Exhibits

A Night at Mr. Kelly’s Exhibit – The Newberry – April 16, 2024

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I’ve never read or seen The Accidental Tourist, but accidentally joined a tour of the A Night at Mr. Kelly’s exhibit at The Newberry (running through July 20) when I unknowingly burst into the back of a gathering just as the docent began her spiel.

I think the last time I did something like that was in Luxembourg City in the mid 1980’s when I had the good fortune to stumble upon the back of the pack of a group of American college students (not my status at the time) being shown around the walled city.

Alas, I remember nothing about Luxembourg City, other than the McDonald’s where I grabbed an orange juice. Nevertheless I’m sure that experience didn’t include stories about Barbra Streisand’s signature being forged for patrons because her hand got tired, the building burning down just as Lainie Kazan was about to sing Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and the audience being handed their checks as they fled the establishment. Also, where else can you see Lenny Bruce’s bar tab.

I saw Woody Allen at Mr. Kelly’s the night of my senior prom and the docent confirmed for me that such parties were accommodated, no fake IDs required. Woody is not mentioned in the exhibit, though, again, the docent confirmed that he appeared at the club several times and his lack of inclusion in the exhibit was not related to later accusations against him, the only person purposefully excluded being Bill Cosby.

The exhibit makes a point of the diversity in Mr. Kelly’s performers and audience members often not found at other clubs of its era, but, I might add, also not in today’s tour group.

Dan Friedman: Stay Radical – The Art Institute of Chicago – February 2, 2024

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When modernism just isn’t enough, why not radical modernism, of which Friedman was apparently the father. But that was years ago, so I looked up ultraradical to see how far things have gone. The second definition of that involves the complete surgical removal of organs in a body cavity, so I’m glad he didn’t go there. What would that design look like – a blank canvas?

When asked, the security guard standing ten feet away from the door to the Architecture and Design room where the exhibit was housed didn’t know where the exhibit was, so I dared to be great and read the sign next to the door, which informed me.

I liked Friedman’s work, in particular the Gallimaufry and ICA Street Sights posters, Deep Sea Meltdown (a startling replica of my hall closet) and Tornado Fetish (an even more startling replica of my brain in the morning).

Friedman was said to have scavenged streets for materials and displayed them at home, using his apartment as a lab, recycling at its best.

And, just when I thought I had seen it all, I read that he was inspired by the futuristic decor of the Jetsons. If I could have snuck his Asteroid Lamp under my coat, I would have considered it. I wasn’t worried about the security guard noticing.

Coming Attractions (or not) – September, 2023

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I was berated today for not telling people about events before they happen. So, for all of you out there who haven’t yet learned how to use your computer, and since I have a little time to kill, here are some ideas for things to do in September.

First, and foremost, and before you tire of my sarcasm, you must go to the Porchlight Music Theatre’s Icons Gala on the 8th at the Athenaeum Center. It will, as always, be a very entertaining evening and, if you buy one of the top-tier tickets, you get to mingle with me at the pre-show cocktail reception. Also, the guest of honor, Ben Vereen, will be in attendance.

As I alluded to in an earlier post, the Chicago Jazz Festival comes to town the first few days of the month. You’re on your own as to which acts might interest you. I stopped going years ago, as I tired of the modern, atonal nonsense they inappropriately call music, but there are a few acts on the calendar this year that I either have seen before and liked or am confident enough about to risk a trek down to Millennium Park or the Cultural Center for a look-see.

The Fourth Presbyterian Church takes its Noonday Concerts indoors starting this Friday, which seems premature to me, but allows them to put to use their big honking organ, though, fortunately for my tastes, not until the end of the month, so, again, why not keep things outdoors until then.

The Harris Theater for Music and Dance is celebrating its 20th Anniversary (seems like 40 years taking into account having to traverse all those stairs) on the 9th in Millennium Park. The unprecise schedule makes it hard to know when I might want to drop in, though the likelihood of families attending the afternoon sessions is fair warning to avoid those.

The Printers Row Lit Fest is that same weekend (both days). It always presents a plethora of interesting exhibitors and programs, if you can find them in the event’s labyrinth (watch out for the Minotaur).

And, not finally, but I’m tired, the American Writers Museum is hosting Get Lit: Grown-Up Book Fair on the 12th, which will feature refreshments, carnival games, and an Adult Spelling Bee, which, I assume, means either dirty words and/or easier ones than the obnoxiously well-prepared kids at the real one have to tackle.

Wheels – The Newberry – July 19, 2023

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What happens when you run out of ideas for a new exhibit? The Newberry came up with the perfect answer by asking what happens when you search your collection for a certain word, in their case ”wheels”.

They came up with enough material to line a couple walls and inspire this column.

Among the highlights they found are photos from the Chicago Railroad Fair of 1949, which Walt Disney attended, and which, it is said, was one of the inspirations for Disneyland.

There also are pictures from a roller derby (which I watched religiously in my youth); a wheel of fortune (not The Wheel of Fortune); the original Chicago Ferris Wheel (not Ferret Wheel, which you can buy online at friendlyferret.com); and more.

I don’t need to fill two walls, only half a page, so, lacking any originality, I decided I would search for “wheel’ among my past blogs. This, as it turned out, was smarter than looking for the plural, like they did, as it opens up the world of compound words.

I’ve mentioned my limited wheelhouse when it comes to Jeopardy categories; a wheelchair, when discussing Bette Midler’s alter ego Delores Delagoa; a wheeled emergency stretcher, when reporting on an incident at a concert; and a wheelbarrow, when recounting working in the park.

And, lastly, I recalled that a Newberry speaker (see how I got back to them) cited Nutcracker choreographer Christopher Wheeldon.

Museum of Contemporary Art – May 9, 2023

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My whole ignorant life I thought tepee was spelled like that, but it turns out it’s actually tipi, the conical tent that is, not the hygiene accessory used to adorn other types of abodes on Halloween.

There are no fully constructed tipis at the Duane Linklater mymothersside exhibit, but several animal pelts, plenty of poles and attractively-designed linen covers, and, for some reason (things his mother owned?), a Kenmore refrigerator, a flat screen television, and a mini Apple Mac. I guess the addition of these items qualifies the exhibit for an art, rather than natural history, museum.

The Enter the Mirror installation includes the work of 19 different artists that the curator scrapped together under one name from stuff the museum didn’t see fit to put on display before or for a really long time, sort of like what I made for dinner last night.

For me, the highlight was Sam Durant’s Partially Buried 1960s/70s Dystopia Revealed (Mick Jagger at Altamont) & Utopia Reflected (Wavy Gravy at Woodstock), a couple of piles of dirt on mirrors, simulating graves, which made me wonder, why not the appropriately-named Grateful Dead at Woodstock, especially in light of the band not making it into the movie or soundtrack album.

I can’t think of anything even remotely interesting to say about the other four exhibits, other than that Endless, gratefully, is not.

Pop-Up Books through the Ages – The Newberry – March 21, 2023

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First I had to learn the vocabulary posted on the wall. A volvelle is a wheel chart, not one of those plastic horns they blow at soccer games.

A flap is a flap, not to be confused with Jeff Leonard’s one flap down home run trot in the 1987 NLCS.

A pop-up is any book with three-dimensional pages, including both of the above, but not something that triggers the infield fly rule.

Finally, a globe gore is a sector of a curved surface that lies between two close lines of longitude on a globe and may be flattened to a plane surface with little distortion, a gore being a triangular or tapering piece of material, not the name of Quentin Tarantino’s next movie.

Among the highlights, there was a pop-up book showing Pinocchio and Geppetto emerging from the whale’s mouth, but not one of Tommy Lee Jones emerging from the alien bug’s innards near the end of Men in Black.

There was a glass-enclosed book that was upside down, on purpose, because, I was told, the volvelle inside the book was upside down for some unknown reason. I’m wasn’t sure how a wheel could be upside down, but I let it ride.

There was a Civil War battle plan map with flaps to show the progress of the battle, there apparently being no computer programs available at that time.

There were paper cut-out nesting dolls that didn’t look anything like Natasha Lyonn.

And my favorite, books depicting flowers that were flaps that could be lifted to reveal naked women, handy for use in public places, so as not to create an additional flap.

Salvador Dali Exhibit – The Art Institute of Chicago – March 2, 2023

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Salvador Dali’s paranoiac-critical method is described as the “spontaneous method of irrational knowledge based on the critical and systematic objectivity of the associations and interpretations of delirious phenomena.” It sounds like drugs were involved.

I understand the definition about as well as I do the paintings themselves, like that his William Tell is really Vladimir Lenin. And his melting clocks are the “camembert of time”, “symbols for the lack of meaning and fluidity of time in the dream world.” Sounds like Einstein meets Freud meets Nietzsche and results in a Julia Child four-dimensional soufflé with an Oedipus complex.

Cheese is a common theme at the exhibit, as the Venus de Milo in Drawers (not in the sense of pants) is accompanied by the story of Dali’s first meeting Harpo Marx, who at the time was naked in a garden feeding a statue of the Venus de Milo made of cheese (don’t know if it was camembert) to a swan. Sounds like more drugs were involved.

But the painting that grabbed my attention was Mae West’s Face Which May be Used as a Surrealist Apartment, and not just for the missing comma after Face.

The Supreme Court is about decide a case appealed from a 2021 judgement declaring that Andy Warhol had no right to appropriate Lynn Goldsmith’s photo of Prince. If the Andy Warhol Foundation loses, the Mae West painting, which was based on a film ad, may, if permission was not granted at the time, be one of many museum pieces of art to fall like dominos if considered derivative, rather than transformative, a legal distinction unrelated to robots that can change their shapes.

Haunted Dolls & History’s Horrors – Chicago History Museum – September 27, 2022

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This is a disjointed temporary exhibit within the boundaries of the permanent Chicago: Crossroads of America exhibit, framed in terms of a scavenger hunt to find 13 hiding spots of 16 dolls (a trio of carolers and the so-called terror twins accounting for the numerical discrepancy), whose origins range from 1862 to 1933, with a few stops at “no date available.”

Chucky was not among the dolls, but “a beheaded beauty” was, according to the brochure I was given at the check-in counter. I’ll never know, as I ran out of interest before finding it. Maybe I headed in the wrong direction.

I also made the mistake of accepting the pamphlet for the adult version, unaware at the time that there was a kid-friendly version, which might have provided more clues and required less attention span, in addition to scrubbing “mentions of violence, disasters, and the supernatural.” Don’t the curators know what kids watch on TV?

Fortunately, I didn’t compound my mistake by putting any effort into my search. Instead, I created my own, simpler, version of the contest. So, although I accidentally found 10 of the not-so-covert nooks and crannies containing the artifacts before my energy petered out, I also awarded myself points for finding the elevator, a bench to sit on, the bathroom, a security guard to pester with stupid questions, and, most importantly, the exit.

A Show of Hands: Handwriting in the Age of Print – The Newberry – September 14, 2022

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My handwriting is terrible. If I were a referee tossing a homemade coin to start a football game, we’d never get to the kickoff, because no one can make heads or tails of my penmanship.

Fortunately, commercial typewriters were introduced in 1874, well before I started school. Unfortunately, no one ever taught me how to type. But, on the computer, I’m a whiz with two fingers – no trouble reading this piece.

All that aside, here’s the thing. According to The Productive Engineer website, printing is, perhaps surprisingly to some, faster than cursive writing, and, at least in my case, far more legible. On the other hand, the site suggests, cursive is better at improving one’s motor skills.

I’m a pretty good driver, but I don’t think that’s what they mean. What I did decide, however, is that if my cursive were better, I could play the piano better. Huh?

Well, cursive writing, not lifting the pen between letters, is like playing notes legato, Italian for tied together.

And, the Newberry exhibit (we finally got to it) includes mention of 1814 lectures on the art of writing that promoted “forearm” or “muscular” movement, using the arms and shoulders, rather than the hands and fingers, which is akin to the notion of using arm weight when playing the piano.

So, there it is. Schools that have discontinued teaching cursive writing might incorporate it into their music curriculum, except, oh wait, budget cuts have killed those programs too.

Handmaidens for Travelers: The Pullman Company Maids – The Newberry – June 8, 2022

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After admiring the interesting photos, the first thing you read at this new exhibit is that the maids were overshadowed by the porters in the public’s imagination of the time, focused mostly on the 1920s. Even now, if you look up the union formed by the railroad employees in 1925, it’s often referred to as the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and only occasionally adds to the title “and Maids”, of which there were approximately 350 at the time per a letter on display.

Other interesting facts presented were:

The existence of 17 rules the handmaidens had to follow, only a mundane five of which were displayed – too bad, the other 12 might have been ripe for snarky attack.

The concerns of the time regarding tuberculosis, which led to the institution of medical exams for applicants; and maybe the box to be checked on the application regarding an unnamed vaccination, although something for small pox might have been a more likely possibility in the 1920s.

A list of 28 names of people who had risen through the railroad ranks from low level positions, such as rodman (apparently a surveyor’s assistant who holds the leveling rod, duh) to leadership of their companies, because there’s “Always Room at the Top for Steady Climbers”. None of the first jobs listed were porter or handmaiden, which came as no surprise given the times, but which made me wonder why the item was included.

A number of the documents, including some employee cards, not like baseball cards, though that might have been amusing, noting things like career records for most manicures given to passengers, but rather records of service that were related to one specific maid who, though otherwise an exemplary employee, received a reprimand for not reporting an unidentified uniform infraction of another employee, perhaps a Rodman with a capital R.