Results tagged “contemporaryart”

We love to read and write, and not just our own posts here on the World Wide Webs. We’ve been working on our first novel for years. It’s a love story involving time-traveling unicorns and so far we have about 850 pages of it written, but we don’t know when we’ll get it published (fingers crossed!). As such, we have a soft spot in our heart for local writers who have been a tad more successful. Luckily we live in a city that gives us a chance to here these talented scribes read!

Pack an umbrella, bring your galoshes, and dress in layers. It's been that kind of week. Here are some events to brave any extreme in weather.

If you were looking for some new books to cuddle up with for the oncoming winter, the Chicago Book Festival is here to help. There's an events booklet available at libraries and bookstores and a PDF online. Much of the information is on readings in the city that happen anyway, but we are excited about the extra discussions for this fall's One Book, One Chicago, Arthur Miller's The Crucible, which we haven't read since high...

Although Chicagoist has some photographers on staff, we don't always "get" modern photography. Something about many trendy fine art photographs can seem too "snapshotty" in nature, a bit too sterile, or somewhat void of emotion. As such, we were thrilled to find the current Jeff Wall show everything we hoped for in a photography exhibit: beautiful, inspired, intriguing and unique. After selecting his "Outside a Nightclub" as our unequivocal favorite piece at the Museum of...

This afternoon, gangs of Chicago artists are out to change the way you think about Independence Day, slaying sacred cows and cherished myths. Myth #1: July 4 is a time to put politics aside and celebrate America. For Feel Tank Chicago, the personal is political. And that includes how we celebrate The Fourth. Rather than marching lockstep with Team USA cheerleaders, loving their country right or wrong, the artistic collective has planned this afternoon’s Fifth...

Spring is just around the corner, but that means that we still have just enough winter weather to push cabin fever into high gear. Fear not, we here at Chicagoist will gladly provide you with some activities that get you out of the house, but also keep you warm — a little something to pass the time until we can put that parka away for the season. Get out of the cold and into...

With the second Body Worlds exhibit expected to attract the same droves of visitors to the Museum of Science and Industry as the first installment did, everybody seems to be noticing something — museums are cool. And because museums are cool, people brought attendance to them in Chicago up 6 percent from 2005 to 2006.

We must admit, we've had our setbacks this year. A new year sounds pretty enticing as we wipe the 2006 slate clean, but we figure we may as well finish off this year strong. There are multiple things going on this weekend that are notable, as always feel free to add additional events in the comments section. Start your weekend off right with some good music. Tonight at theHideout, 1354 W. Wabansia, The Venom Lords,...

We don't know about you, but at just about this time every year, we truly feel like our world is going to implode. Between end-of-the-year work crunches to making travel plans for the holidays to trying to find the time (and money!) to buy a plethora of gifts, "peace and calm" is what we really want for Christmas this year. Thankfully, that's just what we found earlier this week when we ventured to the...

Chicagoist loves us some comics. So we were particularly pleased to see one of Chicago’s most famous practitioners of the art form, Chris Ware, receive a $50,000 grant for his work along with local artist Nick Cave (not that one) and 11 other visual artists.

The Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art hosted Food & Wine magazine's eighth annual Entertaining Showcase this past Wednesday. Chicagoist is sure that there were members of the Chicago social elite in attendance, though we couldn't tell you who they were, what they looked like or what made them so gosh darned elite. This ignorance didn't stop us from enjoying, nay, revelling in the many tasty treats offered to us by some of the best chefs...

Twenty of the top chefs in Chicago are joining forces with Food & Wine Magazine for the 2006 Entertaining Showcase at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Wednesday, November 15. The list of participating chefs reads like a who's who of Chicago fine dining: Food & Wine Best New Chefs Michael Carlson of Schwa and Graham Elliot Bowles of Avenues, Grant Achatz from Alinea, Shawn McClain from Spring, Green Zebra and Custom House, and Andrew Zimmerman...

If there is one thing we aren’t doing this weekend, it’s going to see Borat. The mass amount of advertising and media coverage of Borat has inadvertently allowed him to seep into our dreams and now we are in the process of detoxing. To help you detox from overexposure to Borat, we have provided a few things to keep you busy today.

Despondent over not being able to afford your mortgage? Flummoxed at how your rent always seems to be going up? Outraged at how condos are changing the make-up of our neighborhoods? Then you're probably not going to want to hear about the latest trend in the housing market: ginormous mansions formulated for the stinkin' rich. Today's Tribune Magazine gives a rundown of some spectacular houses under construction in Lincoln Park. Sara Crown Star's new house...

On Friday Chicagoist attended the media preview of Bruce Mau's Massive Change exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art, and we were absolutely blown away. Never have we attended an exhibit with such tangible impact. Mau and his team of designers present hundreds of feasible ideas to help conserve the planet and the human race and to help us all live the highest quality of life possible. The installation is presented from a designer's perspective,...

There’s been a lot of ink spilled about Chicago’s cornucopia of music events this summer, but yesterday’s RedEye also clued us in to several film festivals that are happening in the next three months, including ones we’ve covered like the Silent Film Festival and the Chicago Outdoor Film Festival as well as upcoming events we haven’t like Reeling’s Gay Games fest, the Onion City Experimental Film Festival and the Chicago Underground Film Festival. Here are...

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...

Years ago, in more innocent times, the Museum of Contemporary Art held an annual marathon party to commemorate the Summer Solstice and reacquaint us with the institution. Those days, like the MCA’s outsized hospitality, are no more. But this weekend the Hyde Park Art Center steals a page from that playbook, celebrating their newly christened home during the 36-hour Creative Move.

We’re looking forward to checking out Bookslut’s reading at The MCA Literary Gangs of Chicago tomorrow night. We love Bookslut, we love the MCA, and literary gangs are the only ones that let us wear our colors (pink and blue! Pretty.) without beating us up. But alright, okay, we’ll admit it, we’re going so we can see Hottie McHotsalot, Marisha Pessl.

Few artists inspire as much delight and wrath from even the most casual art observer as Andy Warhol. You love/hate how he made accessible/denigrated his work by putting it on soup cans, how his 8-hour shot of the Empire State Building blew your mind/messed with your mind, how he took silver balloons and made them art, how he captured Marilyn Monroe’s essence over and over again. Starting this weekend, the MCA exhibits many shades...

Your big Valentine’s Evening need not be threatened by a lack of ideas or lack of cash. You can impress that special someone tonight for absolutely free! Yes, that sounds like bad email spam but it’s true. Many of our favorite museums are free on Tuesdays.

The Ukrainian Museum of Modern Art is displaying a small but important collection of work capturing a sea change of Eastern European democracy. Artists Respond: Ukrainian Art and The Orange Revolution receives its U.S. premiere at this unassuming building in the heart of the Ukrainian Village via The Center for Contemporary Art, Kyiv, Ukraine. As reports of fraud surfaced during the 2004 Ukrainian election, supporters of opposition candidate Victor Yushenko took to the streets to...

.. 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!

Need something to do with the kids on Sunday now that the Bears are out of the playoffs and you care nothing for the rest of the teams playing? In its first family edition program aimed toward a younger audience, Stories on Stage is collaborating with the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) and Chicago Public Radio (CPR) to bring the kickass children's book Frindle to the stage.

The quarterly comedy writing and performance showcase Funny Ha-Ha rumbles into the Museum of Contemporary Art tonight, the December offering of the MCA’s Literary Gangs of Chicago series. Chicagoist was lucky enough to catch up with the Funny people last spring and was treated to host Claire Zulkey’s Cosmo Quiz satire, Amy Krouse Rosenthal’s musings on everyday life, a revival of Aaron Friedman's before-our-time ‘Council Wars’ routine, and comedy troupe Schadenfreude’s equal-opportunity hating on FM radio personalities.

When Chicagoist first set eyes on Andreas Gursky’s monumental-scale photography at the Museum of Contemporary Art's 2002 Summer Solstice, we had no idea that one impressive but rather unassuming photo would today rest at the center of controversy. Avenue of the Americas (pictured below) compresses a row of apartment buildings into a space approximately 7 x 11 feet while somehow maintaining their grand presence. Needless to say, this isn’t the type of work that you or I could easily shoot in our spare time and even the largest monitors in Chicago can’t adequately replicate the real thing.

The internationally renowned Mabou Mines troupe opens their reimagined version of Heinrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House at the MCA tonight. Reimagined to say the least, the Obie-award winning DollHouse casts very tall women alongside very short men (3’4” to 4’5”) to convey how outsized Ibsen’s heroines remain in the collective imagination. The cast frolics in a toy house on toy furniture accompanied by piano concerti.

The Museum of Contemporary Art got a big chunk of change from Target so starting next Tuesday they're going to have Target Free Tuesdays. Every Tuesday from 5pm - 8pm admission to the museum is free. The thing is, Marshall Fields used to sponsor the free Tuesdays.. which leaves Chicagoist wondering if "free art for the masses" is something Macy's/Federated isn't interested in getting behind any longer.

On Tuesday, we told you about ResFest at the Museum of Contemporary Art and all the video goodness therein, including the Beck retrospective. But if our sparkling descriptions weren’t enough to motivate you to attend, would free tickets make it worth your while? Then you’re in luck because we’ve got a pair of tickets to see the Beck oeuvre in all its quirky, funky glory and we’re giving them to one of you.

Attention short story fans! (And by "short story fans" we mean enthusiasts of the short story, not story enthusiasts who are short, nor short story cooling mechanisms--though you are all welcome here as well!) You have until noon today to enter here for your chance to win a delightful bundle of Paris Review goodies, courtesy of Picador and in honor of tonight's Stories on Stage event. Three winners will be chosen and notified this afternoon by email.