Each year, the Arts & Entertainment staff chooses individuals in the arts who have made significant contributions to their community in the last 12 months.
The end of the century brings our 15th annual selection, and we’ve chosen artists in music, theater, dance, architecture, the visual arts, film and radio.
These individuals have been recognized for advancing not only their careers but the fields in which they work:
RACHEL BARTON: GIFTED AND GIVING
Barton’s historic $29.6 million award last March as a result of the 1995 train accident that cost her a leg was one of the year’s top news stories, bringing her front-page headlines and a blizzard of media coverage. The gifted young Chicago violinist said after the jury’s verdict in her personal-injury suit against Metra and the former Chicago & North Western railroad that she was relieved to be able to devote herself to her music and “live my life the best way I can.”
But 1999 would have been a remarkable year for the 24-year-old Barton even if she hadn’t been the subject of so much extra-musical attention.
Six days after her courtroom victory, she was performing a challenging modern violin concerto with the Chicago Sinfonietta. Three weeks after that, she played Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons” with the Chicago Baroque Ensemble. She presented Paganini’s fiendishly difficult 24 Caprices and J.S. Bach’s Solo Sonatas and Partitas in live concerts broadcast by WFMT-FM 98.7. She launched a concert series in Elmhurst and took on solo engagements throughout the land. And she released another recording on Chicago’s Cedille label, an album of 20th Century violin and cello duos with her close friend and colleague, Wendy Warner. Her energy, her productivity, were staggering.
Through it all, Barton found time to give back to the city something of the faith and good will many Chicagoans showed her during the long and emotionally taxing trial. She began working with the Archdiocese of Chicago’s Big Shoulders Foundation to bring classical music — especially works by black composers — to inner-city school children.
“I think that (faith) has helped to keep me grounded,” she told the Tribune after the settlement. “It has taught me that being on stage is not for my own glory but . . . that music is a gift, and it’s my responsibility to share that gift with others and help them enjoy the music I love.”
— John von Rhein
VALERIE CASSEL: CREATIVE CURATOR
This year may well have been Cassel’s most creative — but it won’t be just because she served as one of six outside curators for the Whitney Biennial Exhibition, slated to open in New York in late March. Since arriving in Chicago in 1996 after a seven-year stint at the National Endowment for the Arts, Cassel has been quietly but assuredly providing innovation as director of the Visiting Artists Program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Designed as a way to supplement the school’s inventive arts curriculum by highlighting current trends, the Visiting Artists program always has been the entry point for contemporary artists into SAIC. But under Cassel, who was brought to SAIC by dean Carol Becker, the program has been reorganized less around artists than around themes, from the seemingly traditional concept of portraiture to the more cutting edge notion of art and activism. Under Cassel, SAIC students–and the public, since the program is open to everyone–have had the opportunity to see a remarkably fresh parade of mostly young and emerging artists present their ideas. Among her invited speakers: Carmelita Tropicana, Orlan, Jaap Blonk, Trihn T. Minh-ha, Yvonne Rainer, Kate Bornstein, Anthony Fields and Dan Sadin.
This fall, Cassel created two dramatically different series: “Into Space: Digital Technology and Contemporary Practice,” specifically focusing on art making, and “Cry of My Birth,” a residency and lecture program on the next generation of African artists. All the while, Cassel was traveling all over the U.S., visiting artists studios for the Whitney selection.
More Top Picks Best Large Print E Readers For Elderly
For spring, her Whitney experience will play out at SAIC with still two more series: “The Museum of the 21st Century,” featuring the likes of Peter Wollen and Zaha Hadid, and “Contemporary Cinema: Selections from the Whitney Biennial 2000,” which will include work by Shirin Neshat and Yvonne Welbon.
— Achy Obejas
WILLIAM EDDINS: FAST TRACK
He’s young, versatile and arguably the most gifted of a handful of African-American conductors who have achieved prominence in the United States over the last decade. Eddins’ fast-track career seemed to accelerate this year after he was promoted from associate conductor to resident conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra — the first conductor to hold that title in the orchestra’s 108-year history. The promotion recognized that the Buffalo-born conductor, 34, has grown considerably as a musician in his four seasons as one of the CSO’s house conductors and it signaled a broadening of his duties with the orchestra, its chamber music series and its education and community outreach programs.
Since assuming his new position in February, Eddins didn’t waste any time. A few weeks later, he conducted the world premiere of a CSO commission, Olly Wilson’s “Hold On,” in concerts at Symphony Center and Christ Universal Temple on the city’s South Side. In June, he led the Civic Orchestra here in a program of 20th Century American works — his specialty — as part of the American Symphony Orchestra League’s national conference. In addition to sharing podium duties with Pinchas Zukerman on the CSO’s opening night, Eddins is leading the orchestra in two subscription weeks this season and also has a return engagement with the Civic. The only trouble is that all this conducting leaves him little time to play solo piano, another musical pursuit at which he excels.
Be that as it may, Eddins is now well positioned to make a lasting mark on the musical life of the city in years to come.
— John von Rhein
BARBARA GAINES, CRISS HENDERSON: BARD AMBITION
Through a combination of talent, ambition, imagination and shrewd marketing moxie, Gaines, Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s artistic director, and Henderson, executive director, moved their organization from a small, up-and-coming troupe into a major performing arts player. That was accomplished with the opening of a new $23.2 million playhouse this autumn on Navy Pier — celebrated as a local, national and international event in theater.
In one year, Shakespeare Repertory Theater changed its name to Chicago Shakespeare Theater, moved from its old Ruth Page Theater space to Navy Pier, boosted its annual budget from $2.9 million to $5 million, increased its subscription rolls from 7,000 to 17,000 and sold out all 74 performances of its inaugural production on the Pier, Gaines’ staging of “Antony and Cleopatra.” Their next production, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” opening in late January, already has the largest advance sale in the theater’s 14-year history.
“Amazing” is a word Gaines and Henderson use a lot this year. And they’re right. What they accomplished in 1999 is amazing.
— Richard Christiansen
REBECCA GILMAN: PROMISING PLAYWRIGHT
At least 7 minutes of the 1999 performing arts calendar in Chicago belonged solely and memorably to this rising young playwright. In the second act of her play “Spinning Into Butter,” produced in the Goodman Theatre Studio, the heroine, a dean of students at a small college, unspools an astounding monologue in which she confesses to a rampant case of suppressed racism, despite all her good white liberal intentions.
This was but one extraordinary passage of Gilman’s play, which was but one of the highlights of her miraculous year. The London production of her 1996 work, “The Glory of Living,” won her the Evening Standard award as most promising playwright. Her latest drama, “Crime of the Century,” had a hit engagement at Circle Theatre in Forest Park. Her short piece, “Speech Therapy,” a telephone dialogue, was presented last spring as part of the New American Plays Festival of Actors Theatre of Louisville. Her new play, “Boy Gets Girl,” about a woman stalked by a former date, is set for the Goodman mainstage next year. And “Spinning Into Butter,” which received the 1999 Joseph Jefferson Award for best new work staged in Chicago, is set for its New York debut next summer in the Mitzi Newhouse Theatre of Lincoln Center.
Now 35, Gilman, a native of Alabama, came to Chicago in 1994 and earned her living through various day jobs: educational tester, box-office manager, secretary. All that’s over now. “Thank goodness,” Gilman says. She’s on her way.
— Richard Christiansen
IRA GLASS: ANTIDOTE ON THE RADIO
He has help, and lots of it, from his overworked corps of producers and the many independent writers and reporters whose pieces delight, astound and challenge listeners each week. But it is fair to say that “This American Life,” the gem of a public-radio show produced out of WBEZ-FM in Chicago, represents, above all, the sensibility of Glass.
The show’s carefully casual host, Lakeview resident Glass, 40, is also the man who, after years of editing, producing and reporting for National Public Radio news programs, had developed a vision of what radio can and ought to be and came up with “This American Life.” Many people, of course, have visions of a better way; Glass had the talent and work ethic to make “TAL” into a sensation in public-radio.
Blending fiction, reportage, interviews and music, and studiously avoiding “the news,” the show’s most important contribution, many would argue, is as an antidote to celebrity journalism, a reminder that in real lives there is the stuff of real illumination.
First offered for national consumption in 1996, “TAL” boosted its distribution by another 70 or so stations during 1999, to the current 368. And its first compilation disc, “Lies, Sissies and Fiascoes: The Best of `This American Life,’ ” was released in May on Rhino Records. But start with the show itself, Saturdays at 1 p.m., repeated Sundays at 5 p.m., on WBEZ-FM 91.5.
— Steve Johnson
THEODORE HALKIN: INDIVIDUALIST
Native Chicagoan Halkin began exhibiting a half century ago in 1999, and the diversity of his career was celebrated with three exhibitions: a retrospective that began a tour of Illinois museums (at the Illinois Center Gallery, continuing through Jan. 7), a show of works on paper (at Printworks, through December), and recent paintings (at Jan Cicero, through Jan. 7).
Robert Sill, project coordinator of the retrospective, admitted the accomplishment of Halkin’s work came as a surprise, as it would to anyone — meaning most viewers — who would be familiar mainly with the European-influenced paintings and reliefs of Halkin’s early “Monster Roster” phase.
Since then, the artist has grown from fantast to realist to abstractionist in his paintings and has produced some of the most intimate sculpture of any Chicago artist. Moreover, he also has been a beloved teacher, imparting to students some of the individualism that kept him following his own wayward path in Chicago when others seemed to gain direction only from New York.
Now, at 74, with his eyesight seriously impaired, Halkin continues to paint, arguably producing the most personal work of his distinguished career.
— Alan Artner
T. GUNNY HARBOE, JOSEPH ANTUNOVICH: RESTORATION
Chicago has a shameful self-destructive streak, having demolished such architectural masterpieces as Adler & Sullivan’s Chicago Stock Exchange. So that made this year’s triumphant restoration of the turn-of-the-century Reliance Building at 32 N. State St. all the sweeter. Renowned for the big-windowed, white terra-cotta facade that anticipated the steel-and-glass high rises of midcentury modernism, the Reliance was painstakingly converted to a 122-room luxury hotel. At the same time, the building was renamed the Hotel Burnham in honor of architect Daniel Burnham, whose firm designed it.
The final leg of a six-year effort that cost more than $30 million in public and private funds, the project had two leaders: restoration architect T. Gunny Harboe of McClier and the architect of record, Joseph Antunovich of Antunovich Associates. Harboe, in particular, has emerged as a leader in the movement to make the past a part of the future, having carried out the award-winning 1992 restoration of another key building in which Burnham had a hand — the Rookery, with its astonishing light court, at 209 S. LaSalle St.
— Blair Kamin
ROBERT HEINECKEN: MASTER OF CHANCE
When Heinecken saw the 35 years of work assembled in his largest retrospective exhibition to date — at the Museum of Contemporary Art — he said it looked like a first-rate group show, which pleased him immensely. This was fitting for an artist who long had been known as a photographer but rarely used a camera, preferring to work with existing materials — magazines, advertisements, television images — in an experimental and comically subversive way that characterized artists associated with the World War I movement known as Dada.
Chance has been crucial to Heinecken’s output; food, sex and TV culture have been its abiding themes. Along the way he has pioneered all sorts of unconventional means of using and displaying images, beginning with wrapping them around three-dimensional supports to make “photo sculptures” in the 1960s.
For decades Heinecken moved back and forth between Los Angeles and Chicago. A few years ago, he settled here permanently. Few contemporary artists anywhere have careers as playful, unpredictable and fertile. In 1999, Chicago decided to celebrate it.
— Alan G. Artner
HARRISON MCELDOWNEY: LEADING DANCEMAKER
Since the choreographer moved here in 1989, first as a dancer, McEldowney has been building a growing reputation as an extremely bright dancemaker of keen wit and sharp moves. At an accelerating pace, his work has been seen at Marriott’s Lincolnshire Theatre, River North Dance Company, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Civic Ballet of Chicago, Light Opera Works and Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
This year, a lot of things came together for him. His “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off” and brand-new “Group Therapy” entered Hubbard Street’s repertory; he created “Dance Sport,” a breezy, funny new piece for the Hubbard Street Trainee Ensemble; he choreographed The Milly, the city’s official millennium dance, and he and Hubbard Street were recipients of the first annual $75,000 Prince Charitable Trusts’ Prize for Commissioning Original Works for his new ballet, “The Lottery,” due to have its first performances here next spring.
More Top Picks Best Macbooks
Well organized and broadly based, McEldowney also choreographed the dances for Carnegie Hall’s celebration of “125 Years of Musical Theater” in New York. It was a big deal for him, but one for which, he said, “I felt nothing, because I wasn’t working with the people and the community and the family of friends I have found in Chicago.”
— Richard Christiansen
SUE MILLER AND JULIA ADAMS: NURTURING THE MUSIC
The impending shutdown of Lounge Ax, Ground Zero for independent rock on Lincoln Avenue, is an especially cruel blow to this city’s cultural life. So in a sense, it’s a little late to be honoring Miller and Adams for providing a forum not just for great music — Mudhoney, the Jesus Lizard, Yo La Tengo, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Effigies, Shellac, Liz Phair, Neutral Milk Hotel — but for a sense of values that is slowly disappearing from the corporate-rock world.
Miller and Adams were not only pioneers because of what they did — the only women running a city rock club — but how they did it: with a sense of ethics and a commitment to the music that exemplified the post-punk do-it-yourself and do-it-right ideal. It’s little wonder that bands across the country rallied to the club’s support in recent years to raise tens of thousands of dollars to help keep it open.
Lounge Ax will close in mid-January because of economic realities; the club’s bohemian atmosphere, clientele and prices no longer fit with its increasingly gentrified neighborhood. The parking was lousy and the tiny space could get claustrophobic on a big night. But the manner in which Adams and Miller did business, the way they nurtured the music and the bands, can’t be replaced. Here’s hoping they’ll find a new home soon, but even if they don’t, their decade-plus on Lincoln Avenue has set a standard for how rock can foster a community.
— Greg Kot
MICHAEL ORLOVE: WORLD MUSIC
One of the most significant developments in Chicago music during 1999 was the emergence of the World Music Festival, and no one played a greater role in conceiving and launching the event than Orlove. As a programmer in the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs, Orlove successfully sold the idea to his higher-ups, including cultural czar Lois Weisberg. In addition, Orlove shrewdly brought various Chicago arts institutions into the process of planning and staging the festival, which included concerts at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Field Museum of Natural History, Old Town School of Folk Music and HotHouse.
The result was an event far more creatively programmed and professionally staged than the tired Jazz, Blues and Gospel Festivals in Grant Park. Orlove and friends imported musicians from Europe, Africa, India and beyond, and Chicagoans heard them in acoustically superb concert halls and clubs. This breakthrough in festival planning points the way for a long-overdue retooling of Chicago’s other music festivals.
— Howard Reich
BARBARA SCHARRES AND ALISSA SIMON: NEW BEGINNINGS IN FILM
Since 1973, The Film Center of the School of the Art Institute has brought one of this city’s most outstanding alternative film programs to its auditorium in the back of the Art Institute, at Columbus and Jackson. And since 1988, the two people most responsible for all those movies have been Film Center director Scharres and associate director (for programming) Simon.
A nonpareil team, the two have picked superb and eclectic programs that involve hundreds of films, special festivals (notably of Hong Kong, Iranian and African-American cinema), and many in-person filmmaker appearance and panels. The selections represent the cream of Chicago’s alternative film booking, a cornucopia of foreign language films, American independents and art and Hollywood classics, all shown in excellent 35 mm facilities. This year, the Film Center treated movie buffs to comprehensive retrospectives of France’s Robert Bresson, Egypt’s Youssef Chahine and Hollywood’s Howard Hawks, along with its usual large crop of ongoing festivals of new films and the longtime series co-sponsored with the Jewish Film Project.
But 1999 marked an important year of transition. Simon — a graduate of the film, broadcasting and arts administration programs at Yale, Iowa and Wisconsin — left the Film Center in November to move to London and a new career as a free-lance film programmer. And Scharres — a graduate of St. Xavier and the School of the Art Institute, who has been involved with the Film Center for the last 24 years — began preparing to move the Film Center next October to its new home in the theater district on State and Randolph. There, Scharres and the Center will double their programming, with two theaters and a concession stand to boot. For the Film Center and its two ace programmers, 1999 capped an old era and pointed toward a splendid new one.
— Michael Wilmington
LOIS WEISBERG: CITY ART
It was a banner year for the work of Weisberg, commissioner of cultural affairs for the City of Chicago, with Cows on Parade leading the pack of high-concept, high-profile, highly popular projects that her department introduced to the city.
A confessed borrower and absorber of good ideas from other sources, Weisberg recognized it as a great idea for Chicago. (She now owns a fake cow’s skin coat, in black and white.)
It was Weisberg’s own idea, however, to create a special people’s dance for the millennium celebration. Thus was born The Milly, a key part of the millennium attractions she and her coworkers have devised for the new year’s festivities. Complete with lyrics (“Walk, walk John Hancock/Back, back, Jordan attack”), the dance has yet to catch on as a mass movement, but, as a public relations move, it is brilliant.
Add to that this year’s innovative World Music Festival, also sponsored by her department, and you have old pro Weisberg. Chicago’s cultural commissioner since 1989, at the top of her form, mixing high art with pop savvy.
— Richard Christiansen