Results tagged “artscenter”

We were grabbing a granola bar from the Walgreens by our office this morning and came across these amazing treats. It was then we realized that we've been so caught up in the Leap Year excitement that we nearly forgot that it's time to get excited about St. Patrick's Day. While most of our non-Irish friends celebrate this time of year by getting drunk on green beer and acting like idiots, we like to think we actually do pay proper respect to our Irish ancestors by cooking up a nice Irish stew and flipping through our family tree notes. Of course, our great, great, great grandfather was an Irish moonshiner (true story!) so there is some overlap.

If you happened to be dining at any one of a number of Chicago’s top restaurants last Monday evening and peeked your head into the kitchen, odds are you wouldn’t have found the executive chefs there. But that doesn’t mean they weren’t working. Instead, over 30 of the city’s best chefs and 20 United States Bartenders’ Guild members were donating their time and skills to Share Our Strength’s “Taste of the Nation Chicago,” just...

June has been designated as Hunger Awareness Month, and just as the month is winding down, we have one big ticket event to mention in support.

The death of storytelling has been predicted at least since the dawn of the Industrial Age. And in 1936, philosopher Walter Benjamin declared, "the art of storytelling is reaching its end." It's nonsense, of course; even if storytelling itself has taken on some "new" forms, it's still as prevalent as ever, perhaps even more so with the rise of the blogosphere and the millions of people unfurling their own personal narratives.

That time of the year is over, we have gorged ourselves on turkey and mashed potatoes and we wouldn’t mind a little break from the family, so this weekend is the perfect time to break back into the action.

When artists trade Chicago’s energy for a few weeks of peace and quiet in nature, are their careers better off? Or are residencies just cleverly disguised vacations? Not surprisingly, the panel of six artists and administrators representing four institutions at last week’s “Residencies and Other R&R” panel at the Chicago Cultural Center believe they’re serious stuff. Each panelist appreciated the type of focus that comes when you’re not distracted by cell phones, the dishes languishing...

"Outside the CBOT" via Ursus Maritimus. We never noticed this before, but now that we saw it we can't ever look at this photo or these statues another way - does it look like she's fingering her own nipple or are we just perverts?

We like highlights, we like getting them, doing them and giving them. There’s a ton of cool stuff going on this week, check out the quick highlights, and let us know which author is going to get your attention. First off, it’s the closing night party for the Literary Gangs. They’ll finish up with a finale including Andy Ross and Jonathan Messinger. You can see the Literary Gangs on Tues., May 16th, 6:30PM, at the...

.. or at least they go less than they used to? Or something? Wait, what's going on here? 9 out of the 10 largest museums in the city saw a decline in visitors last year, but one had a huge leap. The Museum of Science & Industry saw a 34% increase in attendance. People must have really liked that video game exhibit they had last year!

Some arty-farty Chicago stories we’ve been checking out on the internets today: * The National Endowment for the arts awarded $1.1 million in grants to various people, places and things that make life worth living in Illinois. Recipients include some Chicago heavyweights like the Lyric Opera and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra as well as the Mexican Fine Arts Center and Tribune columnist Dawn Turner Trice. To our mind, the Chicago Jazz Orchestra Association is putting...

Did you miss seeing the winner of the Gold Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival last month? If so, you’ve got another chance this weekend. My Nikifor took home the golden boy at the CIFF this year and is one of the many films playing at the 17th annual Polish Film Festival in America, which starts this weekend in Chicago and runs through November 20th. With the largest urban population of Poles outside of...

In our saturated local media landscape, it’s easy to forget the slender but succinct New City Chicago. This week’s edition turned us on to a new podcast covering the Chicago art scene: Bad At Sports. Michael Workman’s review dubs BAS the diamond in the rough of lunatic hackery too often abusing the mics. Chicagoist has listened to quite a few podcasts this summer and we share his skepticism. But the podcast doesn’t disappoint. With only...

Labor Day is traditionally the symbolic end of summer in Chicago, but for the local art scene it marks a major transition. Chicagoist missed a rash of summer exhibition closings last weekend but, as much as we procrastinate, don’t plan to make the same mistake this weekend. Schneider Gallery’s Portrait closes Saturday. The exhibit brings together seven photographers who capture their subjects unconventionally but in deeply affecting and sometimes freaky ways. Down the block, Saslow...

Some of our readers think we don’t pay enough attention to the world of news and entertainment on the south side. Point taken. It’s nothing personal. We love the south side and would get down there more often if it wasn’t such a trek. So for our readers looking to explore south of the South Loop, we’ve put together a late summer art gallery crawl for your enjoyment. In Pilsen, the alternative art space Polvo...

Chicagoist has mixed feelings about the proposed Fordham Spire (a.k.a Chicago’s next tallest building). It’d be an innovative structure by a celebrated “star-chitecht” that plays well with its neighbors. But does Chicago need another insanely tall skyscraper? Is this a fitting next chapter in the history of Chicago architecture? Three free, informative exhibits at the Chicago Architecture Foundation’s ArchiCenter provide some perspective. In 1972, five up-and-coming architects wrote “Five Architects”, a manifesto detailing how they’d...

If you thought there was a lot to do last weekend, you ain't seen nothin' yet, baby. This weekend if you can't find something to do you just aren't livin in the city the way you should. Deep breath, ok here goes:

Chicagoist stumbled into its local tavern recently and noticed a whole lot of green tinsel and merry little top hats—the American cultural shorthand for St. Patrick’s Day (or Amateur Hour as it’s known around these offices). While you might be tempted to “celebrate” the rich cultural heritage of Ireland with a pint of green Bud Light, why not spend some time this week at the Beverly Arts Center during the 6th Annual Irish Film Festival...

Adding fuel to the theory that The Arts Are Dying in the U.S. (literature, classical music, theater, cinema, etc.) is today’s news from Crain’s Chicago Business that attendance at Chicago’s top 10 museums in 2004 declined for the fourth year in a row.

What can you say about Pilsen? That it’s the largest Mexican-American community in Chicago, and one of the largest in the United States? Check. That it’s home to a decades-old, well established arts scene and some of the finest galleries in town? Check. That’s it a vibrant place to raise a family? Well, for the folks that produce mind-numbing, ubiquitous American Girl dolls, that may not be so.

Bronzeville seems to be getting all the pre-gentrification/new-business-opening buzz these days, but Chicagoist remembers a time (all the way back in the springtime) when Pilsen was the place to be for the hippest of Chicago hip.

‘Tis the season for all sizes and flavors of “Christmas Carol” offerings, plus variations on its time-honored (some might say “tired”) theme. Our favorite standby is ye olde Muppets version, costarring a surprisingly tuneful Michael Caine, but our job here is to send you out into the world, not to your sofa zones. Luckily, Chicagoland has plenty of theatrical Scrooges to please everyone, everywhere, over the holidays: For the Purists: “A Christmas Carol” The...