DuSable Black History Museum gets $1.6 million from state of Illinois for building improvements

The DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center will receive a $1.6 million state grant for renovations. The first installment was presented earlier this month in a check by Illinois Comptroller Susana Mendoza.

The funds will go to updating bathrooms, the museum’s Harold Washington wing, and the theater, said CEO Perri Irmer at a press event. The improvements made to the wing and theater will allow the museum to increase revenue via facility rentals, she said.

The state funds and renovation plans come as Black History Month is underway, and the museum extends its February hours of operation to seven days a week.

The DuSable has struggled with funding and staff turnover in recent years. In a whistleblower lawsuit filed early December in the Circuit Court of Cook County, a former employee raised numerous questions about the museum’s financial and organizational stability.

Via Chicago Sun Times

Cave designed the ancient creatures in “Mammoth” with the Chicago metal fabrication studio Manifold. The works are animated by four people walking in unison. In January, the artist took them for a stroll on the Chicago lakefront.Anthony Vazquez/Sun-Times

Chicago’s Nick Cave is digging up America’s bones at a fraught moment for the Smithsonian

On a cerulean blue Tuesday in early January, artist Nick Cave directs an uncanny scene unfolding along the Chicago lakefront. Three enormous mammoths lumber south toward the city’s silhouetted skyline.

It’s around 11 a.m., but the scene feels out of time, hovering between past and present.

Built from open metal frames wrapped in long, wispy hair, each creature is animated by four people walking in unison. But their bodies are not the kind of Woolly mammoth reconstructions typically found in museum dioramas. Moving across the horizon, the mammoths appear partially decomposed, as if recently unearthed from an ancient, Arctic permafrost.

“Stop!” Cave calls out, his voice carried by the blustering winter wind. “Let’s do that again.”

Via WBEZ

Norman Rockwell's Cubs painting, "The Dugout," now at Art Institute, recalls decades of futility

The Norman Rockwell painting "The Dugout," now hanging at the Art Institute of Chicago, is a longstanding symbol of the Chicago Cubs' reputation as lovable losers — which for some fans had its own appeal.

The Cubs finally broke that hex in 2016. If you can believe it, the 10th anniversary of that magical night when the Cubs won the World Series is coming up later this year. But it's nothing compared to the 108 years that passed before that without a World Series victory, and 71 without even a World Series appearance.

When Rockwell painted "The Dugout" for the Sept. 4, 1948, cover of the Saturday Evening Post, it had been a mere three years since the Cubs had last appeared in the World Series. The painting depicts the Cubs after they lost a doubleheader to the Boston Braves — now the Atlanta Braves — with dejected players standing in the dugout as the fans mock and jeer at them.

Via CBS News

Longtime John Hancock home of art collectors Gael Neeson and Stefan Edlis for sale

A North Michigan Avenue condo where a pair of eminent art collectors lived for decades among numerous canvases and sculptures is on the market.

Via Crain's (paywall)