Art
The Best of Chicago’s MDW Art Fair: Cat Taxidermy, Tarot, and Interactive Icebergs
CHICAGO — MDW is not an art fair focused on sales and bringing in big-name collectors. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
Chicago
Opinion
Vote Picasso for Minister of Art!
CHICAGO — When my wife was completing her mail-in voter ballot for the upcoming US elections, something on the instruction leaflet caught my eye.
Art
Surreal Sculptures Remixing Nature Provoke Environmentalist Concerns
CHICAGO, Illinois — Walking down an urban Chicago street on a quiet Sunday afternoon, I noticed a gathering of greenery nestled in the crack of a sidewalk jutting up against a cement wall. These small moments of nature poking through the urban landscape reveal themselves when we are not paying atten
Art
Expo Marks the Beginning of Chicago's New Art Identity in Post-Mayor Daley Era
CHICAGO — The excitement and buzz around Expo Chicago, the Windy City's resurgence into the international art world, felt deafening. Practically every artist in the city who knew how to handle art was in some way involved with the fair. Newcity newspaper, the city's #1 alt-weekly, published "Chicago
Art
Formalist Public Sculpture Takes Over Chicago's Lakefront
From now until May 2013, you can see a sculpture pretty much every few hundred yards near Chicago's lakefront path, from Belmont Harbor on the north side through Grant Park, next to the Magnificent Mile in the downtown Loop area.
Art
Giant Rodent Menaces Chicago
CHICAGO — Chicago has a rat problem, and you would be justified in thinking that Belgian street artist Roa is paying tribute to the tenacious rodent. According to the Chicago Urban Art Society, which arranged for Roa to bring his distinctive style to this neighborhood, it is in fact a possum.
Art
Three Painting Shows in Chicago
CHICAGO — I had a strong urge to see some painting last weekend, so I decided to see what was showing at some of the commercial gallery spaces in the River North area of Chicago. With the El tracks running overhead, and the solid red-brick ex-industrial buildings, this district is similar in look an
Opinion
Planning the Culture of Chicago
CHICAGO — The draft of the new Chicago Cultural Plan was officially released a week ago. It’s the penultimate step in a process that began in February, and which will end in the fall of 2012 with the release of the final recommendations.
News
A Man with a Chicago Plan
CHICAGO — On Wednesday evening, nearly 300 people crammed into a small auditorium at Columbia College Chicago to participate in an open forum for the Chicago Cultural Plan 2012. You would think that every big city in the world has a cultural plan, but evidently the last time Chicago carried out this
Art
What Is Chicago Style?
CHICAGO — Is Chicago an artistic center on the same level as New York, London or LA? Is there an identifiable “Chicago school," in the same way as the school of Paris or the post-war art movements in Manhattan? Does Chicago produce “famous” artists and artists worthy of greater fame?
Art
Medical Museum Invites Artists in to Probe Illness
CHICAGO — I didn’t even know the International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago existed until a few weeks ago, much less that it has a regular schedule of exhibitions. I certainly didn’t expect the current show, called Body of Work, to be one of the best things I’ve seen as part of Chicago Arti
Opinion
On Bombshells and Public Art
A new Marilyn Monroe sculpture went up in Chicago but homegrown reaction to the sculpture has been "almost uniformly negative" … though you wouldn't know if you were checking Flickr.