co-hosting the show replacing Hasan’s, reports the Washington Post.

“Prominent liberals questioned whether Hasan, one of the few Muslim hosts in cable news, was being penalized for his criticism of the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza and strong support for the Palestinian people. Although Hasan was not among MSNBC’s top-rated stars, his segments often went viral on social media, where users celebrated his takedowns of conservatives such as former Trump adviser John Bolton and Israeli government adviser[s].”

Businessweek Going Businessmonth

“Bloomberg Businessweek, a weekly magazine for the past ninety-four years, is going monthly, the company told staff members,” reports the New York Times. “The magazine will be redesigned with ‘heavier paper stock for a more high-end look and feel’ and relaunched as a monthly print publication ‘later in 2024,’ according to a memo…There was no indication… that the Businessweek name would change. ‘The market for a weekly newsmagazine has been challenging for some time,’ the memo said. ‘But we see demand in both digital and print for the ambitious long-form journalism Businessweek is now well-known for.’”

MUSIC

Roctober Resuscitated Once More; Back Issues Yours Online

More than three decades ago, Jake Austen launched his “wide-ranging, infectiously enthusiastic, and absurdly thorough music and culture zine, Roctober,” reports Gossip Wolf at the Reader. “Issue 52 arrived in fall 2020 after a seven-year hiatus. The Promontory hosts a release party for the new Roctober on Wednesday, December 6, which combines issues 53 and 54 and includes conversations with the likes of Mavis Staples, Yoko Ono, Bootsy Collins, and ? & the Mysterians, plus an interview with Prince conducted via email in 2012.” (Austen uploaded the entire prior run of the magazine to the Internet Archive for download here.)

STAGE

How Jewish People Built American Theater

“More shows than ever, both premieres and revivals, seem to be dealing with antisemitism, at least in the past,” writes Jesse Green at the New York Times’ T Magazine in an extensive multimedia package (free link). “That they rarely get to the heart of the issue—the sometimes self-imposed (and sometimes viciously enforced) invisibility of Jewishness—is the result of a fear of offense or habit of disguise that evolved as a kind of protection for Jews both onstage and off. Any Roth novel will teach you, as my own childhood taught me, that you must assimilate to a certain degree to survive in an antisemitic world… Yet assimilate too much and something integral to your nature dissolves; for me it would have been like killing my grandparents, as they often made sure to tell me.”

“Waffling over the expression of identity is probably inherent to all American minority experiences, but it is especially central to, and problematic for, Jewish art, which is often specifically about that waffling and takes its argumentative shape from it, too. But if this ‘see me/don’t see me’ dichotomy has roots as deep as the history of Jews in the American theater, reflecting the age-old conflict of writing for everyone while still being seen for yourself, it was nonetheless shocking to hear, in 2023, what one Broadway insider told me: ‘Mostly we keep quiet because if we talk, they ship us on the trains.’ This fear persists even though… New York City stages have in the past year offered a bumper crop of plays and musicals that speak to the subject of antisemitism.”

ARTS & CULTURE & ETC.

Sue The T. Rex’s Estate In Dispute

“The surviving relatives of a couple on whose property the skeleton of Sue, on display at the Field Museum, was found in 1990 are in a lawsuit over funds left over from the sale,” reports the Sun-Times. “Fossil hunters discovered the skeleton in 1990 on property owned by Maurice and Darlene Williams that sits on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota. Because of its location on the reservation, the discovery led to years of court battles over ownership rights… Eventually, the couple was able to claim the rights, and they made $7.6 million from the auction of Sue… The couple had four children and three of the siblings are involved in a court dispute over the estate.”

Bally’s Casino License Process Queried By Feds, City

“A federal law enforcement agency and Chicago’s inspector general are looking into the process by which Bally‘s won the Chicago casino license,” reports Crain’s. “One inquiry is being led by the U.S. attorney’s office, and stems from complaints lodged by losing bidders. The existence of the federal inquiry was confirmed by Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd, a longtime critic of the Lightfoot administration’s handling of the casino process.”

Columbia College Strike Longest For Adjunct Faculty In Higher-Ed History?

The Columbia College Faculty Union, or CFAC, with 584 adjunct professors “who have been on the picket lines since October 30, [is] protesting the administration’s decision to eliminate hundreds of already-enrolled classes weeks before the semester began while increasing the size of other classes to cut costs,” reports the Tribune. “CFAC says this is the longest adjunct faculty strike in higher education history, and it’s pushing students and staff members to a crossroads with the entire institution.”

Amazon River Freshwater Dolphins Dying Off

“The Amazon region is suffering from a vast drought, which has already resulted in the deaths of hundreds of river dolphins,” reports Spiegel International. “Water in the rivers and lakes is lower than it has ever been, and many have dried up completely… Lago de Tefé is normally between seventy-eight and ninety degrees Fahrenheit, but in late September, the water heated up to 104 degrees. ‘Fresh water dolphins can stand temperatures of up to 100 degrees,’ says [an expert]. In contrast to humans, dolphins are not able to regulate their body temperatures through sweating. ‘They died of overheating.’”

Wolverines Threatened With Extinction

“The North American wolverine will receive long-delayed threatened species protections under a Biden administration proposal,” reports Associated Press, “in response to scientists’ warnings that climate change will likely melt away the rare species’ snowy mountain refuges and push them toward extinction… Wolverines were wiped out by the early 1900s from unregulated trapping and poisoning campaigns. About 300 surviving animals in the contiguous U.S. live in fragmented, isolated groups at high elevations in the northern Rocky Mountains.”

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