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ART
Sol LeWitt’s Missing Loop Sculpture Needs Rebuilding
“A celebrated sculpture by artist Sol LeWitt was removed from the facade of a Downtown federal building because it deteriorated and needs a complete rebuild, according to the U.S. General Services Administration. But the fabrication work has not been approved or funded, a GSA spokesperson said. While the agency said it’s working with LeWitt’s estate on the sculpture’s conservation, the late artist’s wife said she hasn’t heard from the GSA about the artwork in ‘years,’” reports Lee Bey at the Sun-Times. Bey previously reported on the sculpture going missing in May.
MCA Announces Fall Programming, Including Its Blockbuster Yoko Ono Show
The museum has revealed fall exhibition and programming plans, including the opening of the Chicago-exclusive, major fourth-floor exhibition “Yoko Ono: Music of the Mind” as well as the fourth edition of the “Chicago Performs” series, a new season of “Family Day,” the return of the “Deem Symposium” and a roundtable talk on the exhibition “City in a Garden: Queer Art and Activism in Chicago.” Read more on its plans for the season here.
Interior Designer And Art Collector Larry Deutsch Was Eighty-Four
“Interior designer and art collector Larry Deutsch ran his Near North Side design firm for close to thirty-five years with an adept touch for educating his clients and working within their budgets,” chronicles the Trib. “‘His clients really appreciated him,’ said Stuart Shayman, an architect who worked closely with Deutsch. ‘He was very passionate about what he did—and about his profession—and I would say he was pretty close to being a perfectionist. If things didn’t go right, he could roll with it but he wanted to get as close as he could.’”
MOCA Los Angeles’ New Interim Director Is The Art Institute’s Deputy Director
The museum “has appointed former senior curator Ann Goldstein as its interim director,” reports the Los Angeles Times. “The move comes less than a week after the Institute of Contemporary Art at the University of Pennsylvania announced that MOCA’s current director, Johanna Burton, would be its new director… Goldstein has a long history with MOCA, having shaped her career at the museum, beginning in 1983—just a few years after the museum was established. Over the next two-and-a-half decades, Goldstein rose to senior curator. From 2009 to 2013, she served as director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, and in 2016 she became deputy director of the Art Institute of Chicago.”
Chief Justice Stopped The Firing of National Portrait Gallery Director
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts personally rejected internal suggestions among the board that the Smithsonian follow Trump’s orders to fire the National Portrait Gallery director, reports the New York Times (gift link). “Since 1851, the chief justice of the Supreme Court has served as chancellor of the Smithsonian—a role that involves running the board meetings but also includes perks like getting an early look at the National Zoo’s newborn pandas.”
DESIGN
New York Times Looks At Downtown Detroit’s Renaissance
“Detroit is booming, and the figures recently announced by Mayor Mike Duggan only confirmed what those in the real estate industry knew,” reports the New York Times (gift link). “The city had experienced population growth for two consecutive years, and in 2024 it had outpaced not just all other Michigan cities, but also the overall national growth rate, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The uptick in population has been especially visible in downtown Detroit, where key employers Rocket Mortgage, General Motors and Ford Motors’ tech innovation center are headquartered.”
CTA’s Interim Chief Makes The Case For Permanent Leadership Ahead of Fiscal Crisis
“Acting CTA President Nora Leerhsen has been holding down the fort since career bureaucrat Dorval Carter Jr.’s retirement earlier this year, but she wants the permanent job and is making a case to keep it,” reports the Sun-Times. At a recent City Council Transportation Meeting, “Leerhsen talked about having taken more than 450 rides on the CTA over the last year and visiting every one of the CTA’s seven bus garages, nine rail terminals and maintenance shops.” Still, the interim director faces an impending crisis: “The Regional Transportation Authority faces a $770 million fiscal cliff in 2026 that could cut area-wide transit service by forty percent,” reports Block Club.
Lessons For Chicago From Looming Cuts To Funding Of Philadelphia’s Transit System
“If state lawmakers don’t agree to allocate more money to public transit, branches on half of the El lines could go silent. So many bus routes would get slashed that Chicago would have fewer of them than Kansas City,” reports the Tribune (gift link). Philadelphia faces imminent cuts, “caused in large part, like Chicago’s, by the expiration of federal pandemic aid and exacerbated by ridership numbers that simply haven’t recovered to 2019 levels… Catastrophic transit cuts are slated to start in just weeks unless lawmakers come to a last-minute agreement on funding… The sixth-largest public transit system in the nation expects to eliminate nearly half of its service if lawmakers don’t avert the funding crisis.”
Buffalo Central Terminal, Art Deco Icon Of Rail Heyday, Looks To Revival
“After decades of neglect and painstaking restoration work, plans to transform the huge Buffalo Central Terminal into a mixed-use complex are gaining momentum,” reports Bloomberg. “The wide-ranging redevelopment plan [is] set to take ten years and an estimated $300 million… A master plan for the thirty-three-acre site calls for converting the campus into a mix of housing, commercial and public space that can serve as a new anchor for its Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood.”
Cyclists And Drivers Battle For Toronto Streets
“Cyclists in Toronto are resisting a law that would have the city rip out miles of bike lanes, setting back efforts toward safer streets,” reports the New York Times (gift link).
Milwaukee’s Mitchell Park Domes Gets Key Funding
The Milwaukee County Board has approved spending $5 million a year for the next six years to help pay for a $133 million renovation plan to repair Milwaukee’s historic Mitchell Park Domes, reports Wisconsin Public Radio.
Preservation Of Landmark First Church Of Deliverance Gets Grant
A $150,000 grant will help First Church of Deliverance, the eighty-six-year-old Bronzeville church—a popular spot on architecture tours—develop its first comprehensive preservation plan, reports the Sun-Times.
Medieval Torture Museum Owner Buys State Street Building With Plans For New Concepts
The Medieval Torture Museum has bought a four-story building on South State “for a fraction of its previous sale price, with plans to launch new museum concepts in the property,” reports CoStar. “Concepts being considered for the State Street building in Chicago include the Crime and Mob Museum, the Museum of Sex—Sexibit, and the Museum of Illusions, Moroz said in the email.” Read some of Newcity’s concepts for State Street here.
DINING & DRINKING
Can Chicago Hold Michelin-Star Chef Curtis Duffy?
With his memoir “Fireproof,” reports the Sun-Times, chef Curtis Duffy “is looking to the future and setting his sights beyond Chicago, the city that has defined the highs and lows of his culinary career… What does come next for Duffy? More restaurants, cookbooks and a new documentary set to come out next year, he said… He’s also eyeing opportunities to open up restaurants in Florida, where he now spends part of his time with his Miami-based wife and stepchildren.”
Panaderia For Former Ideal Bakery In Jefferson Park
A new bakery will open inside the former Ideal Bakery in Jefferson Park, reports Nadig Newspapers. “The name ‘La Ideal’ recently was posted on the storefront, and other artwork on the building lists donuts, cakes and Mexican bread as some of the bakery items that will be sold… A business license for Panderia Mana Inc. has been issued for the location.”
FILM & TELEVISION
Britain, Where The Film Center’s Programmer Is Headed, Endorses Public Funding For The Arts
Here or across the sea, outgoing Film Center head programmer Rebecca Fons tells Michael Phillips at the Tribune (gift link) that moviegoing can survive: “Every film exhibitor or curator or programmer is just trying to read the tea leaves and adjust. As usual. After the pandemic lockdown, and then the fallout from the (writers and actors) strikes, the industry was adjusting and counter-adjusting, trying to figure things out. It’s a dance marathon, and we’re all a bit tired. But we’re here. There’s a lot of encouragement and support and courage. We’re all in it. People have been predicting the death of cinema since not too long after the birth of cinema. We just keep doing what we do. It’s a resilient art form.”
Warner Bros. Decoupling Sheds Ten Percent Of Workforce
The machinations of the former Warner Bros. Discovery has announced layoffs that will cut jobs “across its marketing, production strategy, operations and theater ventures divisions. Roughly ten percent of the studio’s workforce” is affected, reports Variety. Details on the multi-billion-dollar overall deal are here.
Gen X Rediscovers The Hollywood Hustle
Elaine Low at The Ankler (subscription) goes “inside the fight to keep rising as immovable boomers and contraction stand in their way… Everyone thinks about death every so often, but it’s a curious thing to consider your professional mortality. It’s a bit like being able to plan and even attend your own funeral—what does the home stretch of my career look like? How have my ambitions met reality? What is my legacy in my chosen industry? Have all those years of work paid off? Gen Xers who work in entertainment are pondering these questions… as they experience a collective ‘Sliding Doors’ moment in their careers.”
LIT
A Chicago Scholar Reveals A Lost Sumerian Myth
“A riveting lost Sumerian myth was recently rediscovered thanks to University of Chicago Sumerologist Jana Matuszak,” reports Archaeology. “She deciphered a forgotten cuneiform tablet that… resides in the collection of the Istanbul Archaeological Museums. Known as Ni 12501, the 4,400-year-old inscribed clay object was originally found during nineteenth-century excavations at the ancient city of Nippur in present-day southern Iraq, but was given little scholarly attention due to its fragmentary nature. The tablet was mentioned in a publication by esteemed Assyriologist Samuel Noah Kramer in the 1950s, though it was not fully studied until Matuszak’s recent research. The text conveys a tale of how the Sumerian storm god Ishkur was trapped in the netherworld, causing chaos on earth due to the lack of rain.”
A Shuttered Black Bookstore Will Reopen As Kansas City Defender Newsroom
Established in 2007, Kansas City’s Willa’s Books and Vinyl has closed its doors, reports NiemanLab. “But thanks to The Kansas City Defender, a local news nonprofit, the collection isn’t going anywhere. Instead, the Defender is fundraising to purchase the collection and turn it into a public archive, making ‘Miss Willa”s bookstore space into its first-ever public headquarters. For the Defender, taking over this space and purchasing the archive are examples of what it means to go beyond news coverage to serve its community.”
MEDIA
“Why Conservatives Should Root For NPR”
“There’s a large market for at least some of… public broadcasting,” writes a National Review staffer at the Washington Post (gift link). “There are strong incentives for private individuals to keep them going in the absence of government money. Donations to PBS and NPR have increased significantly this year as talk of defunding has dominated political conversation. Some Republicans would no doubt be happy if PBS and NPR went away entirely, as they are upset by the networks’ [often-alleged] left-wing bias. They should be rooting for their success instead. It would be proof that, contrary to constant scaremongering from interest groups, cutting federal spending doesn’t end in disaster for citizens.”
MUSIC
Hybrid Battery System To Power Lollapalooza’s Mainstage
More festivals embrace cleaner energy, reports the Tribune (gift link). For a second year, Lollapalooza “will power its largest stage with a hybrid battery system, marking a growing trend of big-name music festivals transitioning away from diesel-based generators.” When they “introduced its hybrid battery-powered stage in 2024, it became the first major U.S. festival to power its main stage with a battery system, which supplements the stage’s generators with energy stored from the electric grid. This system reduced the stage’s fuel consumption by sixty-seven percent, and avoided twenty-six metric tons of carbon emissions.” Meanwhile, “Smoke from Canadian wildfires has rolled into the Chicago area, and AccuWeather has rated Chicago’s air quality as the worst in the world on Thursday as a result, according to a news release.”
Buddy Guy Keeps The Blues Alive In “Sinners” And His Music
“For Buddy Guy—a stalwart and staunch defender of the blues—there’s nothing more important than keeping his chosen genre at the forefront of conversation. It comes naturally: Guy is one of America’s greatest guitar players, a singular artist with a thick roster of A-list super fans—Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Gary Clark Jr. among them,” reports AP via the Seattle Times. “For the eight-time Grammy Award-winning musician, those recognitions aren’t priority. The longevity of the music that made his life is his primary concern.” “Like I promised B.B. King, Muddy Waters and all of them, I do the best I can to keep the blues alive… Blues is based on everyday life, a good time or a bad time… Music is like a bowl of real good gumbo. They got all kinds of meat in there. You got chicken in there, you got sausage in there. You got a seafood in it… When we play music, we put everything in there.”
ARTS & CULTURE & ETC.
Great Lakes Offshore Wind Could Power The Region
“Offshore wind power could provide far more electricity than the U.S. uses for residential, commercial and industrial purposes. But the federal government has recently stopped approving offshore projects in the ocean,” essays The Conversation. “Another option is available, though: the Great Lakes… A 2023 analysis from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory found that the Great Lakes states have enough offshore wind power potential to provide three times as much electricity as all eight Great Lakes states use currently, which would mean plenty left over to meet increasing demand or send power elsewhere in the country.”
Lake Geneva Named One Of Thirty-One Most Beautiful Towns In America
“One of our favorite day trips from Chicago, Lake Geneva has managed to stay at the top of many travel recommendation lists—mainly for its year-round resort-like atmosphere and attractions,” charts Condé Nast Traveler. “In the warmer months, you can enjoy everything from fishing on the lake to golfing; and if the water is a little too cold, you can view the town from above on a hot air balloon ride.”