By Dana Boutin

With new staff and a new site imminent, the Evanston Art Center, in the words of Executive Director Norah Diedrich, is at a crossroads. Poised for challenges to come, Diedrich says, “The environment and economy that we’re all in—whether you’re a for-profit company, a Fortune 500, or a community center—is in flux and chaos. Darwin said it’s not the smartest or strongest that survives but the most adaptable.” As the Art Center’s new director since 2009, Diedrich is looking outward and onward. She worked previously as Manager of Public Programs at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and as the Director of Cultural Programs at Alliance Française, and is now applying her experience in community engagement to plan the Evanston Art Center’s future. Read the rest of this entry »

Karl Wirsum, "Shoestring Query Can’t Beggars be Shoe-Z," 2006

By Bert Stabler

There is a lot up in the air right now regarding city support for the arts in general, and visual arts in particular—and there are reasons to be nervous. The exhibitions at the Cultural Center, both in the upstairs spaces and in the Michigan Avenue Galleries, are set for 2012. But, as the year rolls onward, the mists of 2013 will begin to clear, in response to the various obstacles and question marks brought about by the restructuring of the Department of Cultural Affairs (DCA) in 2011.

Before departing office, Mayor Daley initiated a massive reorganization of cultural agencies, putting basically everything, including the Mayor’s Office of Special Events, under the nominal oversight of Cultural Affairs—now the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. Cultural programming positions were reduced and moved from Cultural Affairs into the Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture (COTC), a separate not-for-profit that had been jointly handling programming with DCA for visual art, music, dance and theater, as well as administering cultural grants. Now positions are being reduced and moved again, this time back under city administration proper, to be filled after a new deputy commissioner for arts programming is named, which should happen in the next couple of months. Read the rest of this entry »

John Neff Prints Robert Blanchon at Golden Gallery

Top 5 Exhibitions of 2011
John Neff, Golden Gallery
Jeff Carter at Crown Hall
Mark Booth, ADDS DONNA
Dianna Frid, Devening Projects + Editions
Crime Unseen, Museum of Contemporary Photography
—Jason Foumberg

Top 5 Painting Exhibitions of 2011
Andrew Holmquist, Carrie Secrist Gallery
Michelle Bolinger, Northeastern Illinois University Art Gallery
Elsa Muñoz, National Museum of Mexican Art
John Henley, Slow gallery
Luminous Ground: Artists With Histories, Illinois State Museum
—Jason Foumberg Read the rest of this entry »

Marco and Martine. photo by Jessica Williams.

By Jason Foumberg

Golden Age, Chicago’s only venue dedicated to selling artists’ books and printed matter, is closing this November. Artists Marco Kane Braunschweiler and Martine Syms opened the shop in Pilsen in 2007, with a focus on affordable art publications by emerging artists, and moved to the West Loop in January 2010, where they hosted exhibition, lecture and performance programs among their well-stocked tables and shelves of printed projects from international artists. Golden Age also had a publishing arm, producing ten titles from emerging American artists, and they participated in events such as the NY Art Book Fair. Golden Age was more than a traditional shop with unusual product; it was also a place where people hung out, browsed books, and chatted with the always-enthusiastic owners, Marco and Martine, about new ideas and trends in contemporary art. But “Golden Age is completely over,” they told me. “We will not resuscitate the brand under any conditions. It’s a done deal.” Read the rest of this entry »

Tony Kushner in conversation with Court Theatre artistic director Charles Newell

By Monica Westin

There are few words in either the arts or academia that are used as often, and occasionally mean so little, as “interdisciplinary.” The overwhelming surge in interdisciplinary work over the past decade ranges from a variety of motivations and understandings of what exactly it is and should do. At best, this work combines the expertise of several areas to solve important problems or shed light on complex issues better than any one perspective or discipline could. But there’s often a dubious quality of work claiming to be interdisciplinary—its success can be difficult to judge (the peer review system, for example, falls apart on the academic end of things), methods and standards between disciplines differ, and the broadness of perspective can result in vagueness and inconsistency. In the arts, interdisciplinary work can especially fall into chaos as the perspective and conversations within the various disciplines involved can get muddled and idiolects misunderstood.

The general consensus has recently seemed to be that we ought to work to create more coherent and coordinated work within this type of holistic undertaking, from clearly defined problems to consistent methodologies and narrow focus. Which is why, when I sat down with David Levin, the director of the University of Chicago’s new Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry, I was surprised and even disarmed to hear that his approach to running the fellowship program for visiting artists and scholars at the Gray Center (supported through a $1.35 million Mellon grant) is to stay out of their way. “Look,” Levin murmurs, excitedly but gently, as he often begins his sentences, “the thought is that the pairings between scholars and fellows we’ve set up will have a truly transformative effect on both their work, but it will take awhile to know. I’m not going around banging on their doors asking to see what they’ve produced.” Read the rest of this entry »

RECOMMENDED

Contemporary classical realism doesn’t have a home in Chicago, but Korean-born Anna Koh is temporarily bringing it into some empty storefronts in the North Park neighborhood, in what is now becoming the annual North Park Art Walk. Koh and her husband Jeffrey Varilla make classical sculpture for churches, universities and public parks, and now she has created something of a salon where she has invited like-minded artists to display their work. She’s also something of a community organizer, so many other organizations have been invited to participate, including the neighborhood universities, public schools and the Chicago Korean-American Art Association, with the ultimate goal of building a North Park Arts Center. The weekend exhibition is centered around the recently built studio of the Koh-Varilla Guild, where one can walk amongst angels, saints and heroes before they’re crated off to their final destinations. (Chris Miller)

October 8 and 9, Kedzie and Bryn Mawr Avenues

Summer’s over, kids. Sure, temperatures might still be in the nineties, and we’re going to enjoy one last hurrah this Labor Day weekend, but weather or not, fall is here. How do we know? The arts calendar, in hibernation these last couple of months, is on the verge of awakening with an explosion of activity. And as we do every year at this time, we’ve distilled it to a short list of highlights in order to help you put you personal fall calendar together.

Start out with our “big eleven” events for fall and then explore these links to the various fall previews we’ve created:

Fall Art Preview
Fall Dance Preview
Fall Film Preview
Fall Music Preview
Fall Resto Preview
Fall Stage Preview

Inside the DePaul Art Museum's inaugural exhibition, "Re: Chicago," with a sculpture by Juan Angel Chavez

By Jason Foumberg

The DePaul Art Museum seems to have risen as quickly as it was realized. Part of a campus-wide flourishing of the arts, including new and forthcoming buildings for the schools of theater and music, the new museum building will open September 17. The galleries were formerly hidden in the university’s library. Now, the museum has a fully accessible public entrance on Fullerton Avenue, directly next to the CTA’s Red Line station. From that station’s platform, people waiting for trains will be addressed by a large video monitor from the museum’s second-floor gallery window, with special projects commissioned by the curators. The first is an interactive video conceived by the design team Plural, who is also responsible for the museum’s new design identity. Read the rest of this entry »

By Christopher Sperandio

You couldn’t get farther from the jockeying and social positioning of the international art world than Manawa, Wisconsin. Just a few miles from this small rural hamlet, however, sits the Great Poor Farm Experiment, a new idea about the art institution, summoned from thin air, seemingly, by Chicago artists Brad Killam and Michelle Grabner.

Brad and Michelle, a power couple famous for their kind and entrepreneurial engagement with the art world, invited me to spend this summer at the Poor Farm, part temporary exhibition site and part artist residency, in order to make a new artwork for exhibition there in August. The idea I got was that the Poor Farm was founded by and for artists much in the spirit of Mickey Rooney’s “Hey kids, let’s put on a show!” The instant I heard about it, I knew I wanted to see it for myself. Read the rest of this entry »

This Friday, a city of storage containers will appear in an empty lot in Wicker Park, and Built Festival will kick off a weekend of experimental art in a highly unusual venue. The storage containers will provide a gallery space to over 100 independent artists working in the theme of urban culture. “It’s a refreshing dip outside of societal norms,” says Tristan Hummel, creator of Built Festival. “We’re making a microcosm of Chicago, an exploration of Chicago.” That exploration is deliberately open and relaxed, as audiences will have the opportunity to enjoy a beer and interact with the art much more closely than galleries usually allow. Read the rest of this entry »