It’s good to see that some things don’t change. Throughout my work activity in Information Technology I worked with many company user communities whose IT “support” was too often characterized by stone-eared listening. A user team would identify a tech problem. The IT staff then would respond, too often, in Continue Reading
Edmund McDevitt
A Musical Interlude: The Chicago Symphony plays Liszt, Wagner and Brahms/Schoenberg
Yes, this blog is about lots of different things. Sometimes it will be about music, usually a review of a concert or other musical event. This one is about the Thursday, June 6, 2019 Chicago Symphony concert at Orchestra Hall. Last night at the Chicago Symphony concert we saw guest Continue Reading
The “Plague” at the Chicago 1933 Century of Progress
The 1893 the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago had its serial killer, H.H. Holmes, made famous as “The Devil in the White City.” The actual extent of Holmes’s crime spree is probably far smaller than the legend and the book suggest, but popular imagination keeps the legend alive. Most people Continue Reading
UPDATE: The Eagle Fountains: Where Have They Been?
August 20, 2024 This is an update to this entry, first published in 2019. I received an inquiry from a friend about the Eagle Fountains, asking why they’re still not back in place. I queried my contact at the Chicago Park District and got this reply: “Restoration of the fountains Continue Reading
Monuments to Women. Seen Any Lately?
I lecture on Chicago’s public art (and on public art in general). Monuments are necessarily part of the conversation, though generally speaking, the making of representational monuments became passé in the 1950s. However, prior to that all of the commemorative monuments in Chicago were to dead white men, several of Continue Reading
Chicago’s Lost, Altered and Disfigured Public Art, #2
As we said in our first entry on this topic, “When we start telling the stories of our public art, the conversation inevitably turns to art that is gone. Where did it go? Why?” The list of missing art is long and, at least to this observer, maddening. Herewith are Continue Reading
The Dentist in the Park
You can picture the faces. Visitors to Lincoln Park walk up to a statue, look at it and walk away saying, “Who?” Many of Chicago’s parks contain monuments that are like that. Humboldt. Schiller. Altgeld, not to name just Germans. Schiller. A sculpture that stands in a lovely, very prominent Continue Reading
The Polar Vortex Song
I have adapted a well-known song so that you have something to sing as we experience the descent of the polar jet stream to our environs. My respects to Mel Torme and Robert Wells. Chestnuts freezing in an open fieldJack Frost nipping off your noseWarm-weather songs being cried by a Continue Reading
The Sculpture at the End of the Fire
The Great Chicago Fire finally burned itself out on October 10, 1871. The exact northern end point of the fire is a matter of conjecture. Most detailed maps show it stopped at just about the spot where the Peggy Notebaert Museum is today. If you’ve been on any of my Continue Reading
John Storrs, Ceres, and The Model Who Wasn’t
Several years ago I was asked to do research for a Chicago architecture documentary. One of my assignments was John Storrs’ sculpture Ceres, which stands atop the 1930 Holabird and Root Chicago Board of Trade Building. My task was to confirm the oft-repeated story of the “model” for the sculpture. Continue Reading