Renowned in Chicago for his century-old plan to create a “city beautiful” here, pioneer urban planner Daniel Burnham was commissioned by Washington to do the same in 1904 for its newly acquired Asian trophy, the capital of the Philippines, Manila. Expecting to find Burnham’s legacy of a park and stately public buildings “obliterated” by progress and regress, photographer Tim Long saw in 2008 that the edifices had been preserved and were still being used for their appointed or similar purposes, adding an American early-modernist colonial architectural touch to a bustling megalopolis replete with shiny skyscrapers and motley slums. Long’s lush color shots of such structures as the Department of Tourism, City Hall, the main post office and Philippine Normal University, among a bevy of others, are straightforward architectural photography. The gems of this exhibit are his studies of the teeming, checkered, colorful and perpetually dilapidated dense concentrations of shanties and ramshackle flats in the ‘hoods that were undreamt of in Burnham’s vision. In that context, the artifacts of the American imperial project come off as anachronistic presences—contrapuntal elements in a polymorphous cityscape. (Michael Weinstein)
Through January 10 at City Gallery, 806 N. Michigan.
Symbols of Life: A Review of Theaster Gates at the New Museum in New York City Gates unites his artistic beginnings as a ceramics sculptor with the impressive amount of objects that he has acquired as an archivist. Titled “Young Lords and Their Traces” it follows the lineage of his artistic and archival practice through multiple times and histories.
Sounding the City: How Experimental Sound Studio Reaches New Audiences Newcity spoke with Olivia Junell, development and outreach director of ESS, about accessibility of sound art, plans for future iterations of the festival and how the main mission of ESS has shifted to accommodate the needs of artists today.
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