Blog

Get Chicago & Great Lakes culture news sent to your inbox every weekday morning. Subscribe to Newcity Today here.

ART

Renaissance Society Announces Karimah Ashadu Exhibition

This fall, the Renaissance Society will present “Tendered,” a solo exhibition by Karimah Ashadu. “Through film and sculpture, the exhibition marks the U.S. debut of ‘MUSCLE,’ a work that examines the conditions under which bodies are rendered legible within contemporary systems of labor and value, especially within the cultural context of Nigeria and its diaspora. ‘Tendered’ is curated by Myriam Ben Salah and Karsten Lund, and was commissioned in partnership with Fondazione In Between Art Film.” September 12-November 1. More here.

How Would You Reimagine “The Odyssey”?

The National Hellenic Museum and CNL Projects invite artists to submit proposals for “‘The Odyssey’: Reimagined,” an exhibition about the lasting relevance of the story. The exhibition invites proposals for new or existing works, including but not limited to painting, sculpture, photography, textiles and digital media that draw inspiration from Homer’s epic. Proposals are due by August 16. View more details here.

DESIGN

Michigan Ave Is Doing Fine, Now Fix That Great Street

“It has been a very trying three or four years on the Magnificent Mile. But a lot of folks there have worked very hard to turn those retail fortunes around. And they are seeing rewards,” postulates the Tribune editorial board (gift link). Time “to turn our attention to State Street, an iconic Chicago thoroughfare if ever there was one and a corridor that, frankly, looks to be in terrible shape. It’s difficult to remember State Street looking much worse,” they write, ranking on the reconstruction of the State and Lake El station.

DINING & DRINKING

Donnie Madia On What “The Bear” Has Done For Chicago Dining

“Even being a small part of ‘The Bear’ was such an honor. What I love most about the show isn’t just the beautiful shots of food or the storyline; it’s the depiction of the industry that I’ve dedicated my life and career to,” writes One Off Hospitality partner Donnie Madia at the Trib (gift link). “It portrays the heart and soul of hospitality, and by that, I mean the pressure, the pride and the relentless pursuit of what it means to welcome people through our doors to take care of them. When I watch ‘The Bear,’ I see the people who are the backbone of this industry: It’s the cooks, servers, bartenders, managers, dishwashers, hosts, bakers and chefs, who are represented with honesty and integrity.”

Hopewell Brewing Conjures Korean-Style Lagers

“Korean-style lagers are an emerging craft beer trend that draws inspiration from Korean drinking culture, emphasizing light, malt-forward, food-friendly beers designed for sharing over meals,” reports Food & Wine. “Chicago’s Hopewell Brewing has released Pocha, a five-percent ABV Korean-style lager. Pocha is short for ‘pojangmacha,’ which are Korean street vendors that sell tteokbokki, hotteok, gimbap and dakkochi. ‘Pocha feels very much like a natural extension of the beers Hopewell gravitates toward, and always have since we started in 2016,’ says Hopewell cofounder Samantha Lee. ‘We’ve always strived to make styles that are really approachable and enjoyable and compatible to whatever else you might have going on for the evening, or your meal.’”

Making Art From The Holiday Club’s Sign Sparkles

A former Holiday Club patron posts a short process video on a personal project: “We rescued a handful of sparkles from the sign so we’d always have a little piece of it with us. When Holiday Club closed, we were honestly devastated. It was our neighborhood bar, we made so many memories there. So when they left the sign out on the street, we snuck out in the middle of the night with a pry bar and rescued a handful of the [round, disc] sparkles just to keep a piece of it forever. We mounted them to a backing, framed them and now they live in our home forever. Every time the light hits them, they shimmer just like they did outside Holiday Club.” (The result is about the size of a standard movie poster.)

Jefferson Park Shifts Festival Focus To Italian Beef

“After twenty-five years, Jefferson Park’s namesake festival has rebranded to focus on Italian beef sandwiches,” reports Block Club. “We wanted to build on what we already had with Jeff Fest, but also give the festival its own unique Chicago identity,” said Bella Ventresca, executive director of the Jefferson Park Chamber of Commerce, “If Italian beefs can be the thing that brings thousands of people into Jefferson Park, that is a huge win for our local economy and our businesses.” July 31-August 2. More here.

FILM & TELEVISION

Woodridge: The Midwest Mecca For 70mm IMAX

With only twenty-five theaters in the United States showing “The Odyssey” in IMAX 70mm, Woodridge “has become an unlikely destination for cinephiles,” visits the Trib. “Cinemark always intended to have the Woodridge theater ready in time for ‘The Odyssey,’ installing the projector just weeks before opening night.” The Woodridge site has only a single theater that can show IMAX 70mm, seating 250. There are five showtimes daily, starting at 7:45am, with the last screening of Christopher Nolan’s three-hour epic at 2:40am.

Do Audiences Want More Movies That Show Effort?

“This year’s breakouts like ‘Project Hail Mary’ and ‘Obsession’ were made by filmmakers who sweated. While CG-stuffed franchise disappointments such as ‘Supergirl,’ ‘Moana’ and ‘The Mandalorian and Grogu’ looked lazy,” opines the Hollywood Reporter. “‘The Odyssey’ proves it: audiences want movies made the hard way.”

Another Documentary On Chicago Violence From The Invisible Institute And Bill Morrison

“Sawyer Avenue, Sunday Afternoon” is a short documentary that reconstructs the October 12, 2025 detention of a Chicago resident by masked federal immigration agents without presenting a warrant. The documentary, produced in collaboration with the Invisible Institute’s Jamie Kalven and María Inés Zamudi, has been published by the New Yorker with an accompanying text. The film uses body-worn camera footage, cellphone video and investigative reporting: “As neighbors emerged from their homes and attempted to stop their vehicle from leaving their block, many documented the encounter on their phones. Working from those recordings alongside body-worn camera footage released through federal litigation, Morrison reconstructs the incident from multiple perspectives, adding credibility to the public record. The eighteen-minute documentary can be viewed here.

Lucas Museum Of Narrative Art Putting Film To Loop

Two state-of-the-art theaters dedicated to “avant garde” and documentary filmmaking will open at the Lucas Museum Of Narrative Art in Los Angeles, the institution announces. Named for documentary pioneer Robert Flaherty and montage maestro Slavko Vorkapich, the rooms will be christened by “curated film selections screened on a non-stop basis throughout the day, offering visitors an open-door, drop-in gallery-like experience.” Explains Ryan Linkof, senior curator and head of film programs, “we wanted to offer an alternative to the traditional museum film program and to create a dynamic, open-door experience designed for discovery, allowing audiences to encounter cinema as a living, breathing art form at their own pace.” View a trailer on the program here.

Paramount-Warner Merger Delayed For Months
“Paramount said on Friday that it had agreed to halt its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery until next June at the latest while a judge considers a lawsuit from state attorneys general who sued to block the deal. The delay throws into doubt the future of a deal that would remake Hollywood,” reports the New York Times (gift link). “In a legal filing, Paramount and the state attorneys general said that they had reached an agreement to freeze the $111 billion merger while the case works its way through court, extending a shorter pause imposed by a federal judge in California last week.”

LIT

Homer Translator Sees Los Angeles In Christopher Nolan’s Ithaca

Emily Wilson, “The Odyssey” translator whom filmmaker Christopher Nolan reportedly favors, shared some thoughts on the film: “This is a film about living in L.A., as Nolan, my erstwhile British compatriot and age mate, has done for years. I gather it’s a strange place. Calypso: the very lovely therapist, doles out great psychiatric drugs, and you may stay in treatment for many years. Who knows which memories of your trauma are real? Circe: the plastic surgeon. Gives people the look they were always meant to have. It’s violent and scary, but oh so tempting… So many people in masks. Everyone is obsessed by shame but doesn’t want to talk about it. The A list celebrities are very humble and grateful. Nobody ever has a normal meal, and everyone is focused on looking sexy rather than having sex. But mostly, a journey that should take half an hour ends up taking ten years. Traffic.”

“I’m Obsessed With Camille Bordas”

“Several months ago, I asked Camille Bordas if I could interview her to mark the release of her debut story collection, ‘One Sun Only,’” writes author Catherine Lacey. “Back when I lived in Chicago, Camille was one of the first and few friends I made there. It was 2016 and she had just finished her first novel in English after having written a few in French and she’d also started, for the first time, to write short stories. Shortly after we met, she published the first short story she’d ever written in The New Yorker. Maybe I don’t have to explain how unlikely and exciting that was and still is. Camille had been able (in a new language and in a new-ish genre) to find a voice so compelling that it held the attention of the editors at one of the most selective magazines in the States.”

Dave Eggers And Salman Rushdie Enter Den Of AI

Promoting his new novel “Contrapposto,” Dave Eggers spoke with the Guardian in a rare extended interview. He’s got strong words about AI: “‘Only you can think of what you can think of. Only you can tell a story in a particular way. Why would you cede that to a machine?’ Eggers’ voice, usually quiet, almost monotone, rises as he warms to his theme. ‘Once you have a machine think for you and write for you, you’re cooked as a species. That’s it. That’s the worse dystopian outcome there could ever be,’ he says.”

Author Salman Rushdie was asked by Variety about what part AI should play in creative work. Rushdie “declared that artificial intelligence has no role to play in literature, cinema or storytelling of any kind, dismissing the technology as fundamentally incapable of originality. ‘Nothing. Zero. It’s not useful to creative work because AI has no capacity for originality. What it can do is suck up enormous amounts of information and produce versions of that. But what it can’t do is something nobody’s done before. And that’s what art is, is to find things people haven’t done before. So, I mean I have less than zero interest in AI.’”

MEDIA

New Indie Mags Bloom In Chicago

Chicago has seen a boom in indie print publications, surveys the Reader. Some issues are themed: “Queer nightlife magazine The Issue, which has published three times since launching in March 2025, focuses on queer nightlife, while ‘part literary mag, part lifestyle’ magazine Gab has put out three issues since spring 2024,” writing about “break-ups, coming-of-age and illusions. Others curate submissions from local creatives: the pub, a quarterly, print-only publication, commissions a blend of Chicago-based long-form reporting, creative writing and DIY, underground scene-based writing; and self-described archival project Write That Down! releases seasonal, biannual issues with submissions reflecting everyday mementos and anecdotes from Chicago.”

MUSIC

John Prine Mural Painted On The Old Town School Of Folk Music

“For John Prine fans, the massive new mural painted on the Old Town School of Folk Music in Lincoln Square can prompt pedestrians to stop and blink back tears,” pictures the Sun-Times. “The Maywood native and folk music legend died in 2020 from COVID complications. This month, his friend and fellow musician Jon Langford, who designed the mural, teamed up with Chicago artist Darius Dennis, owner of Big Wall Sign & Mural, to paint a tribute to Prine on the school’s second-story brick wall during its annual Square Roots Festival. Prine once took lessons there in the 1960s and remained a mainstay as his career took off.”

Lollapalooza Adds THC Drinks To Its Lineup

At Lollapalooza, “anyone twenty-one or older can drink a twelve-ounce Señorita margarita in flavors from locally based Rhythm Beverages,” reports WGN-TV News. “The non-alcoholic drinks are already offered at the United Center, Navy Pier and the Windy City Smokeout.”

STAGE

Jackalope Opens Seventeenth “Living Newspaper”

Jackalope Theatre Company has set its schedule for the seventeenth annual Living Newspaper Festival, inspired by the 1930s Living Newspapers of the Federal Theatre Project that created stories based on recent events. Each night, the festival includes five one-act plays inspired from recent news headlines. Hosted by Jackalope Theatre in the Broadway Armory at 5917 North Broadway, August 20-24. Tickets to the seventy-five-minute production and more here.

M.A.D.D. Rhythms Celebrates Twenty-Five Years Of Tap

“M.A.D.D. Rhythms provides low-cost arts education and leadership opportunities for young people, connecting them with elders and other professionals in the field,” reports South Side Weekly. “The tap dance institution is celebrating its twenty-fifth anniversary through events while continuing to foster community, mentorship and connection on the South Side. Since its founding, M.A.D.D. Rhythms’ performance company has appeared both nationally and internationally.”

A Lollapalooza For Broadway? A Weekend At The Festival

“For decades, theater fans have flocked to Broadway hoping to catch their favorite performers onstage. But what if, instead of seeing one show, they could spend an entire weekend surrounded by stage stars—watching concerts under the stars, singing show tunes around a campfire, dancing at a Broadway rave and stumbling upon surprise collaborations that could only happen in one place? That’s the dream behind The Festival, a new three-day event taking over Kingston, New York’s Hutton Brickyards from August 14-16,” reports People.

“Performers include stars like Audra McDonald, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Christopher Jackson and Kelli O’Hara, plus a reunion of the original cast of ‘Rent‘ in honor of the show’s thirtieth anniversary. Creators Joshua Saltman and David Schwartz call it an immersive outdoor experience which will feature concerts, singalongs, comedy shows and local food and artisan vendors.”

Send culture news and tips to [email protected]