On Culture Archives - Page 2 of 41

A group of protesters outside El Centro at Northeastern Illinois University. In the front we see the back of a woman's head (Nancy Matthews, union president). She has short gray hair and is wearing a green and white patterned blouse. There are various slogans on the signs, including "Admin Shouldn't Cut & Run" and "Professors With Fair Contracts Can Think Beyond Deficits."

At NEIU: a painful lesson in mission creep

by Deanna Isaacs April 19, 2023April 19, 2023

A welcoming committee armed with signs and slogans gathered outside Northeastern Illinois University’s iconic El Centro building last Thursday, an hour before the university Board of Trustees was scheduled to meet there. “UNIVERSITIES ARE NOT BUSINESSES,” one sign read. “How much money have you spent hiring outside people to fire our own?” asked another. Buoyed […]

On Culture

Spring awakening

by Deanna Isaacs March 22, 2023March 22, 2023

Never mind those icy patches on the sidewalk: spring is here, bringing with it our seasonal theater and arts preview issue. Accordingly, while the global banking system teeters, Xi and Vlad (nukes in their back pockets) rendezvous, and Trump seems poised to take the first-ever presidential perp walk, the issue I’m stewing about is this: […]

An image of Salvador Dalí's Apparition of Face and Fruit Dish on a Beach

On Culture

Hello, Dalí

by Deanna Isaacs March 8, 2023

I was a reporter at the St. Petersburg Times in 1980, when St. Pete got the idea of turning itself into Salvador Dalíwood. Not everyone was on board: on the one hand, there were grumbles about Dalí’s apparent tolerance for fascism (including a cozy long-term relationship with Franco), and on the other, sneering art-world objections […]

On Culture

Good guy with a gun

by Deanna Isaacs February 8, 2023February 8, 2023

John Mossman has a scary new movie, but he’s not just trying to scare us. Good Guy With a Gun (not to be confused with a 2020 short with the same title) is a feature-length drama/thriller slated for a regional premiere February 27 as part of the Midwest Film Festival at the Gene Siskel Film […]

At left is a photo of conductor Marin Also standing at the podium conducting. She is a white woman with short blonde hair, wearing a long white jacket with a dark blouse underneath. At right is a poster for the movie Tár depicting Cate Blanchett as the title character, caught from below. We don't see her face, but instead we see her torso and the underside of her chin. She is in a dark gray outfit and clutches a conductor's baton in her right hand.

On Culture

Who’s getting tarred?

by Deanna Isaacs January 25, 2023January 25, 2023

No industry has been more of a closed and creaky old white boys club than classical music. Things are grudgingly changing now that the Western canon appears to be on its deathbed, but, according to research by the League of American Orchestras, “Women conductors are still rare, especially in the high-status position of music director.” […]

A view of the Humboldt Park Stables and Receptory Building, home of the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture. A low half-built gray wall of cinder blocks is one the left. A leafless tree is in the foreground

On Culture

No walk in the park

by Deanna Isaacs January 11, 2023January 12, 2023

Update: 01/12/2023In an email today seeking to “clarify misinformation posted on the museum’s website,” Chicago Park District Director of Communications Michele Lemons said this: “The Chicago Park District did not approve construction on a 5,000 square foot facility nor did the District approve a structure of any size.” Juanita Irizarry delivered a gut punch of […]

A middle-aged Black man (bald, wearing a gray suit) stands left. He is facing a middle-aged white man (blading, wearing a black T-shirt with yellow graphics depicting guns). They are standing in front of a high paneled wall. There is a conference table with laptops and office chairs visible behind them.

On Culture

Fusion and firearms

by Deanna Isaacs December 21, 2022December 21, 2022

The best we can say about 2022? It’s been transitional. If we’re lucky, the shift will be to something better. In the meantime, the war in Ukraine drags on. Predictably, unconscionably, we’ve become inured to it. Inflation rages at a pace new to most of us. The experts pushing and pulling the levers on the […]

On the left is a picture of author Peter Friederici, a middle-aged white man wearing glasses. He is clean shaven, and holding up a pine cone. On the right is the cover art for his book Beyond Climate Breakdown, which has two horizontal images separated by the title and author panel. The top image is of a green forest, and the bottom one is of the same forest, only in flames.

On Culture

Hey, it’s getting warm in here!

by Deanna Isaacs December 7, 2022October 10, 2023

Peter Friederici has a history in these pages. In 1987, the Chicago native—then a recent Northwestern University graduate with a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature and no clear path to a career—got hired as a Reader editorial assistant. He spent two years in that job, working under editors Michael Lenehan and Alison True. Now an […]

A bar graph showing the increase in budget deficits for theaters who responded to Theatre Communications Group's survey on Budgeting for Uncertainty

On Culture

Long COVID for the arts

by Deanna Isaacs November 23, 2022November 23, 2022

Theatre Communications Group, the national organization for nonprofit theater, is about to release its latest annual report on the fiscal health of the field, Theatre Facts 2021. (Yes, it’s almost 2023, but this stuff takes time to collect.) The news is not great. The report, which compares results over a five-year period, tracks the startling […]

A reproduction of an ancient skeleton in a display case. It is on its side with the leg bones curved underneath it.

On Culture

You will die. Then what?

by Deanna Isaacs October 26, 2022October 26, 2022

Is death life’s greatest mystery? Or would we just like it to be? (Therefore, ghosts, devils, heaven, hell, organized religion, and Halloween candy.) Those are not among the five major questions that serve as an organizing mechanism for the Field Museum’s expansive new exhibit, “Death: Life’s Greatest Mystery,” however much they hang in the air. […]

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From domestic terrorism to the voting booth

by Deanna Isaacs October 12, 2022October 12, 2022

When Michael Fanone, the former Trump supporter and D.C. cop who nearly died at the hands of the January 6 mob at the U.S. Capitol, comes to the Chicago Humanities Festival next week to join We Are Proud Boys: How a Right-Wing Street Gang Ushered in a New Era of American Extremism author Andy Campbell […]

A young white man in dark clothing with long dark hair stands holding a sign reading "Pro-Lifers SUCK!" Behind him is a display with an image of a fetus and a few other people on the sidewalk.

On Culture

Anti-abortion activists float a new argument: ageism

by Deanna Isaacs September 28, 2022September 28, 2022

Move over, Grandpa. You think ageism is your cause? Last week, Created Equal, an Ohio-based organization opposed to ending unwanted pregnancies came to town, making stops at the city’s largest college campuses. At Northwestern, they set up shop on Sheridan Road, displaying enlarged images of dismembered fetal parts and passing out leaflets announcing that “Abortion […]

A black-and-white photo showing a city street filled with rubble. In the foreground, three Jewish men in dark coats and hats stand facing a fourth man, a German police officer in a military-type uniform, on the right. He is looking at identification papers.

On Culture

The U.S. and the Holocaust

by Deanna Isaacs September 14, 2022September 14, 2022

Starting Sunday, for three consecutive nights, WTTW will air a new six-hour Ken Burns documentary series, The U.S. and the Holocaust. Burns and his filmmaking partners, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein, based the series on a United States Holocaust Memorial Museum exhibit curated by Chicago-area native and current Newberry Library president, Daniel Greene. From 2014 […]

19th-century etching depicting a crowd of "poor people" waiting to receive the smallpox vaccination. A doctor in a frock coat stands right, giving an injection to a man with his sleeve rolled up.

On Culture

Pox Americana

by Deanna Isaacs August 17, 2022August 16, 2022

Last Sunday, stuffed with antibiotics, numbed by painkillers, and facing a date with an oral surgeon the next morning, I made my way to the International Museum of Surgical Science for an artist’s talk by James R. Wilke. It’s not the best way to visit this unique repository for the medical devices of yesteryear, but […]

Image shows the Louis Sullivan-designed Getty Tomb at Graceland. It is made of buff-colored stone with an arching doorway. The gates are greenish bronze. There are leaves on the ground and a branch with autumn leaves in the foreground of the photo.

On Culture

Walking with the dead

by Deanna Isaacs August 3, 2022August 3, 2022

When Anne Ford interviewed Adam Selzer for the Reader in 2014, it was all about his job as a ghost tour leader. You didn’t have to read between the lines to sense that it wasn’t the perfect gig for a truth-seeking research glutton. “No matter how skeptical I tried to be, I felt like I […]