‘Don’t Close Your Eyes’ Brings Art Depicting War In Ukraine To Chicago

An exhibit featuring pieces from more than two dozen Ukrainian artists about the war in their home country opens this weekend.

“Don’t Close Your Eyes” opens Saturday at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, 2320 W. Chicago Ave. The exhibit brings together more than 150 works by 26 artists from across Ukraine that showcase the literal effects of war as well as its psychological and emotional fallout.

The show was curated by Hanna Melnyczuk, a Ukrainian-American artist and professor based in Massachusetts who began connecting with Ukrainian artists on social media after Russia invaded in February 2022.

Via Block Club Chicago

In Chicago Ceremony, 300-Year-Old Painting Stolen by American Soldier During World War II Returned to German Museum

After a stopover in the U.S. that lasted the better part of a century, a baroque landscape painting that went missing during World War II was returned to Germany on Thursday.

The FBI handed over the artwork by 18th century Austrian artist Johann Franz Nepomuk Lauterer to a German museum representative in a brief ceremony at the German Consulate in Chicago, where the pastoral piece showing an Italian countryside was on display.

Art Recovery International, a company focused on locating and recovering stolen and looted art, tracked down the elusive painting after a person in Chicago reached out last year claiming to possess a “stolen or looted painting” that their uncle brought back to the U.S. after serving in World War II.

The painting has been missing since 1945 and was first reported stolen from the Bavarian State Painting Collections in Munich, Germany. It was added to the database of the German Lost Art Foundation in 2012, according to a statement from the art recovery company.

“The crux of our work at Art Recovery International is the research and restitution of artworks looted by Nazis and discovered in public or private collections. On occasion, we come across cases, such as this, where allied soldiers may have taken objects home as souvenirs or as trophies of wars,” said Christopher Marinello, founder of Art Recovery International.

“Being on the winning side doesn’t make it right,” he added.

The identity of the Chicago resident who had the painting was not shared. The person initially asked Marinello to be paid for the artwork.

“I explained our policy of not paying for stolen artwork and that the request was inappropriate,” Marinello said.

“We also know that someone tried to sell the painting in the Chicago art market in 2011 and disappeared when the museum put forth their claim.”

Via WTTW

Out of print: After nearly 40 years, Newberry Book Fair is done

There is no shortage of used books in this city. You can find them in informal little libraries in neighborhood parks, and in community libraries requiring library cards, and in overstuffed storefronts filled with yellowing pages lacking dust covers, smelling of attics, wrapped in the plastic jackets of far-away suburban libraries.

But since 1985, the Newberry Library’s annual book fair had been the Chicago used-book-apalooza.

Still, the Newberry Library Book Fair is being pulped.

At a pair of recent meetings, administrators informed volunteers that the largely volunteer-run event would be discontinued, off the calendar, permanently shelved.

Via Chicago Tribune