The cafe at the new and improved Chicago History Museum was closed when I arrived an hour early for the annual members’ meeting last Thursday afternoon. I’d planned to grab a late lunch in the bow-windowed corner once occupied by the Big Shoulders Cafe, but made my way instead across the street to Michael’s, which used to be Mitchell’s, and is at least still open round the clock. The History Cafe, as it’s now called, is run by Wolfgang Puck and serves the same Chinois chicken salad that made him famous on the west coast. Pick some up after checking out the lowrider that’s been given the place of honor in the museum’s lobby and you might as well be in LA.
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The museum reopened two months ago after being closed almost a year for a $27.8 million makeover that included removing structural support columns to create a continuous 157-foot rental hall. The amount of exhibit space is about the same and includes those charming soporific Chicago history dioramas, a touchy-feely children’s section (climb into a hot dog bun, play “sniff and guess,” e-mail yourself a postcard), and a long-overdue gallery dedicated to the museum’s 55,000-piece costume collection. Its opening show, on view through the end of May, features the puffed skirts and pinched waists of Dior’s 1947 “New Look,” a diversion for women booted from the post-World War II workforce. The gallery’s dimmer than the back of your closet (and, despite donor support, there’s no free exhibit guide), but the take away’s clear: Chicago dance diva Ruth Page had a great figure and a clothing budget that would’ve fed all the immigrant families pictured on the main floor’s multiculti gallery walls.
Right now “we’re in great shape,” Johnson says. Twenty-eight events have already been held since October 1 in the new party space, which rents for $5,250 and up, and museum attendance has been “spectacular.” Paid attendance the first month after the reopening was 5,990. “But,” he notes, “we’re still in the zone where there’s initial excitement over the novelty. At some point it’ll settle in at a level that we hope will be substantially above older levels.” That should be a piece of cake: in 2004, the last normal year of operation, paid attendance (which does not include school groups) was only 29,000. But if Johnson really wants to goose that figure he could take a second look at the price of admission, which was only $5 when the museum closed but has now jumped to $12 ($10 for seniors and students 13-22). The revamped museum is more handsome, navigable, and digestible than it used to be, but it’s still mostly tchotchkes under glass. There are no dinosaurs or giant octopuses, no Monets or Rembrandts: it shouldn’t be priced like the Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium, or the Art Institute. And it could use more live people. Johnson says docents are now getting improv training from Second City–a great idea, but why stop there? How about a security guard in a Dior gown (even if it has to be a copy) in the costume gallery, some live Chicago blues in the nightclub, and a real hot dog (or pizza or elotes) vendor in the cafe? For that matter, isn’t this the one museum in the city that could justify a McDonald’s franchise?
