Art As Investment | Ear Taxi Returns

Argyle Red Line station, August 1, 2025/Photo: Ray Pride

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ART

Former Art Basel Head: Is Art As Investment A Decades-Long Mistake?

ARTnews points to a piece at Business of Fashion (paywall) by former Art Basel head Marc Spiegler, who says it’s time to “stop hyping art as an investment.” The former Newcity senior editor says the money in the art market over the past quarter-century is behind “recent instability—gallery closures, the cancellation of New York’s ADAA fair, and works by artists like Giacometti and Warhol ‘going sideways’ at auction. Spiegler traces the shift back to the late 1990s, when auction houses began selling newly made works, previously considered too fresh for resale. By the 2000s, speculators and investment funds had flooded the market, treating art less as cultural capital and more as financial commodity… The speculative frenzy inflated prices, distorted collecting habits, and caused the resale market for emerging artists to crash almost as quickly as it rose.”

The result is a market that “comprised [art’s] strengths while highlighting its weaknesses.” Spiegler says “the trade must pivot from selling art as an asset to promoting collecting as a ‘Instagrammable sapiosexy pleasure’ for the wealthy and intellectually inclined—those who care about culture, ideas, artist access and social signaling.”

Censored Artists—Kruger, Spiegelman, Waters, Dread Scott—On How Their Lives Changed

“Censorship can also be a rallying cry, a reminder of why artists make art in the first place,” profiles the New York Times Style Magazine, (gift link) talking to nine artists. John Waters: “When people get their books banned today, I always say, ‘Be glad! It’ll be in the front of the bookstore by the cash register in the banned books section, not in the gay section next to true crime by the bathroom.’ The censor boards were my best publicists. They didn’t realize it, but they worked for me.” Karen Finley: “Eventually I went back to thinking about why I create art. I made the decision that I’d work from joy—which might be more of a radical gesture than the art itself.”

Dread Scott: “I was a young radical who thought that art could change the world. Then, suddenly, I had a work that was part of the national discussion. And it wasn’t just being discussed by the powerful but by the powerless—people from housing projects were standing in line for over an hour to see it. When Congress and the city of Chicago intend to outlaw your work, it shows the power of art, but also the extraordinary lengths [to which] the government is willing to go, including ripping up its own Constitution, to suppress the voice of a previously unknown undergraduate art student.”

Prison Sentence For Heist Of Two-Million-Dollar Suburban Art Collection

A federal judge “gave a four-and-a-half-year prison sentence to a man the feds say helped pilfer $2 million worth of art, antiques and other valuables that had been kept in a Deerfield storage unit,” reports the Sun-Times. John Garcia “admitted in 2023 that he worked with two others to steal more than 180 high-end valuables from the unit and sell them for thousands of dollars. The theft began late in March 2020, during the height of the pandemic.”

DESIGN

Damen Silos As A Museum Of Graffiti Art

“Demolition began in July for the Damen Silos, which for decades were an experimental, industrial art lab where graffiti writers and street artists could practice their letters and technique and meet others doing the same,” reports the Sun-Times. “Before cell phones and social media made it easy to find friends and map murals, they could see artists’ names on the silos and know who had been there lately and who they might run into soon. ‘We’ve had this crown over the city on the South Side,’ graffiti artist Luis Molina (‘Peas’) says of the silos, which have stood as landmarks for him since he was a kid growing up in Marquette Park. Tearing them down means the loss of ‘that historic and nostalgic feeling of what we were and who we were.’”

Chicago YIMBY has pictures in “Eradication Of The Damen Silos Is In Full Effect” here. Community members assembled for one last sunset picnic, reports South Side Weekly.

End Of Red Line Slow Zones Means Uptown Noise

Uptown residents between the Sheridan and Wilson Red Line stops “say track improvements have allowed the southbound train to go significantly faster—and rumble significantly louder,” reports Block Club. “Due to the age of the tracks, the train is… significantly louder than it has been anytime in the past twenty years,” Alder Angela Clay (46th) wrote. “The increased noise from the train makes it very difficult for nearby residents to use Buena Circle Park, Challenger Park or the Challenger Dog Friendly Area—especially with their children.” The Red Line “runs twenty-four hours per day, and the CTA is exempt from city noise ordinances.”

Hanig’s Footwear Leaving Michigan Avenue After Half-Century

“Located in the former Hancock Center building at 875 North Michigan, Hanig’s Footwear has operated along the retail-lined street for fifty years,” sizes the Sun-Times, but plans to close the store this fall. The company will keep its Wilmette location. “‘Small businesses are no longer viable on Michigan Avenue,’ said seventy-seven-year-old owner Peter Hanig, who brought the Cows on Parade public art exhibition to Chicago in 1999 after being inspired by a similar display in Zurich.”

River North Offices In Former Shoe Factory Could Turn Residential

Real estate investment firm Concord Capital plans to convert Salesforce’s former River North office and a nearby building into apartments, reports the Sun-Times, “the latest in a string of proposed adaptive reuse projects in the neighborhood… The project would create sixty-six apartments while retaining the building’s ground floor retail.”

DINING & DRINKING

M&M’s Parent Company Boosts Its Hotel Chocolat In Chicago And United States

Hotel Chocolat, “a British premium chocolate maker acquired by Mars Inc., is tapping its new owner’s firepower to expand in the United States,” reports Crain’s. The chocolatier “opened two stores in Chicago earlier this year, and is opening another location on the city’s outskirts this week,” with plans for stores next year in New York, Boston and Los Angeles. “Its two Chicago locations strategically avoid ‘tourist-driven locations’ in favor of ‘the neighborhoods where people really live,’ an approach Hotel Chocolat will continue to follow in other regions, [Hotel Chocolat’s CEO] added.”

Utz Outta Michigan

Utz Brands will close its Grand Rapids manufacturing facility to cut costs, crunches Food Dive. The chip and pretzel maker, which is “consolidating its manufacturing operations, will have seven plants after the Michigan closure.” In 2021, Utz Brands acquired Chicago snack company Vitner’s.

Drag Diner Hamburger Mary’s Reopens

Drag diner Hamburger Mary’s has opened a new Edgewater location, reports Block Club. Reservations are almost filled for evening dinners and shows Thursday-Sunday at the restaurant at 1055 West Bryn Mawr.

Starbucks Closing “Pick-Up” Stores, Including In Chicago

“Starbucks says it will ‘sunset’ its pick-up only concept stores across the country as the company moves to evaluate its portfolio of coffeehouses,” reports WMAQ-TV. Locations to go include 55th and Woodlawn; 227 West Monroe; 555 South Dearborn; Addison and Sheffield; 2063 North Clark; Wrightwood and Racine; and Prentice Women’s Hospital.

FILM & TELEVISION

Corporation For Public Broadcasting Winding Down

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting will begin “‘an orderly wind-down of its operations’ after seeing its budget cut through Republican-led legislation,” reports WGN-TV. “Despite the extraordinary efforts of millions of Americans who called, wrote and petitioned Congress to preserve federal funding for CPB, we now face the difficult reality of closing our operations,” CPB President Patricia Harrison said in a statement. “CPB remains committed to fulfilling its fiduciary responsibilities and supporting our partners through this transition with transparency and care.” Adds the New York Times, “The company is among the first casualties of a vote to strip roughly $500 million in federal funding from NPR, PBS and local stations across the country.”

Defunding Public Media Slams The Documentary Industry

“‘We may have lost our funding, but unlike Congress, we have not lost our way,’ writes ITVS boss Carrie Lozano as she assesses a less vibrant documentary landscape without the $9 million her organization provided annually to indie doc filmmakers behind titles like ‘Minding the Gap,’” writes the Hollywood Reporter. ITVS funds and distributes documentaries through PBS. “PBS is the foremost distributor of independent documentary, featuring stories and storytellers that don’t meet the interests or priorities of commercial media like the big studios and streamers.”

MEDIA

Bud Miller, WLS-AM Newsman During Pop Music Heyday, Was Ninety-Six

“Bernard ‘Bud’ Miller spent twenty-seven years at WLS-AM as a news reporter and news director during the 50,000-watt station’s pop music heyday, working alongside well-known on-air personalities [including] Larry Lujack, Tommy Edwards, Fred Winston and Bob Sirott,” reports the Tribune. “He built a full-service news department second to none—especially unique for a rock music station,” recalled Sirott. “He was a serious newsman but we all loved him because he knew music was our number-one product.”

Exodus Of Journalists At Washington Post Accelerates

After its purchase as a personal investment by Jeff Bezos, The Washington Post expressed ambitions of being a national newspaper, including one with a Midwest bureau. But now, “Almost everyone at the Washington Post I made a point of reading has left,” posts Spy co-founder Kurt Andersen on Threads. “Philip Bump, Josh Dawsey, Glenn Kessler, Caroline Kitchener, Ashley Parker, Alexandra Petri, Jennifer Rubin, Catherine Rampell, Eric Wemple. Is their book critic Ron Charles the only one left? It’s as if the bosses want me to cancel my subscription.” Axios D.C. details the losses. Politico is keeping a list of departures, running three pages through July 24, here.

MUSIC

Ear Taxi Music Festival Returns

Ear Taxi Festival, the Midwest’s largest celebration of new and experimental music, returns this fall for the first time since 2021. The monthlong event will present twenty-four concerts, featuring over 500 artists in both large-scale and intimate formats at multiple venues. Twenty-seven world-premiere commissions will debut, and “Ear Taxi Festival ’25: The Composer’s Voice” showcases the new work of dozens of Illinois composers during its run, October 3-November 2. Details here.

Nancy Faust Releases “At The Game”

“Nancy Faust At The Game” has just been released at Bandcamp here, “with never-before-seen photos of Nancy Faust during the 1977 White Sox and Bulls seasons, as well as liner notes written by Nancy herself.”

STAGE

About Face Theatre Announces Season