Talk Ain’t Cheap
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The Public Square, initially launched as the chilly-sounding Center for Public Intellectuals, is meant to bridge the gap between theorists and political action. While Lee’s husband, Marc Ewing, rode his tech company, Red Hat, up the e-stock bubble with prices as high as $267 per share before a split (it’s now trading at about $12), she was completing a dissertation in German studies that had her itching to bring society and its thinkers together. The Center for Public Intellectuals started out with lectures by high-profile academics; as the Public Square it’s created programs that sponsor discussions of cultural, social, and political issues in Chicago neighborhoods. They include Cafe Society, weekly coffee-shop conversations greased by e-mail preparation and paid moderators; Know More (there’s a name they ought to take another look at), a discussion series in West Englewood; and most recently a documentary film series, “Civic Cinema,” which sponsored a free screening of Born Into Brothels last weekend.
The IHC has been around as the local legs of the National Endowment for the Humanities for 30 years. It’s neither a federal nor a state agency, though in 2004 it received 42 percent of its $2.2 million budget from the feds and 38 percent from the state. It claims to reach millions of people through the documentary films and exhibitions it funds, and last year counted 218,000 at lectures, readings, and discussions it produced. IHC executive director Kristina Valaitis says the missions of the two organizations mesh well and that the IHC will benefit from the Public Square’s ability to “get diverse audiences together and do programming quickly.” She plans to expand the Cafe Society program, which Public Square says reached 6,000 people through 300 events in Chicago last year, bringing it to places like Carbondale and Rockford.
Dragging the river for bodies
Count Leslie Hindman out of this year’s new Navy Pier art show, Chicago Contemporary and Classic. Hindman, who was to head up the antiques component, says she decided to exit after the show was abruptly moved up a week. It now runs April 29 to May 2, overlapping with a major antiques show on the west coast. CC&C plans to offer antiques without her. . . . Michael Workman’s trading the Artboat he’s run during Art Chicago for the last couple of years for a land-based exhibit in the West Loop, with trolley service to and from the pier. The Nova Young Art Fair, sponsored by Workman’s Bridge magazine and planned for April 28 to May 1 at 857 W. Fulton Market, will offer 30 booths at $2,500 each plus some less expensive “project” spaces, Workman says. Meanwhile, Thomas Blackman will move the Stray Show of emerging galleries, previously held on Kingsbury, to his Art Chicago tent on Butler Field by Millennium Park, April 28 to May 2.
