Blair Kamin – Page 36

Nick Cave has been singing about mortality for decades, and he's really good at it. Whether the narratives are biblical or pulpy, the victims innocents or death row convicts, the circumstances comprehensible or cruelly random, Cave's songs are on intimate terms with the infinite ways a life can be extinguished. And yet, "Skeleton Tree", his latest album with his estimable band, the Bad Seeds, is a relatively concise song cycle shadowed by death that feels different than all the rest. <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/kot/sc-music-nick-cave-skeleton-tree-ent-0916-20160916-column.html" target="_blank">Read the full review.</a>

Could you build this? New ideas for Tribune Tower once again surprise, delight and provoke

May 11, 2019 at 6:22 a.m.

A new design contest for Chicago's Tribune Tower? As they say in Iowa, hasn't that field been plowed? The impact of the original 1922 competition for the newspaper's Michigan Avenue...

Flexible, intimate and innovative, The Yard at Chicago Shakespeare has its opening night

December 17, 2018 at 4:47 p.m.

Like a pimply adolescent morphing into clear-skinned maturity, Navy Pier is slowly transforming itself from a hyper-commercialized shopping mall-by-the-lake into an appealing public space. The latest step turns the visually-awkward...

"(Not) Another Tower," Tatiana Bilbao Estudio, Mexico City, Mexico. Part of the Chicago Architecture Biennial located in the Chicago Cultural Center, September 19, 2017.

2nd architecture biennial shines light on present by looking at the past

May 11, 2019 at 6:22 a.m.

The Chicago Architecture Biennial no longer can be accused of indulging in the city's long tradition of windy braggadocio. When the big contemporary architecture and urban design exhibition opens this...

A model of the Inland Steel Building, center, in the Workspace section of the "Past Forward: Architecture and Design" exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, shown Sept. 13, 2017.

Ideas connect in Art Institute’s ‘Past Forward’ design exhibit

December 17, 2018 at 4:48 p.m.

There are old favorites, like Daniel Burnham's sweeping vision for Chicago. And there are unexpected gems, like the glossy prefab kitchen and bathroom units of a French architect intent on...

Chicago designers announced for 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale

December 17, 2018 at 4:48 p.m.

The Chicago-based curators for the U.S. Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale on Tuesday announced designers who will create material for the exhibition, including some from Chicago. The Chicago...

A new residential building, Exhibit on Superior at 165 W. Superior St., features a restaurant and plaza Aug. 27, 2017, where a Howard Johnson's motel once stood in River North.

The growth of Chicago’s Super Loop: So much building, so little architecture

May 11, 2019 at 6:22 a.m.

A flock of construction cranes fills the sky. Downtown's population is soaring. The skyline is changing and so is the texture of city life. A generation ago, West Madison Street...

Chicago Architecture Foundation gets a new home

December 17, 2018 at 4:49 p.m.

The Chicago Architecture Foundation, best known for its architecture tours that ply the Chicago River, plans to move to new and larger quarters next year — a riverfront office building...

MCA’s sensitive $16M renovation reflects how audiences interact with art, and each other

December 17, 2018 at 4:49 p.m.

There are two ways to freshen an old museum: With a sledgehammer or a scalpel. The sledgehammer approach imposes the will of the renovation architect on the original design. It...

Architecture for fall 2017: Biennial casts the biggest shadow, but there’s also the Apple store

December 17, 2018 at 4:50 p.m.

It's an architecture biennial year, so get ready for an explosion of provocative exhibits and new buildings that are the byproduct of Chicago's construction boom. The main event, the second...

Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee are the minds behind biennial and MCA redesign

December 17, 2018 at 4:50 p.m.

As artistic directors of the Chicago Architecture Biennial and chief architects of the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago's interior redesign, both opening in September, Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee are...

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