We didn’t know we had it so good. Dynastic heir Richie Daley is all right turning Chitown into Singapore-lite, but the sweet home’s first and only elected black mayor, Harold Washington, was something else—a consummate politico who worked his way up through the machine and learned to combine tactical ruthlessness in the back rooms with a folksy charisma and genuine warmth on the streets that made him the “people’s mayor.”
We can see the complexity of Washington’s personality in this ample exhibit of
forty-five photographs by Antonio Dickey and Marc PoKempner who capture through the lens Washington campaigning, politicking, governing and posing for their portraits. Among the well-crafted photojournalistic images here, the most revealing is PoKempner’s series of Washington presiding at a city council meeting, in which his expression mutates from brooding irritation, through abject exhaustion and impatience, to open-hearted delight. Our present leader might learn to be a bit more expressive. (Michael Weinstein)
Through June 27 at Roosevelt University Gage Gallery, 18 S. Michigan. (312)341-6456.
Lost in Translation: A Review of Crip* at Gallery 400 The strongest works in the exhibition succinctly express the ways the artist relates to their own body while calling out how the artist’s body and body of work has been perceived or coded against norms or ideals.
Repurposing AI: A Review of Stephanie Dinkins at Stamps Gallery While this show is timely for everyone, I consider its setting within a university art gallery and emerging tech hub like the city of Ann Arbor a subversive provocation which Dinkins invites the greater public—including members of the university community—to consider our own positionality to AI and technology.
