UChicago Arts' Year In Review
by Alexandra Fiorentino-Swinton
2019 was a great year for the arts at UChicago. With so much going on, we decided to take a look back at what we accomplished this year. Scroll through our memorable (but by no means comprehensive) round up of UChicago Arts events that happened in 2019.
January
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Hyde Park native Nikko Washington, artistic director of Chicago hip-hop collective Savemoney and frequent collaborator of Chance the Rapper and Vic Mensa, opened a showcase of his introspective works at the Logan Café. His exhibition, 53 ‘til Infinity, was a reflection on nostalgia, black expression, consumerism and community.
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Pedro Reyes’s satirical puppet play Manufacturing Mischief—starring mini versions of cultural and intellectual icons Karl Marx, Noam Chomsky, Ayn Rand and Elon Musk—came to the Logan Center to riff on everything from economic philosophy, to the current political climate, to technological ethics. A product of Reyes’s artist residency at MIT, it riffs on the pervasive “techno-enthusiasm” he saw there, as every problem had technology thrown at it as the end-all solution.
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Photograph 51, the story of Rosalind Franklin’s often-ignored contribution to the discovery of the DNA double helix structure, painted a portrait of a brilliant scientist maligned by sexism. Anchored by one of the most important scientific discoveries the world has ever seen, the Court Theatre’s production was an empowering and complex look at what truth and knowledge mean in a world plagued by prejudice.
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University Ballet, run completely by UChicago undergraduates, reimagined the Victor Hugo classic The Hunchback of Notre Dame with ballet La Esmeralda. Combining pantomime and ballet to enrich their physical storytelling, this expressive production made for a wonderfully unique take on the tragic story. (1/26)
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February
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Visual artist Karthik Pandian and choreographer Andros Zins-Browne reflect on the nature of movement and revolution, inspired by the aftermath of the Arab Spring. The latest installation of their Atlas Unlimited series, located at Logan Center Exhibitions, depicted monuments, tents and border walls with architecture and sculpture for an international view of transience and reconstruction. “Activations” of the exhibition included Builders that present narratives of displacement and settlement, blending reality and fictionalized accounts.
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UChicago hosted an Intimate Evening with Sweet Honey in the Rock—founded by original member of the SNCC Freedom Singers Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon, Sweet Honey in the Rock blends music and activism with their signature brand of a cappella singing and dancing. They returned to UChicago during Black History Month to bring renditions of African folk hymns, gospel songs and freedom anthems of the Civil Rights Movement to Mandel Hall for an intimate performance.
This year’s annual student fashion show, Atelier MODA, was composed of looks by student designers ranging from experienced sewers to complete novices, all given the opportunity to learn how to create with MODA’s Designer Boot Camp. The show featured student models showcasing the creations, with looks ranging from pop culture inspired to athletic wear to street culture to grunge. Student dance collective Maya also gave an unforgettable modern dance performance.
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Student Shakespeare troupe The Dean’s Men took on the famed Scottish play Macbeth, an investigation into madness, ambition, and revenge.
March
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Ntozake Shange’s acclaimed choreopoem For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf returned to the stage at the Court Theatre. Examining the beauty, pain, and sisterhood that comes with being a black woman, For Colored Girls was deeply honest and expressed the fury and complexity that comes with being a deeply marginalized body. Themes like love, identity, abuse, sex, and body image were fleshed out and dissected by this introspective, powerful company of women.
University Theater put on Fun Home, the musical based on Allison Bechdel’s autobiographical novel of the same name. A reflection on Bechdel’s memories, sexuality, and her relationship with her father, it is a vulnerable and touching look into the blessings and heartbreaks of growing up. The UT production delved into that complexity and vulnerability, breathing life into revelatory musical numbers. (3/14)
Accompanying the Wrightwood 659 exhibition “Dimensions of Citizenship: Architecture and Belonging from the Body to the Cosmos,” originally on view at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, UChicago Arts created the Dimensions of Citizenship Dome pop-up at the Chicago Athletic Association. It highlighted questions of borders and belonging in a world defined by the strict boundaries of nation states.
April
The Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society’s HUTOPIA used the architectural concept of a “philosopher’s retreat” as a means of examining conditions of solitary living, exile, and escape. Using German philosophers Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Adorno as prototypes, all of whom experienced some sort of significant isolation in their lives, the artists of HUTOPIA utilized sculptures and historical photographs to look at what retreat means and how it factors into creation.
The Renaissance Society hosted Liz Magor’s BLOWOUT exhibition—the artist’s investigation into the dynamics between objects, contrasting tender and hard, man-made and mass produced, extrapolating these dynamics out onto larger social histories and aesthetic ideals.
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UChicago Professor Kristen Schilt and filmmaker Chase Joynt created a documentary, Framing Agnes, featured in the prestigious Tribeca Film Festival. The duo uncovered previously unknown information about Harold Garfinkel’s famed 1958 sociological case study of a transgender woman named Agnes. They utilized never-before-seen tapes and transcripts of Garfinkel’s interviews with many trans and gender non-conforming people, reconfiguring what was known as an isolated study into a historical understanding of transgender experience while grounding it in the present day, enlisting trans actors to re-enact the transcripts.
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Partnering with the Pozen Center for Human Rights and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, UChicago Arts was thrilled to host internationally acclaimed artist and activist Ai Weiwei. Weiwei screened his award-winning documentary Human Flow and held a Q&A discussion. Human Flow is a critical and empathetic look at the massive refugee crises that have swept the world post-WWII.
May
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Pulitzer Prize winning playwright David Auburn (AB ‘91) adapted Saul Bellow’s The Adventures of Augie March for the stage, premiering it at the Court Theatre. Bellow was a UChicago faculty member for 30+ years, and his writing is deeply connected to the community and his experiences in the city. A largely plotless book, Bellow’s vivid linguistic style is what canonized the text. Auburn brought the work to life with a seamless understanding of not simply the what, but the why of its characters.
June
Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, the exhibition Fieldwork at the Smart Museum of Art celebrated American artist Tara Donovan’s manipulation of everyday materials like plastic straws, index cards, and rubber bands into surrealist structures. Her works evoke manipulation of space and manufactured unpredictability.
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Student circus troupe Le Vorris and Vox put on an acrobatic interpretation of Alice in Wonderland. Utilizing traditional and contemporary gymnastic circus techniques, they used physical motion to craft the narrative of the classic tale.
July
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Frank Lloyd Wright’s Robie House, located on the UChicago campus, was recognized as a World Heritage Site by the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The iconic building is an example of the Prairie School style of architecture, which emphasizes retaining humanity and nature in modern, mechanized structures.
Six Latinx artists based in Chicago and six Cuban artists came together via an artist exchange organized by the National Museum of Mexican Art and their collaboration created the exhibit Cross Currents. Their works compellingly expressed the importance of art for examining ourselves and our relationships with the rest of the world. The artists joined forces to cultivate a powerful demonstration of the multifaceted nature of their identities and experiences and displayed it at the Smart Museum. We commissioned poet, activist, and actress Spencer Diaz Tootle to write a reflect, which you can read here on our archive.
August
The UChicago Library recieved 2,700+ prints by the acclaimed photographer Vivian Maier, donated by collector and director of Academy Award nominated documentary Finding Vivian Maier John Maloof. Now the largest collection of Maier prints in any museum or library, they will be housed at the UChicago Library Special Collections Research Center. The photos show her world travels, Chicago scenes, and things she collected, all depicted in a variety of compositions that made her photography so unique among her 20th century peers.
September
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“From purpose to pop culture”—textile making has been a part of human history for hundreds of thousands of years, and Tufting Gun Tapestries at the Logan Center Exhibitions aimed to showcase this unique form of creation and its modernity when integrated with technology. Art collective Assemble showcased their works and held workshops to help students create their own.
The Last Cruze by artist LaToya Ruby Frazier is a photo series that centers the workers of the General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio, which was recently shut down due to an increase in overseas production and the shift towards electric and autonomous vehicles. The exhibit, shown at the Renaissance Society, physically mirrored the assembly line in the GM Complex. Frazier examines this occurrence through the lens of labor, family, community, and the working class as a matter of social justice.
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The highly acclaimed third Chicago Architecture Biennial kicked off in October, with the theme “... and other stories,” incorporating not only architecture in the strictest sense of the word, but urban design, engineering, policy, social activism and all other factors that shape an architectural landscape. The Biennial’s devotion to intersectionality was praised—made possible in large part by UChicago’s own Yesomi Umolu, curator of Logan Center Exhibitions, who was the artistic director of the Biennial.
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Jacqueline Stewart, UChicago professor of cinema studies and director of non-profit Black Cinema House, became the first black female host of Turner Classic Movies, presenting Silent Sunday Nights! Much of Professor Stewart’s scholarly career has been dedicated to preserving and showcasing the contributions made by people of color to the art of film.
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National Medal of Arts and MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship recipient Ann Hamilton created an installation in the popular on-campus study spot, the Joe and Rika Mansueto Library, for her project aeon. The installation features translucent scanned images of Oriental Institute artifacts, previously entombed underground for thousands of years, placed on the library’s glass dome.
October
School of Social Administration Professor (and College alum) Eve Ewing was honored with the Chicago Library’s 21st Century Award, a prize honoring promising early-career writers with ties to Chicago. Professor Ewing is the author of Marvel Comics’ Ironheart, poetry collections such as 1919 and Electric Arches, and scholarly works like Ghosts in the Schoolyard: Racism and School Closings on Chicago’s South Side. (10/10)
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Meleko Mokgosi’s painting cycle Bread, Butter, and Power, the latest piece of his ongoing series Democratic Intuition, was shown at the Smart Museum. It reflects on democratic concepts and how they shape our world, with this twenty-panel installation taking a dive into the feminism of southern Africa. Mokgosi contextualizes his historical analysis through art, bringing attention to the political landscape and power dynamics of creation in Africa.
Joshua Jay, a champion of the World Magic Seminar and holder of an unbroken Guinness World Record in magic, brought his unique take on magic to UChicago for a performance, Q&A and student discussion. Jay’s Tragic Magic: A History of Fatal Conjuring looks at the most perilous tricks and illusions as he explains and recreates some of the most iconic acts.
Art History Professor Leslie Wilson's class Exhibition in Practice culminated in the Smart Museum of Art exhibition Down Time, curated by UChicago students in the course. They focused on subjecthood and artistic spaces with a particular concentration on the black experience of created space. The students collaborated to write exhibition texts, coordinate programming, and participate in the installation process.
November
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Director Kimberly Peirce (AB ‘90) returned to UChicago to screen her highly acclaimed and groundbreaking film Boys Don’t Cry for its 20th anniversary. Boys Don’t Cry was one of the first empathetic depictions of a trans person in film, based on the real story of the life and murder of Brandon Teena in 1993. Peirce participated in a post-screening panel and co-taught a three hour masterclass. This December, the film was added to the Library of Congress’ National Film Registry for preservation. (12/7)
"Camille Norment: Untitled (red flame)" opened at Logan Center Exhibitions. This sound-based sonic exhibition emerged from a series of workshops the artist conducted with Chicago residents as she examined the place performative voice in cultural history. Norment coined the term "psychoacoustics" to describe her analysis of sounds in their cultural contexts. (12/15)
The Chicago Black Dance Legacy Project, developed through a partnership between Logan Center Community Arts and the Joyce Foundation’s Culture Program, as well as leaders from each dance company, is a multi-year project that seeks to celebrate the historic impact of Chicago-based black choreographers in the national dance community, and strengthen the impact and reach of black dance for generations to come. (12/20)
December
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Lawrence Abu Hamdan, this year’s UChicago Richard and Mary L. Gray Center for Arts and Inquiry fellow, won the prestigious Turner Prize for visual art. A self-described “private ear,” or forensic audio analyst, he innovatively utilizes sound art for sociopolitical analysis and commentary. This fall quarter he co-taught a seminar course in the College called “The Sonic Image.” (12/3)
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Celebrated poet, essayist, scholar, and MacArthur Genius Anne Carson came to UChicago for a series of lectures—Stillness, Corners, and Chairs. Joined by partner Robert Currie and choreographer Jonah Bokaer, each night dealt with different social and introspective themes.
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University Theater’s fall musical was Company, Stephen Sondheim's iconic musical comedy. Company is a Tony-winning reflection on loneliness, marriage and friendship.
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Theaster Gates, professor in the Department of Visual Arts and director of Arts and Public Life, won the World Economic Forum Crystal Prize! He is being honored for his “leadership in creating sustainable communities.” With artworks exhibited internationally, Gates has remained committed to revitalizing Chicago’s South Side, establishing initiatives for the cultivation and preservation black culture and dialogue on race and history. (12/13)