What a coincidence! Give or take a day, the new dates announced last week for Chicago Contemporary & Classic, the show that’s replacing Art Chicago on Navy Pier this year, are the same dates Art Chicago announced last fall for its relocated exposition. Art Chicago will be held April 28 to May 2 in a tent on Butler Field, adjacent to Millennium Park; CC&C’s new schedule runs April 29 to May 2–moved up a week from the traditional slot on Mother’s Day weekend to avoid overlapping with the New York auctions. Never mind the hometown overlap, which will force dealers to choose one show or the other–or none at all.
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The move, and the news that the Municipal Pier and Exposition Authority has given CC&C a lock on these dates for the next seven years, is rankling Art Chicago head Thomas Blackman, who says he begged pier officials for years to change the dates. “It’s incredibly curious, since it’s something I had been trying to do for so long. I have a written [answer] saying there was no way they could do it,” he says. “All of a sudden some new show comes along and they can.”
The fair has needed “dramatic” change for several years, Blackman admits, but says he resisted making it at the specific request of the Navy Pier managers, who “said they would not be able to fill that hole.” He says Art Chicago outgrew the pier as far back as ’98, when he first told the MPEA he needed more space to compete with shows in other cities. He wasn’t allowed to put sculpture outside (the annual outdoor show Pier Walk does that), and parking was a nightmare. “It’s difficult to get clients to come out and purchase $10,000 to $1,000,000 paintings when they don’t even know if they can get a parking place,” he says. The pier–now the state’s biggest tourist attraction and a noisy victim of its own success–had become a less desirable but ever more expensive venue: “Even though my demands in terms of electrical and so forth went down for the last three years, my costs went up.”
If you’d rather face a firing squad than a microphone, you’ve got plenty of company. Northwestern University professor Susan Mineka says fear of public speaking is the most common psychological ailment in our culture. But to the Arts & Business Council of Chicago it’s just another challenge. A council workshop, “The Actor in Everyone: Presentation Skills for Arts Administrators,” is set for 10 AM January 19 at 300 E. Randolph. Imagination Theater executive director Aimee-Lynn Newlan, who will conduct the three-hour session, says “everybody has what it takes to be an inspiring speaker.” It’ll cost $40 if your organization’s annual budget is under $250,000, $60 if it’s over, to prove her wrong….Also from the Arts & Business Council, a spring training and matchmaking program for board-member wannabes. If you’re an experienced professional with time and money to burn, the council can teach you what’s expected (don’t imagine it’s artistic advice) and pair you with a nonprofit arts organization. Since “On Board” began six years ago, it’s churned out 90 such angels. The tab’s $1,500; sessions are Saturday mornings beginning in March, and the deadline for application is January 31. Call 312-372-1876 for more.
