Midwinter mystery: How did a Pitchfork rock fest end up in the Art Institute?
These are just a few of the ways the upcoming Midwinter will be different from popular music festivals you may be used to: There will be no forced mass retreats...
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Burst pipe after cold wave closes Chicago History Museum exhibit
Visitors to Chicago History Museum will find the museum’s “Modern by Design: Chicago Streamlines America” exhibition temporarily closed for the foreseeable future. The reason? A visitor to the gallery on...
Late-night comics follow Trump’s State of the Union speech, live and exasperated
The big question, as President Trump’s State of the Union speech moved toward epic length Tuesday night, was whether the late-night shows that chose to go live to mark the...
2019 Super Bowl commercials ranked: Watch them all here
This year’s advertising Super Bowl had, again, lots of celebrities and lots of dogs. It also had many ads featuring dogs, amirite? The recent trend toward sincerity continued with spots...
2019 Super Bowl commercials: 5 best and 5 worst
Dozens entered the arena. They came bearing double entendre and slow-motion shots of the American flag. They came with horses, with dogs, with robots galore. They paid famous people to...
The 5 greatest Super Bowl commercials of modern times
It’s been more than two decades that I’ve been reviewing Super Bowl commercials for the baiduhai, I was a little surprised to realize the other day. That’s a whole...
Behind the scenes at Brookfield Zoo, Bob Lacy became famous worldwide using software to help save species
Bob Lacy has visited the realms of polar bears in Norway’s arctic circle, killer whales in Seattle’s Puget Sound and flightless takahe birds in New Zealand. The Brookfield Zoo conservation...
Underground Railroad sites exposed through lens of Chicago photographer Dawoud Bey in haunting new Art Institute exhibit
The photograph shown (Untitled #1 Picket Fence and Farmhouse) from “Night Coming Tenderly, Black,” Dawoud Bey’s new exhibition at the Art Institute, doesn’t look like this in the Modern Wing...
The richest man ever was not named Gates or Bezos; he was king of Mali in the Middle Ages
This is what the king Mansa Musa brought with him on his trans-Saharan pilgrimage from Mali to Mecca: “8,000 courtiers, 12,000 slaves and 100 camels each carrying up to 300...
‘Chicago 1919: Confronting the Race Riots’ looks to bring city to terms with a chilling summer 100 years ago
One hundred years ago this summer, a black teen on a raft crossed an imaginary line into a “white” section of a Lake Michigan beach, was stoned by white bathers...