Chicago is losing one of its biggest — arguably its biggest — cultural advocates at the end of the month with the retirement of Cultural Affairs Commissioner Lois Weisberg. The 85-year-old Weisberg is best known for organizing the wildly successful "Cows on Parade" public art exhibit of more than a decade ago, but her legacy runs deeper than that. Weisberg was also the driving force behind the Chicago Cultural Center, Taste of Chicago, Gallery 37, most of the major music festivals along the lakefront and neighborhood festivals throughout the city, and Friends of the Parks. Weisberg's knack for networking was the subject of a Malcolm Gladwell New Yorker profile. In short, Chicago could still conceivably be a cow town without Lois Weisberg. more ›

Chicago’s literary scene saw a few turns, upsets and successes this year. Here are handful of them. more ›

If the literary world has learned one thing about its sometimes rocky relationship with the Web, it’s this: the publishing industry and its literary communities must absolutely find a way to use the new technologies of the digital age in order to grow and flourish. And although Chicago has long been a nurturing environment for readers, writers and publishers, the city didn’t have an online hub for literary minds to connect with each other or to find information. Until yesterday, that is, when the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs launched two new websites. more ›

Tonight is the only night you can catch this year's Site Unseen: a site-specific performance event featuring theater, dance, music, and visual art by local and international artists. more ›

What do you think of when you hear the words "artist's studio"? Maybe you imagine a small room stocked with tools of the trade, tucked away in a building in which other studios reside. But "artist's studio" can mean many things, from a corner of the cluttered table in one's tiny kitchen to a spare bedroom to a spacious loft in which one can make ginormous sculptures that cost a lot of money. more ›

Yesterday we clued you in to the Chicago Department Of Cultural Affairs' Edible Audible Picnic noontime summer music series. The fine folks at the Department of Cultural Affairs have pulled out all the stops to make this a musically memorable summer as they follow up the lunchtime tunes with Downtown Sound: New Music Mondays, an evening series featuring both local and international indie-rock and pop voices. more ›

Unlike Navy Pier, which functions happily as a tourist magnet, Millennium Park welcomes as many real live Chicagoans to its green spaces and promenades as it does out-of-towners. It's as much ours as it is the visitors', a gathering place for everyone, and it doesn't need a Bubba Gump Shrimp outlet to entice. And while the imminent opening of the Art Institute's Modern Wing at its south end is certainly the biggest park news, the lineup for summer 2009's Edible Audible Picnic series sounds pretty awesome, too. Get ready to grab a sack lunch and check out some jams under Frank Ghery's trellis. more ›