Logan Launch Festival is happening this weekend, an appropriate time for joviality considering October is Chicago Artist’s Month (CAM). The three-day festival is a celebration surrounding the opening of the Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts at the University of Chicago.  The Center will serve as a hub for the vibrant arts scene at the University and a destination for the South Side and greater Chicago area.  This weekend's festivities are free, open to the public and happening now through Sunday, October 14.

Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts
Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects
Photos by Tom Rossiter
© The University of Chicago

Numerous events are occurring throughout the weekend ranging from site-specific sound installations, multiple performances, plays, films, orchestra ensembles, discussions, lectures, readings, workshops, a live broadcast, as well as visual artworks. There are a few ongoing installations, such as Sonic Environments: The Work of Richard Lerman: Sound Installation Piece, as well as exhibits MFA: On Display, and Wall Text both presented from the Department of Visual Arts, as well as Self-Guided Tours.
 
Multiple performances are shaking up this evening, Friday, October 12, so be sure to check out the full schedule. Ricardo Basbaum’s “Would you like to participate in an artistic experience?” addresses complex social transformations through the circulation of a deceptively simple object, one of his “New Bases for Personality (NBP)” which is ongoing all day Friday. Music Department Piano Showcase, Los Cenzonties with David Hidalgo, Monk and Mingus: Performance by University Jazz X-Tet, Uballet, Deeply Rooted, The Ransom Notes, Student Performance of Tony Award-Winning Play “Proof”, and Spektral Quartet are all exciting events ranging from music to performance to dance, or some combination of the above. There will also be a chance for you and your friends to participate in informal performances at the Logan Cabaret Series Kick-Off at the Performance Penthouse from 9-11pm, Friday, October 12. More performances will be held throughout the weekend, including the Turtle Island Quartet concert on Sunday at 3pm.
 
Several discussion panels, lectures, and conversations will develop this weekend including a few this evening.  Beware the Stairs Are Always Moving: A Conversation with architects Tod Williams and Billie Tsien takes place tonight from 6-7:30 pm.  Later on, from 8-9pm in the Café, Café Scientifique sessions invite the public to explore and debate current issues and interesting topics in science research at the University, for the price of a cup of coffee or a glass of wine.
 
Family programming will take place all day Saturday including Family Telling Workshop; Barrel of Monkeys, “That’s Weird, Grandma”; Animation Workshop; and StoryTelling with the Ase Youth Ensemble. There will also be Arts Trolley Rides from noon - 5pm where guests can visit museums and cultural institutions across the University of Chicago campus including the Oriental Institute Museum, Renaissance Society, and Smart Museum of Art.
 
Open House Chicago (OHC) organized by the Chicago Architecture Foundation is an annual weekend festival providing free behind-the-scenes access to many of Chicago’s greatest places and spaces. The Logan Center, selected as one of OHC’s “Top Twenty Sites to Visit,” will offer self-guided tours for OHC participants that feature “backstage” areas of the performance spaces as well as private studios on Sunday from 10-5pm. Logan Center presents Scheduled Tours on Sunday to explore the Logan center with a knowledgeable guide. Hear about the building’s history, architecture, and role within the University with visits to the performance hall, blackbox theatre, digital media center, classrooms, gallery and more.
 
Look for more detailed information and a full schedule of events on the Logan Center for the Arts website, so you can participate in this dynamic community with its intriguing, intellectual, and enjoyable events.
 
Festival hours:
Friday: Noon – 11pm
Saturday: 10 am – 11pm
Sunday: Noon- 5pm

Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts
915 East 60th Street
Chicago, IL 60637

Reva and David Logan Center for the Arts
Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects
Exterior construction view from the north
Photo by Tom Rossiter
© The University of Chicago

Xavier Nuez’s beautiful photographs depict decaying parts of the city that many try to avoid. Let Nuez lead you to these alleys and ruins and give you a look around - challenge your preconceptions and maybe open your eyes to what keeps him going back for inspiration after 20 years of photographing.

20 Years of Alleys & Ruins: Dark, Menacing Spaces opens December 9th during Chicago Arts District’s 2^nd Fridays and runs until February 6, 2012; photographs will be displayed in the seven showPODs along the 1800 block of South Halsted St.

Xavier says that while photographing he’s been chased by gangs, questioned by police, accosted by crazed addicts and drug dealers, and held at gunpoint. “And yet under these trying conditions, and within the filth and stench of the city’s gutters, I find inspiration. With a family history of homelessness and with a constant belief that I was next, I found the need to dignify what has been rejected.”  

See these striking images and participate in the excitement during the last 2^nd Friday of 2011, December 9, 6-10pm at South Halsted and 18^th streets. You’ll see the photographs by Nuez that The New York Times calls masterpieces, as well as attend openings in 30 other galleries and art spaces.

Visit the 2^nd Friday info center at 1821 S Halsted St for maps and event details.

For additional information contact curator Cynthia West at: cwest@chicagoartsdistrict.org

Fall brings about many changes: changing of the leaves, the cold weather, and as you all guessed by last week’s busy opening schedule, of course new exhibitions for galleries. One art destination not far from the city is the Elmhurst Art Museum, an architecturally significant facility that focuses on contemporary art in the suburb of Elmhurst. Starting on September 16, and currently showing until December 31^st, the museum is presenting four new exhibitions for the fall. Three artists represented by Chicago galleries, artist Matt Woodward (Linda Warren Gallery), Glenn Wexler (Zolla/Lieberman Gallery), and Firat Erdim (Roy Boyd Gallery) are exhibiting their new works, with architecture as a lose but underlying theme. The Art Center is also concurrently presenting their new collection additions in a separate exhibition.

Matt Woodward’s The Tremendous Alone is a collection of immense drawings about architecture and the way in which it becomes a powerful memory, which creates a perception of how we view a given time and place. Six vast drawings fill the gallery space in an intuitive view of the artist’s personal memory. Woodward’s intent to push past the architecture into a suggestive place of life and death creates an overall thought provoking and visually stimulating experience.

Glenn Wexler’s multi-media exhibition Stillness in Motion is based on the in-between spaces of nature and the developed world, all seen through the lens of an urban setting. The collection includes structures lit from within, wall text, and photographic images that all pertain to the close proximity of architecture and its relationship to land and cityscapes.

 The architectural and sculptural work in Firat Erdim’s The Arbor looks at the transformation of objects and places between states of nature, raw material, construction and ruin. Erdim takes standard wood planks and uses them to create structures that comment on the states of arrangement and deterioration.

Collection Highlights: New Acquisitions is made up of the new 18 works that are being added to the Museum’s collection. The generously gifted works add to the contemporary art collection and speak to the current culture. The exhibition includes works from Jerry Cargill, Helen Maurene Cooper, Mark DeBernardi, and many more. Come check out these four fabulous exhibitions and revel in their creative excellence.

When: September 16- December 31, 2011

Where: Elmhurst Art Museum

http://www.elmhurstartmuseum.org/current-exhibitions.html

The Arts Club of Chicago is presenting a truly special exhibition this month - Bertrand Goldberg: Reflections is a comprehensive, yet intimate look at the works by this great artist.  The show, opening September 16, is made up of Goldberg’s personal collection of art and artifacts, alongside images of Goldberg-designed buildings, furniture, fabrications, and jewelry.  The exhibition has been designed and installed by John Vinci, along with Bertrand Goldberg’s architect son, Geoffrey, and it pays homage to the influential work that Bertrand Goldberg produced throughout his life.

Reflections takes the viewer through the sources and influences on Goldberg’s vision by looking at his own collection of art, his friendships with artists and intellectuals, his photographs, and designs for architects.  This “behind the scenes look” allows one to dive deeper into Goldberg’s life and help explicate the genius and infamous works that he created, both for those who’ve long admired his work, and for those who don’t know the architect beyond his famous ‘corn cob towers’ - Marina City.

Bertrand Goldberg was born in Chicago and he left behind a legacy of architecture that contributes to the city’s beautiful skyline.  Goldberg’s most iconic construction, Marina City, sits on the bank of the Chicago River, and marked the beginning of his work in large-scale commissions.  Goldberg’s vision for the project was revolutionary, as it was intended to be a full-service, city-living community, in response to the suburban flight that was happening in the 1950s.  Residents could live, dine and park in the residential community.  Today, condo buyers expect such amenities as standard.

Goldberg’s work is seen throughout our city, and this exhibition has a special place in our hearts, giving us greater insight into the buildings we pass by daily.  Another famous building of the architect’s, Northwestern Memorial’s Prentice Women’s Hospital (the pod-like Streeterville structure with round windows) is the current subject of a preservation society debate, so there is no doubt that the close examination of Goldberg’s work is especially timely.  

The Arts Club show is a companion exhibition to Bertrand Goldberg: Architecture of Invention being held at The Art Institute of Chicago from September 17 to January 15 and is the first comprehensive retrospective of his career.

"My message, I think, is much more important either than myself personally, or than the quick identification as the round-building architect. I am talking about the performance of people in a social system, about the performance of people in the city."

-Bertrand Goldberg