Miao Wang, no title, 2024/Image: Patron Gallery
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ART
Nick Cave’s Kinetic Sculpture For Kansas City Airport Decommissioned?
“One of the most popular and expensive pieces of public art at Kansas City’s new airport terminal now sits in a warehouse and may never be reinstalled due to safety concerns,” reports the Kansas City Star. “Nick Cave’s kinetic sculpture ‘The Air Up There‘ cost $1 million to create and install. It consists of 2,800 colorful spinners that dangled from the ceiling of the check-in hall at Kansas City International Airport. But it was removed in October after the part of one spinner fell… The report put the blame on the failure of a clip of the kind that fishermen use to connect hooks and lures on their lines. The ones used are insufficient to withstand the weight and sway of the spinners over time.”
Said James Martin, the city’s public art administrator, “I talked with Nick before the holidays, and there’s a lot of disappointment.” Cave and designer Bob Faust “understood the need to take it down as quickly as possible. I did let Nick know that the potential outcome [was] decommissioning the work.”
The Difficulties In Pricing Frieze
“The potential sale [of Frieze] raises questions around how to value the prestigious and unique art brand,” comments The Art Newspaper. “Frieze’s parent company, the entertainment and sports conglomerate Endeavor, announced in April 2024 that it had struck a deal to be acquired in full by the private equity colossus Silver Lake at a $13 billion valuation. Six months later, Endeavor made it known that, as a provisional part of this larger transaction, it was exploring the sale of select live-event assets in its portfolio—including Frieze, which the accompanying press statement called ‘the world’s leading platform for modern and contemporary art.’
“Another point of speculation concerns the post-sale fate of Frieze’s current leadership, headlined by chief executive Simon Fox… in May 2023, Endeavor paid $16.5 million to buy out the remaining thirty-percent owned by the brand’s co-founders, Amanda Sharp and Matthew Slotover. Two months later Frieze announced the acquisitions of the Armory Show and Expo Chicago.”
Bryana Bibbs Sets Cultural Center Solo Show
Newcity Breakout Artist Bryana Bibbs will have a solo exhibition, “two hundred and fifty-one days,” at the Cultural Center curated by Elise Butterfield, the artist announces on Instagram. Opens Saturday, February 1, 10am-5pm, with the artist present 2pm-5pm, and runs through May 18.
Miao Wang’s “The Other” At Patron
Patron presents “the other,” their first solo exhibition with Chicago-based artist Miao Wang (b. 1988). “Wang’s materially committed practice honors a human, physical relationship to the passage, and reality of time. Working largely with materials that hold material connections to historical and contemporary Chinese aesthetic traditions, filtered through the Western monochromatic canon, Wang has developed a unique conceptual language of abstraction. In ‘the other,’ Wang presents four distinct bodies of work, each representing the artist’s relationship, through repeated gesture, to notions of doubling, kindred beings, or, in her words, ‘an expression, and its shadow.’” Opens Saturday, January 11, 5pm-730pm. More here.
MCA, Consulate of Mexico In Chicago Team Up For Three Kings Day
The Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Mexican Consulate in Chicago will team up today from 10am-noon to celebrate “Dia de Los Reyes” with migrant children. Sixty migrant youth from Latin and Central America will participate in art activities in English and Spanish and share the traditional “Rosca de Reyes” cake, a symbol of unity, at the MCA, in collaboration with Heartland Alliance. “This is the second year of our collaboration, which reinforces our commitment to create inclusive cultural spaces for all of Chicago’s Latino communities in partnership with the consulate, which has helped us increase our public program audiences by more than sixty-five-percent,” the MCA relays.
DESIGN
2025 Is The Year Of Return To The Corporate Office
A cascade of companies beckon their workers back to their cubicles: JP Morgan is going for the full five days, reports Bloomberg. “CEO Jamie Dimon has been critical of remote-working policies”; the change would return the $3.9 trillion bank to pre-pandemic rules. This follows last year’s news of a major Gensler-led renovation of the Loop’s Chase Tower. Meanwhile, Fortune reports that “global ad giant WPP [issued a] sweeping return-to-office mandate for its 114,000 staff, calling them back to office four days a week.” Among other returnees are Amazon, The Washington Post, Dell, Southwest, Starbucks, Salesforce and IBM.
“Office market stakeholders point to the escalated mandates, many of which take effect in 2025, as a signal that demand for office space will be on the rebound after years of depressed leasing activity,” but “escalated in-person requirements may not trigger a spike in leasing,” reports CoStar.
Bronzeville Could Get Fifty-Story Tower
“Former Transwestern broker JC Griffin wants to purchase a vacant South Side site that has been subject of testy negotiations in recent years,” reports the Real Deal. Griffin is “in talks with the owners of 2545-55 South King Drive in Bronzeville to purchase the six-and-a-half-acre property next to the former Michael Reese Hospital site… Through his development firm, Griffin Venture Group, Griffin is proposing a fifty-story, 370-unit residential tower for the site with some portion of the units set aside as affordable housing. The land could trade for $30 million-$35 million… Financing for the deal is uncertain.”
Tallest Building In Evanston Planned For Downtown High-Rise
In a third attempt at developing the site, reports Evanston Now, “a thirty-one-story, 330-foot-tall tower with 447 apartments is being proposed for 605 Davis Street.” If approved, “the tower would be the tallest structure in Evanston, surpassing 277-foot Orrington Plaza and 276-foot Sherman Plaza,” adds The Real Deal.
Daiso, Japanese Dollar Store, Lands In Chicago Area
“Daiso sells everything from home décor to kitchenware, beauty products, stationery and Japanese snacks,” reports WMAQ-TV. Its hundred or so U. S. stores are mostly in Texas; the retailer, offering “affordable and unique” Japanese-inspired products, will open its first Illinois stores in Willowbrook and South Elgin.
DINING & DRINKING
Charis Listening Bar Opening In Bridgeport
“We’re super excited to announce that we’ll be on sonic curator detail for Chicago’s newest listening bar Charis (pronounced: care-iss),” reports 606 Records on Instagram. “Opening soon in the lovely Bridgeport community, Charis Listening Bar will be a warm welcome for vinyl enthusiasts, cocktail appreciators (NA beverages included) and those that consider a loungey vibe essential.” Instagram here. More Charis here.
Sideshow Gelato Dashed By Bureaucracy?
Jay Bliznick, majordomo of the now-shuttered Sideshow Gelato in Lincoln Square, adds a 2,000-word post-mortem on Facebook of the difficulties the establishment had with the city, down to inspectors not knowing what a “sideshow” is, as well as several inspectors dropping in on the closing night fundraiser. “When we were going through the Zoning under the Lightfoot administration we were held up for almost two months… The head of the department refused to approve the plans because they didn’t understand the shop’s concept… The first problem was the stage. Why were there stages if it is a gelato shop?”
Bliznick describes the myriad of complications which added to the decision to close. “We came to the last day. We decided to do one last big goodbye party. No tickets at the door. It was billed as a fundraiser with a suggested donation… so we could have something to pay off some of the shop debts. We, admittedly, were lax on the language but it was still there. So we are having the party. 9:35pm, on a Saturday, on the Saturday between Christmas and New Years the Bureau sent THREE officers to fine me… Since I was closing anyway they decided not to fine me but give me a ‘Cease and Desist’ from performing any other shows with the threat of arrest and a fine. They wished me luck with future endeavors and slunk out.”
McDonald’s Small-Sizes Diversity
Chicago-based McDonald’s “is ending some of its diversity practices, citing the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 decision outlawing affirmative action in college admissions,” reports the Sun-Times. The corporation is ending “external surveys,” and plans “to retire specific goals for achieving diversity at senior leadership levels. It also intends to end a program that encourages its suppliers to develop diversity training and increase the number of minorities in their own leadership ranks… McDonald’s said it would continue to support efforts that ensure a diverse base of employees, suppliers and franchisees.”
MEDIA
Axios Considers 2025 For Chicago Media
“Chicago media had some ups and downs in 2024, but the hope is that budget cuts and other issues won’t spill over into 2025,” writes Justin Kaufmann in a rat-a-tat summary at Axios Chicago. Because? “This is a media town, live and local all the way.”
Billionaires Aren’t Good With Journalistic Investments
“Billionaires, once thought to be the saviors of journalism, are proving themselves poor stewards of media companies,” writes veteran media executive Norman Pearlstine at the Columbia Journalism Review. “Several billionaires who have purchased media companies treat their acquisitions as sidelines they can run without much hands-on attention. They believe that running a media company must be easier than whatever business made them rich and that their talent and training are easily transferable from their primary business to media. They also trust their instincts more than others’ experience. They seem to favor many of Trump’s economic policies and fear he might retaliate against their primary businesses should he dislike their publications’ coverage of him… Journalists must redouble their efforts to expose the threat to democracy.”
Fact-Checking Will Be Verboten At Meta
Meta co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that its products, including Facebook, Instagram and Threads, will become more like Elon Musk’s X/Twitter. Among imminent changes: no more paid fact-checkers; “community notes” will become the dominant hum challenging misinformation and disinformation. In a video addressing users, the billionaire states that the recent elections “feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech.” Summarizes CNN’s Brian Stelter, Zuckerberg “asserts that ‘the fact-checkers have just been too politically biased, and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, especially in the U.S.” Facebook will also “get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender that are just out of touch with mainstream discourse.”
Zuckerberg continues, “We’re bringing back civic content. For a while the community asked to see less politics because it was making people stressed, so we stopped recommending these posts. But it feels like we’re in a new era now and we’re starting to get feedback that people want to see this content again. So we’re going to start phasing this back into Facebook, Instagram and Threads, while working to keep the communities friendly and positive.” The content review teams will no longer be based in California, but Texas instead.
MUSIC
Free Concert Celebrates Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
The Music Institute of Chicago, in a new partnership with Evanston Interfaith Clergy and Leaders, will present its twenty-second Annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Celebration Concert, a free event on Sunday, January 19, 3pm, at Nichols Concert Hall in Evanston. The performance also will be available via livestream. Details here.
STAGE
Silent Vigil Held Day After Cirque’s Abrupt Blue Man Closing
“On Monday afternoon, fans of the show as well as former employees held a silent protest outside the theater where the show held court in Chicago for decades,” reports the Sun-Times. “They marched, they banged drums and, with blue faces devoid of any recognizable human emotion, they occasionally paused to dab paint on passersby during their North Side protest Monday. But the two dozen participants uttered not a single word — in homage to the always silent, blue-faced characters that stalked the Briar Street Theatre’s stage for the last time on Sunday night.”
Bristol Old Vic Theatre School To Shed Undergrads
More cracks in the edifice of British theater: “Renowned drama school says ‘unprecedented funding challenges’ make degrees unviable from September 2025,” reports the Guardian. “Bristol Old Vic theater school, founded in 1946, said its undergraduate training model was now ‘financially unsustainable’… One of the UK’s most celebrated drama schools, which counts the Oscar-winners Olivia Colman, Daniel Day-Lewis and Jeremy Irons among its alumni, is to scrap its undergraduate degrees due to a range of financial challenges.”
ARTS & CULTURE & ETC.
Chicago Second-Worst Traffic In World, Report Claims
“Chicago tied New York City and ranked only behind Istanbul, Turkey for most hours its average driver was stuck in traffic in 2024—and it’s getting worse,” relays Block Club Chicago. The original, infographic-heavy “Global Traffic Scorecard” is here.
Biden Bars Medical Debt From Credit Reports
“Unpaid medical bills will no longer appear on credit reports, where they can block people from mortgages, car loans or small business loans. That’s according to a final rule announced by the Biden administration on Tuesday,” reports the Sun-Times.
Christmas Tree Recycling Begins Saturday
“Residents can recycle their Christmas trees at dozens of drop-off locations across the city starting Saturday. As part of a Department of Streets and Sanitation program, thousands of trees are mulched each year, diverting trees from landfills and creating mulch for city residents, local parks and forests,” reports WMAQ-TV, which lists six locations where free mulch will be available starting Monday. The twenty-seven drop-off locations, open at parks January 11-25, are here.
St. Charles Arts Council Gets Home
The St. Charles Arts Council has its own site starting in February: “Having a physical space for the Arts Council has been on our radar for years,” executive director Kathryn Hill says in a release. “Our programming will expand exponentially this year, as we will have space for workshops, gallery exhibits and artist talks.” A grand opening is slated for Sunday, February 23, noon-3pm. More here.
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