Last Chance to see Modernism's Messengers: Alfonso and Margaret Iannelli (complete with curator tour) , plus new Alfonso Iannelli monograph

Update [Tuesday, August 6, 5:05 p.m.):  It appears there has been a leak at the Block Museum.   All art work is being moved to a safe location.  Designing the Future has closed prematurely, and Saturday's event with David Van Zanten has had to be cancelled.


Still adding great stuff to the August Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

click images for larger view

Two essential exhibitions are entering their final days, and AIA Chicago is marking their imminent closing with two rare curator tours.  This Thursday, August 8th, Tim Samuelson will be leading a curator's tour of Modernism's Messengers: The Art of Alfonso and Margaret Iannelli, which closes Saturday, August 17th.  As we've written before, it's a don't miss overview on the often troubled lives and far-too-little known - until now - work of two important Chicago artists.

2013 is becoming the year of the Iannellis' rediscovery.  Late on Thursday the 8th, at the Cliff

Dwellers, there will be a book signing of the just published Alfonso Iannelli: Modern by Design, by David Jameson with an introduction by Tim Samuelson.  We hope to be writing soon about this marvelous, lavishly illustrated (350+ color plates), but Snap upyour copy now - I'm hearing the first printing is selling briskly.

There's an even shorter window to see another great show, at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum on Northwestern University's Evanston campus.  Drawing the Future: Chicago Architecture on the International Stage, 1900-1925, runs only through this Sunday, August 11th.

It's an arresting overview of the work of Marion Mahony, Tony Garnier and others. (Including one of those illustrations by Jules Guerin that launched Daniel Burnham's 1909 Plan of Chicago into the public imagination, where it has endured ever since.  Seen a rare opportunity to see it at its original scale, which gives a much bolder impression than the version folded into the book.)


This Saturday the 10th, AIA Chicago has also arranged for Drawing the Future curator David Van Zanten to give a gallery talk of his show, which is a great way to wrap up the run.

And while we don't cover architectural tours - there's just too many of them - on Sunday the 18th, the is mounting a South Side Jewish Chicago tour with Herb Eiseman and architect/preservationist Carey Wintergreen, starting in 1847's State Street, site of the Midwest's first synagogue, and heading down to Hyde Park and South Shore.  $40.00 for members, $45.00 non-members. Information here.
Chicago Jewish Historical Society

Even in the middle of summer, this next week is jammed-pack, with a screening of The Pruitt-Igoe Myth at the Graham on Wednesday the 7th, and the Japanese film Termae Romae at the Cultural Center Thursday and again on Saturday the 10th, the same day there's a panel discussion of Design Education at the Institute of Design at the Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art, and Ilianna Kwaske talking about Behind Closed Doors: The Psychology of Our Domestic Spaces at MCA.

Also on Thursday the 8th, David Bagnall will talk about From Artistic to the Prairie Home: Domestic Interiors of Chicago's Gilded Age, at Fourth Presbyterian's Gratz Center.

We've also added a number of events tied in with the Cultural Center's show Spontaneous Interviews.  Add it all up and there's now nearly three dozen great items still to check out on the August Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

.

New Geographies 5, Shirley King for CAF, new items for logjam week on the April Calendar!

Yep, still adding items to the April Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

This Thursday, April 18th, the publication of New Geographies 5 - The Mediterranean: Worlds, Cities, Regions and Architectures will be marked with a panel discussion at the Graham with editor Antonio Petrov, architect Clare Lyster, Sean Keller of IIT, Hashim Sarkis of Harvard and Stephen J. Ramos of the U of GA.

It's one of those logjam evenings that will also include 99% Invisible's Roman Mars at Unity Temple, Erin Feher on The Architectural Rise of San Francisco at the Driehaus, and Paul Stoller of Atelier Ten at AIA/Chicago.

We've also learned that this Friday's Chicago Architecture Foundation Gala, Architecture is Art, at the Radisson Blue at Aqua, will feature, in addition to dinner, dancing and an auction, a performance from Shirley King, who will perform with the Blue Road Band.  About the same time, Preservation Chicago will be hosting it's own Spring fundraiser at the Union League with live music, an auction, and a presentation by Lost Chicago author David Lowe.

As if that's not enough, there's also the final days of the American Planning Association's 2013 National Planning Conference, an AIA/Chicago panel on the Chicago Infrastructure Trust, Michael Webb of Cooper Union at UIC, the principals of Project Projects at the Art Institute, UrbanWorks' Patricia Natke talking about Pilsen at CAF lunchtime on Wednesday.  

Hashim Sarkis returns for a lecture, The World According to Architecture at Wishnick Hall, IIT , a Landmarks Illinois presentation on the restoration of Hairpin Lofts at the Chicago Cultural Center and a DePaul University Real Estate Center symposium on Chicago's New Eastside.

Next Saturday the 20th sees a symposium at Evanston's Block Museum, The Modern Capital: City, Utopica, or Spectacle?, on the occasion of the opening of its new exhibition, Drawing the Future: Chicago Architecture on the International Stage, 1900-1925.

And believe it or not, that's not all, not by a long shot.  Check out all the great items and get the who/what/where's on the April Calendar of Chicago Architectural Events.

Tonight at IIT: Jiang Jun, Reading Urban China in Five Dimensions, plus Louis Sullivan back at the Cliff Dwellers

Tonight, October 27th at 6:00, the IIT College of Architecture is sponsoring a talk, Reading Urban China in Five Dimensions, in Crown Hall, 3360 S. State by Jiang Jun, editor-in-chief of Urban China Magazine, which was been described as "An Encyclopedia of Chinese Cities in a Time of Junk"  The magazine is currently the focus of the exhibition Urban China: Information Cities at Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art through April 3rd,  organized by NewYork's New Museum, where it was on display last winter.  According to the MCA . . .

For the past six years, Urban China has been engaged in a unique multidisciplinary inquiry into the rapid state of change in China, presented in the format of a magazine -- the only one devoted to issues of urbanism published in and about China. With offices in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, and a network of correspondents and collaborators around the world who work under the guidance of its visionary Editor-in-Chief, Jiang Jun, its photographs, texts, and diagrams, as well as a growing archive of artifacts and images have become a repository of knowledge about the fastest process of urbanization ever recorded in human history.

The lecture is free and open to the public.  Information 312/567.3312 or on-line.

Louis Sullivan returns to the Cliff Dwellers

Tomorrow, October 28th, there'll be a showing of the new documentary, Louis Sullivan: the Struggle for American Architecture, as the kick-off event for the Block Museum's The American Architect in Focus film series.  The screening will be at 7:00 p.m., tickets are $7.00 and will be on sale 30 minutues before showtime at the museum 40 Arts Circle Drive, Northwestern University in Evanston.

And if you move quickly you may still be able to get one of the last remaining tickets for a unique showing of the documentary at the Cliff Dwellers, the artist's club where Sullivan was a regular and where at the end of his life he wrote The Autobiography of an Idea.  A few years ago, the Cliff Dwellers was forced out of its original location atop Orchestra Hall, but it's now right next door, at the crest of the Borg Warner Building at 200 S. Michigan.  Tickets are $20.00 at the door.

Both screenings are scheduled to be followed by Question and Answer sessions with the documentary's director, Mark Smith, and its composer, Michael T. McLean.

Information on-line.

Sullivan at the Block, Design Evanston Awards, Music's sway over Frank Lloyd Wright, Traditional Building Exhibition and Conference - still MORE great October events

As if 50+ events weren't enough, we've just added another half dozen to the October Calendar of Architectural Events.   Saturday, October 2nd, the Pleasant Home Foundation will offer up A Tour of Oak Parks Arts & Crafts Interiors in Oak Park.  On Wednesday the 6th, the Häfele America Chicago showroom will offer  Digital Solutions: Locker Management (yes, even getting shut up in your own locker by the school bully has now gone digital.)

On Thursday the 7th, musicologist David Patterson will talk about The Five Influences: Music and Mr. Wright's Architecture at Frank Lloyd Wrights Unity Temple in Oak Park.  On Thursday, the 14th, Design Evanston will offering up their 2010 Awards, while from Wednesday the 20th through Saturday 23rd, the Traditional Building Exhibition and Conference will convene at Navy Pier with dozens of panels, workshops, seminars and tours.  Access to the exhibition hall is free with registration.

And on Thursday, October 28th, there will be another screening of Mark Richard Smith's new documentary, Louis Sullivan: The Struggle for American Architecture at the Block Museum in Evanston, part of the Block's film series, The American Architect in Focus, that will continue into November.

The October Calendar is now at 60 great events and counting. Check them all out here.