DCASE leadership still in flux as city braces for start of festival season

The city’s top cultural chief, Erin Harkey, is still on the job more than two weeks after she was terminated by Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a mayoral spokesperson confirmed Monday.

The spokesperson, Ronnie Reese, said that the first deputy commissioner, Jennifer Johnson Washington, would temporarily fill the role once Harkey departs.

Johnson, who has been slow to embed his own leadership team at City Hall, terminated Harkey and the city’s buildings commissioner in mid-February.

News of Harkey’s termination came just weeks before the city’s festival season begins and was a surprise to some in the arts community. The Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events is in charge of events like The Taste of Chicago and Blues Fest. It also funds a number of arts organizations and individual artists, an effort that Harkey, who was appointed by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, expanded.

Esther Grisham Grimm, executive director of the nonprofit arts organization 3Arts, said it “feels like the rug got pulled out from under us, just as we were gaining momentum.”

Via WBEZ

Galerie F Closing After More Than A Decade Of Championing Chicago Street Artists

Galerie F is closing after more than a decade in Chicago.

The popular street art gallery at 211 W. 23rd St. announced its closure on social media Tuesday night, along with a massive sale of 75 percent off everything online and in store.

The shop will be open noon-6 p.m. Saturday for its closing sale, and possibly Sunday, according to the gallery’s Instagram.

“With much painful consideration, we’ve decided to pull the plug on this bugger,” owner Billy Craven wrote. “Choppin’ it up with y’all while you checked out the shows or flipped thru the bins … that’s been saved to our grey matter. Forever!”

Via Block Club

State Street skyscrapers hit top ranking on list of most endangered Chicago buildings

Two early 20th century skyscrapers on State Street lead off an advocacy group’s 2024 list of notable properties that could face demolition.

The pair of buildings continues Preservation Chicago’s fight with the federal government, which wants to demolish the towers it owns at 202 and 220 S. State. The terra cotta clad sentries from another era have made the organization’s list in four prior years.

But the rest of the group's annual “Chicago 7” list of buildings it deems most endangered is devoted to newcomers as preservation priorities, sites that testify to different parts of the city’s history. They have added beauty or style to the streetscape, but some are vacant and could be lost.

Via Chicago Sun-Times

The Stan Culture for Stanley Quenchers Has Some Pretty Cringey Parallels With the Art World

Like many of you, Stanley Quenchers blipped onto my radar sometime in December. My friend in New York called as she was chasing around Brooklyn in a panic, trying to land one of these mugs for her 9-year-old daughter. Then the TikTok videos arrived into my feed, bodies racing past one another to grab mugs in deep magenta at a single shelf in a fluorescent-lit store.

Via Artnet