Vibrant Continuation
A look back at 2022 and what’s in store for 2023.
QUICK LINKS
Recently at the Green Line Performing Arts Center (GLPAC), one artist embraced another artist’s practice as a “vibrant continuation of a beautiful process,” acknowledging both the brilliance of an exceptional contemporary artist and the long history of Black and Brown cultural excellence.
The phrase “vibrant continuation” resonates as a remarkably apt description of APL in 2022 - a year of recalibration and fresh starts, launching new relationships and welcoming friends back to the Arts Block, while deepening and expanding our commitments to centering people of color, acting with intentionality and neighborliness, co-creation, building access and breaking ground, and supporting artists as catalysts of change.
Adrienne Brown, Arts + Public Life Faculty Director
For Arts + Public Life (APL), the “beautiful process” continued in 2022 as a series of re-connections and inaugurations, including my appointment as the Director, as we welcomed colleagues, partners, alums, keyholders, and audience members back to the Arts Block. And it continues accelerating, presenting, and preserving wide forms of artistic expression.
We hope you had a chance to participate in the process with us in ‘22, and to connect with your own favorite moments on the Arts Block —perhaps by attending one of our long-running series such as yoga or First Monday Jazz, catching up with alums of our Artists in Residence program during their summer retrospective, returning to your in-person after school program, or convening with the South Side Home Movie Project to re-see Chicago through the eyes of past filmmakers.
We also hope you were able to discover new loves at Arts + Public Life, like shopping at the L1 Creative Business Accelerator + Retail Shop, seeing work by our new cohort of performance residents, or popping into the Arts Incubator Gallery to discover your new favorite artist.
As we reflect upon the year to mark moments of return and reinvention, creation and extension, we celebrate the commitment to “vibrant continuation” that characterizes Arts + Public Life’s offerings, old and new, anchored in the care-filled and careful work of relationship-building. We look forward to the ongoing reverberation of our work and the work of our partners into the New Year and beyond.
-Adrienne Brown, Arts + Public Life Faculty Director
Introducing Sheridan Tucker Anderson
In August, APL welcomed Sheridan Tucker Anderson as the new Associate Director of Exhibitions + Residencies. A Chicago based independent curator, art historian, and arts advocate, Anderson has been awarded several fellowships and residencies including the inaugural Andrew W. Mellon Curatorial Fellowship at the Art Institute of Chicago, the inaugural Curatorial Fellowship at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, the University of Chicago Masters of Art African Studies Fellowship, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Curatorial Fellowship, and the Chicago Artists Coalition HATCH Projects Curatorial Residency.
Sheridan Tucker Anderson, Associate Director of Exhibitions + Residencies
2022 APL/CSRPC Artists-in-Residence
Celebrating a Decade of Sensational Artists
2022 marked a decade of impact for Arts + Public Life’s flagship Artists in Residence (AIR) program in collaboration with the Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture (CSRPC) — 32 artists, 10 exhibitions, and thousands of connections. We were honored to welcome our family of AIRs alumni back for our summer retrospective exhibition, All That Light.
The ten year anniversary offered an important opportunity for us to pause and evaluate the aspects of the program that have made it so successful, and to dream up ways to make it even better. After conferring with our alumni, past jury members, staff and neighbors, APL is delighted to share that in October we re-launched the AIRs program in its new and improved format! Stay tuned for announcements in January about our 2023 Cohort.
Performance Residency: A Plentiful Pilot Year
In June, APL relaunched the Performance Residency at the Green Line Performing Arts Center. Nine resident artists and creative ensembles packed our calendar (and our seats) with an eclectic range of work including jazz, footwork style dance, stand-up comedy, audio projects, and film - head here to see the full line up. A few Performance Residency highlights:
My Best Friend Is Black, an ensemble of seven hilarious Black comedians who had produced a slew of shows throughout Chicago expanded their popular series to Washington Park as Performance Residents, quickly becoming an audience favorite by showcasing Chicago’s up and coming Black comics and sketch artists. These seats sold out FAST! The group hosted their last show at the Green Line on Dec 16, but you can still catch them around the city.
Cam Be & Neak during their performance, “a film called black” at GLPAC
Since 1996, Kuumba Lynx has honed an arts making practice that presents, preserves and promotes Hip Hop as a tool to reimagine and demonstrate a more just world. In September, Performance Resident Chris “Mad Dog” Thompson and Kuumba Lynx produced a powerful and heartful double hitter: Footwork Through Trauma and Juke for Liberation. In Footwork Through Trauma the group examined the impact of environmental racism and called upon the ancestors as they imagined a place more loving with creative freedom fighters. Juke for Liberation brought the healing joy with a family-focused event, featuring an open dance cipher with live DJs, mural paintings, and back-to-school giveaways.
Performance Resident Kuumba Lynx brings the community together for their “Juke for Liberation”, their two-day event at GLPAC
Rose Blouin: To Washington Park With Love
Feb 11 - Mar 19, 2022
WP People 159 [detail], by Rose Blouin
In the summer of 1987, South Side photographer Rose Blouin visited Washington Park every weekend with her camera and her kids. Blouin initially set out to capture how important the eponymous park is to its surrounding neighborhood, but as she worked it became a study of how we interact with – or become a part of – our environment.
For more information about the show, the importance of parks on Chicago’s South Side, and a robust reading list on Washington Park’s history, visit us here.
Love the photos? Contact Rose Blouin directly at rblouin@colum.edu to purchase a print of your own!
Apr 8 - May 27, 2022
[Left to right] WallPAPER of Respect: The Gold Freedmen, by Shonna Pryor; Building Virtue: A Study, by Janelle Ayana Miller.
[Left to right] Still Life with Seven Gold Impressions and Still Life with Eight Gold Impressions, by LaKela Brown
Guest Curated by Ciera McKissick
Relic, inspired by the traveling billboard piece, There Are Black People in the Future by artist Alisha Wormsley, explored what cultural Black artifacts and emblems of today will be left behind to reflect our time here and inform the future. McKissick posed the question, “what will we find when we get there?” to explore what shapes future identities in the beyond. Artists Abigail Lucien, Janelle Ayana Miller, Kevin Demery, Lakela Brown, Rhonda Wheatley, and Shonna Pryor explore Black relics through documentation, intuition, collecting, spirituality, and the land through minerals and food.
Guest Curated by Tracie D. Hall
All That Light: A Ten-Year Retrospective of the Artists-in-Residence (AIR) Program (2012 - 2022) sought to survey the cumulative impact the program has had on the artists it has supported, the audiences it has convened, and the city it has engaged and depicted. Conceived a decade ago by artist Theaster Gates and jointly hosted by APL and the Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture (CSRPC), the AIR program has grown to become one of the art world’s most generative incubators of talent.
Logan Center view. Works listed left to right. If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home by Now, by Faheem Majeed; E.T., Elliot, and E.T. black by eliza myrie; Arere, by Arif Smith
Logan Center view. Works left to right. If You Lived Here, You’d Be Home by Now, by Faheem Majeed; E.T., Elliot, and E.T. black by eliza myrie; Arere, by Arif Smith; Flowers Bleed with me 1-3, by Victoria Martinez; Let It Alone Watch It Work and Minstrel Man, by Cecil McDonald, Jr.; She Who Destroys and The Perfect Servant #2, by Lola Ayisha Ogbara; Reflective Gesture, Stephen Flemister.
Oct 21 - Dec 16, 2022
SkyART, Weinberg/Newton Gallery, and APL presented Can You See Me?: FREEDOM SPACE, as part of a collaborative exhibition that explored the impact of incarceration on young people’s lives. Curated by Scheherazade Tillet, FREEDOM SPACE imagined a moment without confinement, violence, or oppression. Tillet considered what Black lives, especially those of Black girls and young women, would be like if our past social movements had been able to achieve their freedom dreams. What would it mean if Black people could move about freely – without the threat of elimination, incarceration, or historical erasure?
Curated by Devon VanHouten-Maldonado (Director of Programs, SkyART) and Kasia Houlihan (Director, Weinberg/Newton Gallery), with Curatorial Advisor Rikki Byrd, Can You See Me?: FREEDOM SPACE featured a selection of Tillet’s images as well as works from her personal collection, archival footage from the South Side Home Movie Project, and an imprint made by incarcerated youth in SkyART's Just-Us program.
Introducing Dei Nikoi
In May, Dei Nikoi joined Arts + Public Life as the new Community Arts Engagement and Programs Manager. A trained operatic soprano, cultural critic, and songwriter, Dei supports the APL ecosystem by developing sustainable partnerships with community artists and arts organizations, collaborating with UChicago-based arts partners, and working to ensure that community engagement permeates all aspects of APL.
Dei Nikoi, Community Arts Engagement and Programs Manager
In-Person Public Programs Return
The “public” of Arts + Public Life is you. This year, Arts + Public Life audiences enjoyed over 70 artist-led programs, bringing over 4,000 South Side neighbors, creatives, University students, faculty, staff, and other visitors from across the city back together for deeply rewarding, in-person events. A few highlights from our 2022 public program series on the Arts Block:
Emerging and experienced jazz artists like Cherise Scott, Emil Robinson, Tracy Baker, and Donica Lynn graced the Green Line Performing Arts Center stage for our signature First Monday Jazz series.
Music lovers rejoiced in the 2022 installment of Rearview Mirror Sessions. Led by musical historian and DJ Duane Powell, the series focused on the life and careers of four 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival performers. While talented performers closed out the sessions with live performances, it was the collective singing from the community audience that truly lit up the theater each night.
Laughter, tears, cheers, and comradery typifies a Grown Folks Stories experience. Since 2019 APL has partnered with The Silver Room to present Grown Folks Stories, a night of unscripted and unrehearsed community storytelling at the Green Line Performing Arts Center. The 2022 partnership ended with a farewell to the GFS host Whitney Capps, ushering in the hosting reign of local lyricist, comedian, and Chicago storyteller, Binkey Tolefree.
Evenings with Authors, a new series celebrating Chicago writers, debuted in July with a discussion of Energy Never Dies: Afro-Optimism and Creativity in Chicago, featuring APL-CSRPC Artists-in-Residence alum Ayana Contreras. And in October, audiences gathered to honor Pemon Rami and unpack his memoir, When Blackness Was Golden!: Observations from the Front Line.
Donica Lynn dazzles in First Monday Jazz performance at GLPAC
Re-Airing Rear View Mirror Sessions with Duane Powell: Bill Withers
Keyholders Reconvene and Reconnect
APL’s keyholders kept the Arts Incubator brimming with activity. Keyholders are values-aligned community groups who host meetings, workshops, and instructional public engagements enjoying no-cost access to APL managed facilities. Here’s what they were up to in 2022:
The talented members of Committed Knitters hosted their bi-weekly gatherings on Wednesdays at APL’s Arts Incubator Flex Space in Washington Park. Always a lively bunch, 20-30 knitters assembled to create unique accessories, showcase quilts, celebrate birthdays, and uplift each other through friendship. 2022 highlights include the group’s summer yarn crawl, making baby hats and blankets for Hope 2 Others clothing drive, and a letter exchange with Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson!
After 2 years of faithfully teaching virtual yoga sessions to the Arts + Public Life community, yogi Latipha Rivers returned to the Arts Incubator for in person Community Yoga sessions. Under her gentle direction, a steady stream of new and experienced students came to the Incubator Friday and Saturday mornings to reconnect with their bodies and breath.
The Washington Park Camera Club community of local amateur photographers returned to the Arts Block this fall in preparation for launching new gatherings in 2023.
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson shares endearing exchange with APL Keyholders Committed Knitters
Welcome Back, Julia Hinojosa
Returning to Arts + Public Life in September in a new role, Julia Hinojosa now serves as APL’s Associate Director of Education Programs. A professional dancer and a non-profit arts administrator, Julia manages APL's portfolio of arts education programs for South Side Chicago teens that cultivate artistic and creative growth, leadership, and social development. Under her leadership, all APL arts education programs fully resumed in-person instruction, allowing the young participants to explore, create and imagine together.
Julia Hinojosa, Associate Director of Education Programs
During spring, summer, and fall sessions, 135 youth artists participated in APL’s four flagship arts education programs: Backstage Productions (BSP), Community Actors Program (CAP), Teen Arts Council (TAC), and the Design Apprenticeship Program (DAP). Led by a team of teaching artists, their work together produced over 250 direct instructional hours. In partnership with After School Matters and with the support of several other funders, APL has offered more than $400,000 in stipends to student participants since 2013. In 2022 alone, APL provide $64,560 in stipends to youth participants in the APL arts education programs.
Arts + Public Life believes in the power of student voice. We lead programs that are learner-centered and process-driven in order to amplify these voices. APL’s project-based approach allows students to respond to real-world demands while learning from their lived experiences and their peers. The APL teens produce original work each term. The teaching artists who lead the workshops augment the curriculum with project-based field trips, visiting the rich ecosystem of theaters, studios, festivals and cultural venues around Chicago. Thank you to the family and friends who attended the summer and fall 2022 teen showcases and congratulations to the teens who built community and a sense of belonging while stacking creative professional experiences.
APL Youth brighten Washington Park community through artistic engagement and performance showcases
Stepping Up: Fabiola Ramirez
In July, Fabiola Ramírez, APL’s Assistant Director of Operations, assumed new duties, becoming the Associate Director of Creative Entrepreneurship and Operations. In this new position, she manages the day-to-day administration of all APL’s Creative Entrepreneurship initiatives, including the L1 Creative Business Accelerator and Retail Shop, and occasional virtual and in-person pop-up events and arts marketplaces.
Fabiola Ramírez, APL’s Assistant Director of Operations
Events
In addition to their roles as business owners and store managers, the L1 Fellows produced a novel series of in-store programs and workshops.
Zen Soul Apothecary Presents: Divinely Guided, Tapping into You
AIDS Foundation Chicago 2022 Learning Circle Collaborative Fundraiser
CBD, Cocktails & Conversation
Winter Holiday Pop Up series featuring guest creative entrepreneurs
L1 Fellows posed in front of the CTA Green Line train campaign
Arts Marketplaces
L1 curated and hosted APL’s first outdoor summer arts marketplace, Good Vibes on Garfield. The L1 Fellows extended the invitation (and profits) to seven POC and women-owned small creative businesses, netting $7,200 in collective sales in one day. A CTA campaign on South Side buses and Green Line train platforms promoted the market, featuring the L1 Fellows alongside guest vendors DandyKingzMan, Huey’s Son Apparel & Accessories, Red Elephant Candle Company, Exotic Scents of Mind, Black Plant Lovers, angelbbsoaps, and ELüKE.
Small Creative Businesses shine through the success of L1’s “Good Vibes on Garfield”
Big wins solo and collectively
ReFormed School secured product placement in WNDR Museum’s 3 new museums across the country.
Solo Noir Launched in 237 Walmart retailers, won Best Shaving Cream by Ebony Magazine, and featured in Beauty Independent online publication. Andrea Polk has been invited to be a participant in Target’s 2023 Black Owned Business Fair Expo.
Hemp Heals Accepted as a client of the Institute for Justice Clinic on Entrepreneurship at UChicago’s Law School receiving assistance with Manufacturing Negotiations, Contracts/Proposals, Product Label Reviews, Trademark Business Name & Logo. Hemp Heals has also been accepted into the Cannabis Innovation Lab by 1871 & GrownIn.
With the support of two local residents who worked alongside the Fellows as L1 sales associates, L1 customers spent over $53,000 in the shop this year, with all proceeds going to the fellows.
The L1 Fellows participated in over 30 vendor markets around the country including the Essence Festival, The Silver Room Block Party, Black Women’s Expo, RefineCity Juneteenth Market, and Soho House Chicago’s Pop-Up Market.
Andrea Polk, Peter Gaona, and Tiffany Joi reflect on time spent as L1 Inagural Cohort Fellows
APL’s inaugural cohort of creative entrepreneurs, Peter Goana, Tiffany Joi and Andrea Polk, has been engaged in the L1 creative business accelerator program since August 2020. The L1 Retail Store has carried their popular product lines since 2021: Gaona’s Reformed School, Joi’s Hemp Heals Body Shop, and Polk’s Solo Noir for Men & Zen Soul Apothecary. As 2022 wrapped, so did the inaugural Fellowship. With pride (and a bit misty eyed,) we say goodbye to the first cohort of Fellows and share a few 2022 milestones.
The South Side Home Movie Project
Debut of Custom Community Cataloging Tools
After years in development with a collaborative design group of home movie donors, archival researchers, students, educators and artists, SSHMP debuted customized Community Cataloging tools that enable people to add their own memories and tags to the online archive. The new crowd-sourcing features capture the kind of priceless anecdotal material offered verbally at screenings, grounding the films in lived experience. Community tagging options can now be accessed by users at home as well as during in-person events. The tools were tested with South Side residents at the Woodson Regional Branch of the Chicago Public Library in October; debuted publicly at Home Movie Day in November; and presented nationally at the Association of Moving Image Archivists in December to members of the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, and archives from around the country.
In this full-day celebration of the South Side Home Movie community in November, families who recently joined the SSHMP archive shared their home movies publicly for the first time to a standing-room-only crowd, revealing hours of never before seen footage of South Side life in the 1940s-60s in their newly digitized films. A PopUp Portrait Studio (hosted by photographer Seed Lynn) offered professional photos in the tradition of Black family portraiture, while DJ Raven Wright spun an all-vinyl set throughout the day.
Tracye Matthews (CSRPC) and Justin D. Williams (SSHMP) engage in enriching conversations during “Home Movie Day”
“What Home Movies Reveal: A Guide for Exploring the SSHMP Archive”
This imaginative, joy-filled pilot curriculum was introduced to selected teachers and teaching artists for review sessions over spring and fall. With a unique set of interactive lessons, activities and creative reuse projects showcasing topics ranging from “What is an archive and what can I do with it?” to “How do home movies complicate our understanding of who calls the South Side home?,” the complete curriculum will launch publicly in early 2023.
Film Preservation Gears Up
With the generous support of a Covid-recovery grant from the American Council of Learned Societies, SSHMP brought on new Processing Archivist Camille “Ami” Townson. With their assistance, SSHMP was able to preserve, digitize and make 74 new home movies accessible online across 12 family collections. SSHMP was honored to welcome these families and their extraordinary films into our growing archive, now over 700 films strong.
Engagement
Architecture of Memory
Now in its fourth iteration, this architecture studio course asks UChicago students to design a memorial inspired by South Side history and sited within Washington Park, the Arts Block's 372-acre neighbor and itself a central aspect of many South Side narratives. Taught by Nootan Bharani, APL Associate Director of Design and University Partnerships, the course centers APL’s work on the Arts Block and is offered by the University’s Humanities Division.
This winter, student work from the course engaged with the APL solo exhibition Rose Blouin: To Washington Park With Love and with Rose Blouin herself, as well as with the South Side Home Movie Project. Student project topics (and lively discussions!) in 2022 included: celebrating Chicago's beloved Bud Billiken Parade, facets of art that thrive on the South Side, sustainable building and infrastructure in relation to government reinvestment in the South Side, and the legacy of the Chicago Defender.
Urban Hikes & Bikes: Art, Culture & Activism in Washington Park
As a new addition to our growing partnership with Chicago Studies, UChicago students and community members participated in an educational hike focusing on the enduring art, culture and activism of Washington Park. The hike started at DuSable Museum sculpture garden, traveled through Washington Park, and concluded at the Arts Block for First Monday Jazz at the Green Line Performing Arts Center.
Students study narratives of the South Side with artist Rose Blouin in the Architecture of Memory course.
Nootan Bharani with UChicago students and community members on the Washington Park tour.
The Arts Lawn
Arts + Public Life is excited to introduce audiences to our first outdoor venue in 2023. The Arts Lawn will be an active green space designed to contribute to the cultural and economic vibrancy of our Washington Park neighborhood, and will extend our programming space by adding an acre of outdoor, state of the art audio/visual capabilities. Like all APL venues, the Arts Lawn will be open and free to the public. Stay tuned for details about outdoor programs, events, marketplaces, and more!
The Arts Lawn continues to grow in progress as the groundbreaking project reaches new stages of development
Strategic Implementation Planning: Years One and Two
In 2021 APL’s strategic implementation planning turned inward, as we focused on rooting our practice and our infrastructure. In 2022 we turned our energies to larger questions, and redesigned our working groups to think more broadly about our practice, our vision, how we show up for our neighbors, and where we can strengthen our partnership offerings. We’re looking forward to deepening these initiatives in 2023 as we continue to ground ourselves for sustainable, intentional growth. You can read our full values statements on our website here.
Building Capacity. Paying Artists.
Last summer, Builders Initiative made a one-year commitment to support artists of color through residencies and fellowships. Thanks to this exceptional grant, APL deepened its financial commitment to Artists-in-Residence (AIRs) and L1 Fellowship. The grant also strengthened our capacity to expand these signature programs serving Black and Brown artists and supporting their public-facing work, resulting in art exhibitions, public programs, and creative retail.
“The biggest challenge I have faced being a creative entrepreneur has been adequate funding to support my vision,” said L1 Fellow Andrea Polk. “To have the support of L1 to assist me in growing and scaling my business, and help celebrate the milestones, is unmeasurable.”
APL is grateful to Builders Initiative for its partnership providing direct financial support to artists and supporting APL’s mission to provide residencies for Black and Brown artists and creative entrepreneurs.
APL thrives thanks to a community of generous donors whose gifts support Arts + Public Life’s Arts Incubator, Green Line Performing Arts Center, L1 Creative Business Accelerator + Retail Shop, and the vibrant creativity happening every day on the Arts Block.
Thank You to APL’s 2022 Major Funders
Highlights to Look For in 2023
PROGRAMMING
To honor a decade of First Monday Jazz, Arts + Public Life presents a special 10-year anniversary edition of our longest standing program. First Monday Jazz: Origins & Evolutions is a year-long celebration of jazz artists who chart the evolving landscape of this musical tradition. Join us on Monday, February 6, at the Green Line Performing Arts Center, as South Side jazz singer, bandleader, and arts agitator Margaret Murphy-Webb kicks off the 2023 lineup featuring both established and emerging Chicago musicians.
Rearview Mirror Sessions with Duane Powell returns. The beloved music lecture series will resume in Spring 2023. Music historian and DJ Duane Powell dedicates the 2023 installment of Rear View Mirror Sessions to four virtuosic vocalists: Chaka Khan (March), Luther Vandross (April), The Isley Brothers (May), and Rick James (June). Live music performances will close out each session. Rear View Mirror Sessions is presented by Soundrotation, in conjunction with BrainTrust Management.
We’re getting grown outside! As we eagerly anticipate the opening of the Arts Lawn, we’ve made plans to bring the expanding community of storytellers connected to The Silver Room’s Grown Folks Stories outside on the lawn. Check APL’s website and monthly newsletter so you don’t miss listening to (or telling) an unrehearsed five minute story under the stars.
Look for a new spin on Spinning Home Movies! South Side Home Movie Project’s popular series featuring artists diving into the archive and emerging with imaginative new programs and soundtracks continues with a roster of new creative partners including poet and rapper Mykele Deville, ragtime pianist and composer Reginald Robinson and film scholar Allyson Nadia Field.
RESIDENCIES
Get your tickets for the final three performances in the pilot season of APL’s performance residency:
Upcoming events and programming to look forward to in 2023
The Process featuring Alyssa Gregory
The Process turns the spotlight on what happens long before an audience shows up. Through interviews with Chicago dancemakers and performers, this special presentation honors the value in the work and the working, and unpacks the methods by which we create dance.
Juana and the Missing Mayan Book, featuring Rocio “Chio” Cabrera
In 1562, the Spanish Inquisition destroyed all but four ancient Mayan Books. Seven years after the book-burning, Juana explores her roots by venturing deep into the Yucatecan jungle. How can history shape our life and future? Juana and the Missing Mayan Book tells the story of the Spanish invaders through the eyes of a fictional nine-year old Mayan girl.
Dear Black Artists with the 77, featuring Rachel Gadson
A touching original short film featuring dozens of Chicago artists discussing their creative journeys, barriers to access, and their greatest hopes for Black artists.
L1 Creative Business Accelerator and Retail Shop
L1 will welcome three new creative entrepreneurs into the fellowship and retail space next spring. Vends + Vibes, APL’s popular winter arts marketplace, returns this time as a sizzling hot summer activation. The open call for Vends + Vibes vendors will be released in Spring.
APL/CSRPC Artists-in-Residence Program
APL will welcome three artists to the 2023 AIRs program to join the roster of over 30 incredible artists from years past.
EXHIBITIONS
Opening June 2023, The Myth Maker (working title) exhibition will highlight the work of Chicago author, activist and UChicago alum Frank London Brown (1927-1962). Developed in collaboration with APL Faculty Director Adrienne Brown, writer Eve Ewing, and PhD candidates Korey Williams and Angela Orokoh, the exhibition will explore Brown’s expansive portfolio of novels, articles, and short stories, seeking to activate the archive through film screenings, interviews and anthologies aimed at celebrating a remarkable unsung savant.
Looking Forward
Despite ongoing pandemic challenges, 2022 was generous to Arts + Public Life and allowed us a "vibrant continuation of a beautiful process." We successfully returned to in-person public programming, updated and relaunched flagship programs, celebrated our youth, honored alum artists, and strengthened our staff and operations. In addition, we solidified our leadership with the appointment of Prof. Adrienne Brown as the new APL Director, deepened existing relationships, and built new partnerships with donors, Washington Park neighbors, community and arts organizations, and university colleagues. Rejuvenated with the energies and enthusiasm of the New Year, we look forward to 2023 reaffirming our gratitude and commitment to — as our mission states — "fostering neighborhood vibrancy through the arts on the South Side of Chicago."
-Alfredo Nieves-Moreno, Arts + Public Life Deputy Director
Arts + Public Life would like to thank each and every one of you for your continued support as we go into 2023!