Open House Chicago’s New Sites | Music Box’s New Sound System

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ART

Sotheby’s Plans November Auction For Cindy and Jay Pritzker’s Art Collection

“Artworks from the collection of the late Cindy and Jay Pritzker, thirty-seven pieces worth an estimated $120 million but representing only part of their collection, will go up for auction at Sotheby’s in New York in November after spending a couple of months being seen in galleries around the world,” reports Crain’s. “The works, by artists including Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse and Paul Gauguin, are of a caliber ‘that rarely exists outside a museum context,’ said Julian Dawes, head of Impressionist and Modern Art at the venerable auction house. ‘In terms of rarity, in terms of quality of each example, it’s an extraordinary collection.’”

Philadelphia Builds A Garden For Alexander Calder

“What can a museum experience be now? Meet Calder Gardens. A leading architect, garden designer and philanthropist build a thrillingly eccentric complex for the inventor of the mobile,” reports the New York Times (gift link). “Celebrating one of the city’s native sons, the site, Calder Gardens, is small but potent, an exhibition space and philanthropic project, a civic gift with a radical slant. Stuffed with both prime Calders and more obscure material, it revivifies the artist’s expansive powers, and it ought to inspire similarly adventurous single-artist museums, which are still a rarity in this country.” The institution was designed by celebrated architecture firm Herzog & de Meuron.

Are We Censoring Some Of The Most Well-Known Slavery Imagery?

“In the two centuries since the medium was invented, few photographs have had a more powerful impact on the American conscience than a series of images made in 1863 of a formerly enslaved man known by at least two names, Gordon and Peter. Early in 1863, he escaped the hell of enslavement and found safety among Union forces in Louisiana, thus becoming contraband, to use the solecism common at the time,” writes The Washington Post (free link). “The image shocked even those who knew the brutality and horrors of slavery.” Reportedly, “the Trump administration will remove a display of the photograph from a Park Service unit that deals with slavery and the Civil War, as part of its campaign against what it deems ‘corrosive ideology.’”

DESIGN

Open House Chicago’s Fifteenth Edition Sets 210 Locations

The Chicago Architecture Center has set sites for the fifteenth annual Open House Chicago, taking place over the weekend of October 18-19. The free annual festival provides behind-the-scenes access to places of architectural, historical and cultural significance. Open House will debut thirty new sites this edition, which include “Bertrand Goldberg’s Hilliard Tower Apartments in Chinatown; Morris Architects Planners-designed The Magic Lounge in Andersonville; state-of-the-art indoor cultivation facility Four Star Mushrooms, growing gourmet mushrooms in the Near West Side; the late Steve Albini’s recording studio Electrical Audio in Avondale; and the state-of-the-art Aspire Center for Workforce Innovation in the Austin neighborhood, converted from a shuttered elementary school.” The complete list, mapped by neighborhood, is here.

Downtown’s Virgin Hotel To Become Sports Illustrated “Urban Resort”

The Virgin Hotel Chicago on Wabash will “be converted into a sports-themed urban resort with the Sports Illustrated brand under a new plan from a Florida hospitality firm [Travel + Leisure],” reports Crain’s. “Travel + Leisure did not specifically identify the planned Sports Illustrated Resorts Chicago location as a timeshare, but said in a statement that the property will be converted from an existing hotel and offer ‘flexible, points-based ownership options, with sales beginning in early next year.’”

DINING & DRINKING

Twisted Spoke’s Biker Skeleton Could Become A West Town Monument

“Artist and neighbor Jon Satrom has launched a petition to move the beloved motorcyle-riding skeleton to a median on Ogden Avenue following Twisted Spoke’s closure. The bar’s owner is on board,” maps Block Club. “After thirty years, ‘Skelly,’ as owner Mitch Einhorn affectionately refers to it, is coming down and could disappear from the neighborhood.” The bar “closed last month, and a new concept is taking over the space.”

Metric Coffee Opens Avondale All-Day Cafe

Metric Coffee has opened Milli, a cafe and roastery in Avondale, relays Chicago Eater. The project, “transforming a 12,000-square-foot former antiques warehouse into Metric’s new headquarters and a daytime third place,” has been in the works since 2021. More from Metric here.

Four Seasons Reopens Mile High Cocktail Club With Handshake Speakeasy

Four Seasons Hotel Chicago is reopening the Mile High Cocktail Club, “an exclusive and elevated speakeasy experience” in continued collaboration with the Handshake Speakeasy. The Mexico City-based bar was named to the top spot on the World’s 50 Best Bars list last year. Mile High will be open from October 2-December 31. Reservations are required at OpenTable here.

Lincoln Square’s The Green Post Closing

The Green Post at Rockwell and Lawrence is closing after three years, knells Block Club. The ownership team behind The Northman, the now-closed Fountainhead and Bar on Buena will close their pub on September 30. “From day one, our vision was to create a full-service neighborhood pub built on a [strong] beverage program, chef-driven cuisine and a true sense of community,” the owners wrote in a statement. “This has always been our passion, but the realities of today’s Chicago restaurant scene have made sustaining this model increasingly difficult.”

Trump-Supporting Owner Of Moe’s Cantina Flies To D.C. In Hope Of Slowing Worker Deportations

Restaurateur “Sam Sanchez is lobbying the White House to end its mass deportations and protect undocumented essential workers,” reports Block Club. “A board member and former board chair of the Illinois Restaurant Association, and whose company operates Chicago venues including Moe’s Cantina, Tunnel nightclub and Old Crow Smokehouse—said he voted for Trump to support a ‘law-and-order’ approach aimed at deporting violent offenders. But Sanchez said he is alarmed by mass deportations of nonviolent, hard-working immigrants in Chicago. ‘I can’t regret supporting law and order, but what they’re doing now… is not what the president promised.’”

FILM & TELEVISION

Music Box Debuts New Sound System With Paul Thomas Anderson Action

The 70mm presentation of Paul Thomas Anderson’s big-and-loud “One Battle After Another” christens “a brand-new sound system in [the Music Box’s] main theater. Manufactured by Netherlands-based Alcons Audio and installed by Kinora Audio Visual Systems, the system was designed to improve dialogue intelligibility and increase power handling, as well as integrate seamlessly into the theater’s architecture. The focus of this improvement was not only to install a system that was powerful enough to handle modern soundtracks, but also to reproduce all soundtracks beautifully and accurately, providing the same listening experience to every member of the audience.

“Built in 1929 at the dawn of sound films, the Music Box’s Auditorium design has been a particular challenge for the reproduction of modern cinema soundtracks. Over the past fifteen years, the theater has made significant investments in improving the theater sound: improving the stereo sound stage by moving the left and right channels from behind the screen, adding acoustic treatments to reduce reverberation time, replacing and upgrading power amplifiers and surrounds, and installing an acoustically transparent screen. With the installation of this new system, the theater is better suited to reproduce nearly a hundred years of movie soundtracks than ever.”

MEDIA

Cleveland’s Ideastream Public Media Wins Major Grant For Dedicated Jazz Studio

Ohio’s Ideastream Public Media “has received a $1 million gift from Cleveland’s Char and Chuck Fowler Family Foundation to fund its NEOJazz Legacy Project and build a dedicated studio for its JazzNEO channel,” reports Inside Radio. “Since its launch in February 2024, JazzNEO has been operating without a dedicated studio and airing all pre-recorded programming. The new state-of-the-art space will allow for live hosting, interviews and live jazz performances.”

Washington, D.C.’s WETA Suffers $4.4 Million Cut

“WETA in Washington, D.C., has eliminated twenty-one staff positions and canceled three TV shows as it looks to cut $4.4 million in spending for this fiscal year,” reports Current. The circulation of its monthly magazine will be reduced, and local shows “If You Lived Here, Get Out of Town” and “WETA Best Bets” have been canceled, and “Telly Visions,” its website and podcast about British television and culture has ended.

MUSIC

Jeff Tweedy Releases “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter” Pre-Tour

“Here sits Jeffrey Scot Tweedy, alt-rock bard and best-selling author… the Grammy-winning Wilco frontman and longtime Chicagoan bellies up to a glass table in the modest but homey kitchen of the band’s Irving Park studio,” places Mike Thomas at Chicago magazine. “The 5,000-square-foot, low-ceilinged space just off Irving Park Road, known far and wide as the Loft, has served as a recording space, a practice room, a place to store equipment, and a hangout pad since 1997. As such, it’s stuffed with all manner of musical implements and instruments, from amps and pedals to drums, keyboards, and guitars—especially guitars, scores of them, some upright and naked on stands, others protected in cases on metal shelves.”

What’s escaped from the space is one of the thirty songs, a single and video, “Lou Reed Was My Babysitter,” from his new solo album, “Twilight Override.” Tweedy says in a release that the song’s title references “the joy in this dark music that Lou Reed made, and the beautiful conflict that it creates when you try and analyze it. And how it was such a positive force for so many people. ‘My life was saved by rock ‘n’ roll’—Lou Reed is saying the same thing.” The triple album is out September 26; Tweedy kicks off his tour in Chicago on September 25 at a to-be-determined locale, with a November 1 booking at the Salt Shed.

New Principal Trombonist For CSO

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has named Timothy Higgins its new principal trombone, charts Chicago Classical Review. Higgins will appear in that role for the first time at this week’s season-opening concerts.

STAGE

Remembering Chicago Theater Architect John Morris

“John Morris brought an extensive understanding of stagecraft and a keen eye for audiences to his long career as a Chicago-based theater architect who designed performance spaces like the Steppenwolf Theatre’s mainstage, the Lookingglass Theatre, the Athenaeum Center, the Black Ensemble Theater and the Old Town School of Folk Music, among others,” chronicles the Trib in an extended, illustrated obit (gift link).

Lyric’s Ryan Opera Center Selects Singers For Season

One of the world’s preeminent artist-development programs for emerging artists, the Ryan Opera Center at Lyric Opera of Chicago has announced singers for its 2026-27 ensemble. The new members include sopranos Kylie Kreucher and Josie Larsen, baritone Adam Partridge, and bass-baritones Matthew Dexter and Lin Fan. They will join five returning ensemble members: mezzo-sopranos Alexis Peart and Camille Robles, tenor Daniel Luis Espinal, baritone Sihao Hu, and bass-baritone Benjamin R. Sokol. More here.

Refracted Theatre Announces “The Shortlist” Fest

Refracted Theatre Company announces the debut of “The Shortlist: A Refracted Festival,” September 19-October 18, at the Den Theatre, a festival of workshops and staged readings showcasing plays Refracted is considering for its seventh season in 2026. The festival replaces the previously announced “Dream Hou$e,” which was recently canceled. All performances are pay-what-you-can. More here.

Nora Dunn On Comedy, Anger And Becoming Conciliatory

“‘Saturday Night Live’ pissed me off,” writer-performer Nora Dunn tells Mike Thomas at Chicago magazine. “I’d been writing my own material for three years. I’d had a one-woman show. In San Francisco, I’d done improv with a really funny group called Spaghetti Jam, and I’d improvised with Robin Williams one night for forty-five minutes. So I knew my stuff. I auditioned with so many characters and so much material and thought, people are going to be writing for me like crazy. But the writers literally would say, ‘It’s impossible to write for women.’ I thought, I can’t wait to get out of here.”

ARTS & CULTURE & ETC.

A Hundred Liberal Philanthropies Prepare To Push Back Against Government Crackdown

A hundred institutions have “published an open letter to defend their missions amid fears the Trump administration could target their tax-exempt status,” reports the New York Times (gift link), “even as its list of signers doubled as a list of the types of left-leaning charities that President Trump may target. The statement condemned political violence and any possible retribution… Following the murder of Charlie Kirk last week, the Trump administration has said it plans to crack down on nonprofits that it accuses of fostering a culture of violence, name-checking the Ford Foundation and Mr. Soros’ group. An executive order could come as soon as this week.” The letter is here.

Meanwhile, “The People Vs. Project 2025” launches: Nationwide organizing has been launched, records American Theatre magazine, under the banner of “The People vs. Project 2025,” billed as “A Movement to Defeat Trump and the Heritage Foundation and Reclaim the Nation’s Democratic Institutions & Cultural Narrative,” “which will stage simultaneous events across the country September 20-21, inviting artists and culture workers to shape the initiative and take local action during the autumnal equinox. Livestreams of the weekend’s events will feed into a central channel and be distributed to audiences across the country.” The initiative “is designed to connect, amplify and mobilize artists and cultural workers confronting the authoritarianism and targeted state repression that is using the playbook laid out by the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 (pdf) and is ‘threatening democracy, civil rights and cultural freedom in the United States,’” they say.

What Is The Future Of Humanities At UChicago?

“As someone with a lifelong love for the arts and humanities, it pains me to see mischaracterizations of efforts to place these fields on a stronger footing at U. of C. No, we’re not replacing instructors with ChatGPT (to name one strange rumor), and we’re certainly not removing the arts and humanities from the center of academic inquiry. The university has a website debunking some of the most glaring inaccuracies,” writes Deborah L. Nelson, dean of the Division of the Arts & Humanities at the University of Chicago, at the Tribune. “The pressures on the arts and humanities today are real and in many ways unprecedented. But we won’t build a stronger future for these beloved subjects by treating them as static or frozen in time. Success will require imaginative thinking, engagement with a changing culture and a renewed commitment to collaboration across disciplinary boundaries.”

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