Former City Cultural Programmer Orlove Heading To NEA

By Chuck Sudo in Arts & Entertainment on Mar 21, 2012 10:00PM

Nice guys sometimes do finish first. A press release earlier today from the National Endowment for the Arts announced that Michael Orlove is the organization's new director of presenting and artist communities.

Orlove worked as a senior programmer for the former Department of Cultural Affairs, and later as director of music programs Chicago Office of Tourism and Culture, and his fingerprints can be found on some of the city's most ambitious and diverse cultural programming. Orlove was responsible in the founding and programming for Summerdance, World Music Fest Chicago, the Downtown Sound series and other free music programming at Millennium Park. Former Mayor Richard Daley's merging of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Office of Special Events eventually led to Orlove's transfer to the Chicago Tourism Office and the retirement of longtime Cultural Affairs czar Lois Weisberg.

WBEZ's Jim DeRogatis wrote a scathing criticism of the two offices' merger in December 2010. But court-appointed city hiring monitor Noelle Brennan determined the way Weisberg was running Cultural Affairs in tandem with the Chicago Tourism Fund was a violation of the Shakman Decree. Orlove and other cultural programmers shunted off to the Tourism Office found themselves on the outside looking in.

Orlove's first day with the NEA is May 7.