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Chicago-set “Dark Matter” renewed for second season/Photo: Apple
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ART
Young Artists See Bust At End Of $712 Million Boom
“Artists saw six-figure sales and heard promises of stardom. But with the calamitous downturn in the art market, many collectors bolted—and prices plummeted,” factors the New York Times. “Running the business side of a career is rarely taught in art schools… But the spectacular implosion of today’s market for young artists is different. There is a lot more money—and a lot more art—flowing through the system than before.”
DESIGN
Pentagram Pioneer Sir Kenneth Grange Passes At Ninety-Five
“The celebrated designer and co-founder of Pentagram has passed away,” the design group relays. He “was already a well-known designer when he co-founded Pentagram, establishing his award-winning studio in 1958 where he worked on many high-profile projects including Kodak’s Instamatic camera and a range of kitchen appliances for Kenwood. Architecture was an early and lasting influence on his practice, having worked in three architectural studios before setting up on his own. It was also a significant influence on his understanding of modernism, a philosophy that informed his thoughtful and refined approach to design throughout his long and very successful career. Sir Kenneth’s portfolio features many familiar household objects such as kitchen appliances, irons and washing machines, as well as cameras and typewriters. He designed pens for Parker, computers for Reuters, postboxes for Royal Mail, a London black cab and the U.K.’s first parking meters.”
From the New York Times obit: “His cameras, food mixers, lamps and even taxis and trains were widely celebrated objects of post-World War II design… Spare, aesthetically pleasing, with a near maniacal focus on ease of use, Mr. Grange’s creations modernized the look, feel and routine of daily life, especially in Britain—from waking up, to switching on a lamp, to a tidy shave, to a purée for breakfast and then the commute to work, by taxi or train.” His work was highlighted in the 2011 exhibition, “Making Britain Modern.”
Who Owns The Most Illinois Farmland?
“New data from the Illinois Society of Professional Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers offers a look at the ten biggest absentee landowners in Illinois,” reports Farm Progress. “Top of the list: the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints… Bill Gates is a distant sixth, with less than a third of the Mormon church’s acres.”
Cities Of The Future Need Not Only Trees, But All Sorts Of Shade
“Trees are nice and all, but they’re not enough,” writes Emma Marris at the Atlantic. “Across the country, environmental groups and city governments are calling for more urban trees… Trees are indeed a wonderful and absolutely necessary part of cities, and they should be planted in many more places. The thing about trees, though, is that they must grow for years before they can provide meaningful shade. To get shade fast typically means erecting an awning, a shade sail, or a wall—it means building something. So where’s the million-awnings initiative?”
DINING & DRINKING
Former Lawry’s? It’s Magic! Mag Mile Gets New Magic Space
“An entity led by Glen Tullman, the venture capitalist and former Allscripts CEO, has entered into a lease agreement with the owner of 100 E. Ontario, a historic building just west of Michigan Avenue,” reports Crain’s. “The space was home to Lawry’s The Prime Rib for more than four decades until the steakhouse closed in 2020.” Metamorphosis Chicago LLC “appears to be… a new magic-themed dining and entertainment concept.” In the 1990s, Tullman planned “restaurants in New York City and Orlando [with] illusionist David Copperfield, but the project fell apart and the venues never opened.”
Podhalanka On Its Last Pierogis
“After almost four decades in business, Podhalanka owner Helena Madej is now moving back to Poland to retire. No one has stepped up to run the legendary Polish restaurant,” notches Block Club. Madej has run the Wicker Park establishment since 1986, the last business of the old “Polish Broadway.” (Podhalanka is “an informal name for a ‘village girl’ from the hills of Podhale, which Madej visited while growing up.”) Her nephew “will not be staying on and Madej hasn’t heard anything from the building’s owner about someone taking over the space.”
Plethora Of Bivalves Problematic; Oyster Smarts Slacken
“The education on bivalves hasn’t kept up with the growing popularity of oysters—including at the restaurants that serve them,” writes John Kessler at Chicago magazine.
Jaleo Chicago Names New Chef, Menu
Jaleo Chicago, the fifth and latest location of José Andrés’ flagship restaurant, has a new executive chef along with updated menu items and design changes. Executive chef John Borras brings over three decades of culinary expertise to the restaurant. Originally from Venezuela, Borras’ passion for cooking was influenced by his Spanish father, and that Spanish heritage is central to his culinary style and menu development. Joining are executive sous chef Miguel Maldonado and sous chef Michael Padilla. More Jaleo here.
FILM & TELEVISION
Chicago-Set “Dark Matter” Gets Second Season From Apple TV+
Apple TV+ has renewed novelist Blake Crouch’s “Dark Matter,” reports Variety. The sci-fi thriller series is based on his best-selling novel and stars Joel Edgerton, Jennifer Connelly, Alice Braga, Jimmi Simpson, Dayo Okeniyi and Oakes Fegley. “Thanks to everyone who tuned in for season one—book fans and new fans,” says Crouch, “and the great city of Chicago—you were so good to us. In the process of writing and filming season one, we discovered that there’s so much more story to tell, and we’ve only scratched the surface of these characters as they fight for survival and to find their way home through a landscape of mind-bending realities.” Our review of season one here.
Wayfarer Studios’ “It Ends With Us” Nears $200 Million Worldwide
To celebrate the success of its production, the Blake Lively-starring “It Ends With Us” (trailer here), the adaptation of the best-selling Colleen Hoover novel, Highland Park’s Wayfarer Theater is presenting a pop-up of protagonist Lily Bloom’s Flower Shop. Local florist Swansons Blossom Shop will host a floral arranging workshop in the space every Saturday in August. Through Sunday, “It Ends With Us” had grossed $180 million worldwide after a $100 million global gross on its opening weekend.
“Wayfarer Studios is an independent production studio producing and fully financing a slate of feature films, episodic television, documentaries, unscripted series and podcasts” and is a sister company to Wayfarer Theaters, which opened in Highland Park in 2023. Wayfarer Studios was founded in 2019 by Paylocity founder Steve Sarowitz and Justin Baldoni, co-star and director of “It Ends With Us.”
Phil Donahue Was Eighty-Eight
Phil Donahue died on Sunday night following a long illness, reports Variety. “The show moved to the WGN-TV station facilities in Chicago and was renamed ‘Donahue’ in 1974. Multimedia Program Prods. bought ‘Donahue’ in 1976, and by the end of the seventies, it was broadcast on more than 200 stations, mainly network affiliates, reaching nine million viewers, the overwhelming majority of them women.”
Chicago Film Critics Association Adds Members, Sets Dates
The Chicago Film Critics Association added four new members to its fifty-plus roster of writers from area outlets: Cody Dericks, Daniel Gorman, Zachary Lee and Sarah Welch-Larson. Plus, for the CFCA 2024 awards, nominations will be announced December 10, while winners will be announced on December 12.
LIT
826Chi Exits Wicker Park
Nonprofit creative writing center 826Chi is on the move: “We are moving out of our Wicker Park space as we look to find a new home for 826Chi’s Writing Lab.” This “allows us to prioritize bringing our tuition-free programs directly to students in communities throughout Chicago, working directly in schools and with community partners… Thousands of publications and tens of thousands of young writers have been a part of our tuition-free programs.” (Instagram.)
MEDIA
Meet The Minnesota Star-Tribune
“We’ve reimagined this local news institution to represent the heart and the voice of the north,” posts Steve Grove, CEO and publisher of the former Minneapolis Star-Tribune, a 157-year-old media company. “Our decision to add Minnesota to our name is a commitment to expand our work across our state… You told us you want to hear stories not only about what’s happening in your neighborhood but everywhere in Minnesota, and we hope to bring you a report that does just that. It may sound curious to those who don’t live here, but we think being a Minnesotan is something like accepting a higher calling.”
Adds the New York Times: The paper “will use an injection of money from its billionaire owner to expand its coverage beyond the Twin Cities into other parts of the state… The expansion is a rare big bet in the newspaper industry. Local newspapers have been shrinking across the country.” But The Star Tribune “hasn’t made major layoffs in recent years, and its newsroom has remained around 225 people for years. The Star Tribune is owned by Glen Taylor, a billionaire who also owns the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Minnesota Lynx. He bought the paper for about $100 million in 2014, several years after it filed for bankruptcy. The paper has been profitable every year since, but until now, Mr. Taylor had not invested more into the publication.”
ARTS & CULTURE & ETC.
Security For DNC Moves Outward To Loop, Michigan Avenue
Over the weekend, “security measures surprisingly spilled over into neighborhoods nowhere near the United Center or McCormick Place,” reports WBBM-TV. “At the Dirksen Federal Building in the Loop, security gates popped up overnight to prevent anyone from vandalizing the courthouse, while people living along the Magnificent Mile and Gold Coast discovered unexpected more security gates and road closures miles away from the DNC sites… Some of the security measures in place ahead of the DNC aren’t obvious at first glance. In the South Loop, some manhole covers are marked over with seals, letting officials know if they’ve been tampered with.”
Chicago Will Host 2026 NAACP Convention
“On the eve of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the NAACP announced it will bring its 117th national convention to the city. It’s been thirty years since the convention was held in the city,” reports the Sun-Times.
DNC, Etc.
Each day of this week’s Democratic National Convention will have a celebrity host, including Tony Goldwyn, Ana Navarro of ABC News’ “The View,” Mindy Kaling and Kerry Washington for Kamala Harris’ Thursday night acceptance. Tonight’s nomination roll call will be in the form of a rally and will include a DJ and “surprise” guests, as well as best-selling authors Michelle and Barack Obama (Lynn Sweet).
The price of a dedicated chair and electrical outlet for journalists at United Center starts at $911. “A similar setup at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee cost $100… The fastest speed internet from AT&T will run you $9,368 for the week.” (WBEZ.)
Rebranding: The Harris Walz logo was projected on Sunday night across the higher floors of the Chicago Trump Tower. (WFLD-TV tweet.) More images here, including the legend, “PROJECT 2025 HQ.”
Jonathan Eig’s survey of Chicago for Dem tourists highlights the Green Mill (WBEZ): The Green Mill “is the place. It’s dark, it’s wooden, it’s dimly lit. There are neon signs, there’s a beautiful bar and just a little stage where the musicians are surrounded by their adoring fans. It’s just a cozy, warm, dark place. I come here to swing. I just love the music. Jazz just makes me happy, but it also feels like very Chicago music and it’s a very Chicago scene here.”
Rick Kogan remembers his 1968 (Tribune): “I was there on August 28, 1968, a sixteen-year-old standing with some older men, women and children behind barriers police had set up outside the picture windows of the hotel’s Haymarket Inn. ‘Help, help,’ came the screams, as police came at those on the sidewalk and street, and in Grant Park. Billy clubs swinging, people were forced back until they began crashing through the window… The next night I was just outside the doors of the Hilton, watching the madness in front of me. Some of the cops, who formed a line intended to keep the anti-war protesters from getting inside the hotel, eyed me suspiciously. I looked, hair a bit shaggy but not long, like those outside the hotel,” Kogan writes.
“All there that night became part of what would come to be known as the ‘Battle of Balbo,’” writes Kogan. “Though it lasted less than thirty minutes, it was ugly and terrifying. I saw blood and I saw tears and I heard the most vile words and sad screams. Heavy glass ashtrays, tossed from windows above, shattered on the sidewalk. A piece clipped my forehead. The skirmishes on previous convention nights in Lincoln Park… did not have the dubious distinction of television cameras present to record the action, like at the Hilton. Yes, the whole world may have been watching but soon enough it came time to change the channel.”
Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Will Bunch lands in Chicago (gift link) and sees ghosts of 1968. “In sleekly modern Chicago, the ghosts of a rebellious 1968 are hard to find, but they still haunt this week’s Democratic National Convention… Specters of 1968 still haunt the nation’s third-largest city, and America writ large… I was part of that whole world that was watching this on TV. I was nine years old… on the night of August 28, 1968,” the personal bits of his fine column read. “My parents invited a few friends to our linoleum family room and newfangled color TV to watch Humphrey get the nomination and probably imbibe a beverage or two. I wandered in just when NBC showed the cops wailing on the protesters at Michigan and Balbo, shocked but mesmerized. A friend of my parents said, ‘I don’t think little Willy should be watching this,’ but I couldn’t leave. I was now interested in politics and soon journalism—the first moments of a journey that’s brought me a thousand miles to this Hilton lobby and isn’t close to finished, fifty-six years later.”
Mayor Johnson speaks to protesters; stages and sound systems will be permitted in Union Park. “The agreement, which was reached after hours of back-room negotiations between the parties, nullified an emergency motion filed in U.S. District Court earlier this week alleging the city had violated protestors’ First Amendment rights by restricting how the rallies could be staged.” (Tribune.)
“So which is it? When the balloons drop August 22—I almost said ‘when the smoke clears’—what will be left of Chicago’s reputation? Another boost for sweet home Chicago, celebrated in song, cynosure of American life? Or will it be more body blows for the punching bag of the Western world?” (Neil Steinberg, Sun-Times.)
Chuck Ebeling, Eighty-One, PR Exec Who Helped Save Yerkes Observatory
“Chuck Ebeling worked as a public relations executive for major Chicago-area companies, including McDonald’s, and later spearheaded a successful effort to save the Yerkes Observatory in Williams Bay, Wisconsin, after the longtime owner moved to sell the property,” chronicles the Trib.
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