“Historical manifestations of dandyism range from absolute precision in dress and tailoring to flamboyance and fabulousness in dress and style,” Miller wrote in the exhibit catalog. “Whether a dandy is subtle or spectacular, we recognize and respect the deliberateness of the dress, the self-conscious display, the reach for tailored perfection, and the sometimes subversive self-expression.”

The exhibit, “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style,” draws on other sources beyond Miller’s book. It’s organized into 12 sections. Each symbolizes a characteristic of dandy style as defined by Zora Neale Hurston in her 1934 essay, “Characteristics of Negro Expression.”

See photos from the blue carpet.

Is an important event missing from this date? Email us.

Weather records (from the National Weather Service, Chicago)

• High temperature: 91 degrees (1959)
• Low temperature: 27 degrees (1875)
• Precipitation: 1.32 inches (2018)
• Snowfall: 0.6 inches (1940)

1917: Fred Toney of the Cincinnati Reds and Jim “Hippo” Vaughn of the Chicago Cubs both pitched hitless balls for nine innings at Weeghman Park. The Tribune called the game, “a contest that will stand as one of the most remarkable in history.”

The Reds won on two hits and a run in the 10th. Toney maintained his no-hitter.

The 1st Negro National League game was played 105 years ago today — and Chicago played a part

1920: In front of more than 8,000 spectators, the Indianapolis ABCs beat the visiting Chicago American Giants in the Negro National League’s inaugural game.

1921: The Field Museum opened to visitors in its current space off DuSable Lake Shore Drive after a move from the Palace of Fine Arts building in Jackson Park. Eight thousand people showed up on the first day despite “biting wind and drizzly rain” outside.

1927: The Stevens Hotel — then the largest hotel in the world — opened on Michigan Avenue. The $30 million, 28-story towers contained 3,000 rooms, an 18-hole rooftop miniature golf course complete with sand traps and its own hospital. It was, according to its own press clippings, “the greatest hotel of all times.”

One perk? Rooms for pets: “No longer will the society woman with a pair of wolfhounds or trained leopards be turned away because she insists on bringing her pets with her,” the Tribune reported on May 1, 1927. “They will be cared for in luxury by trained attendants.”

Famous guests have included Charles Lindbergh, Queen Elizabeth II, Elizabeth Taylor, seven U.S. presidents and dozens of other personalities.

The hotel also has had starring roles in numerous films, including “The Fugitive” and its sequel, “U.S. Marshals,” “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and “Home Alone II.”

Several name changes and renovations later, the Hilton Chicago has about half as many rooms.

1960: “Flying Officer” Leonard Baldy and pilot George Ferry were killed when the “WGN trafficopter” helicopter they were riding in crashed and burst into flames on the Chicago and North Western railway right of way near Hubbard Street and Milwaukee Avenue.

Four times a day, Baldy broadcast advice to drivers on the Tribune-owned station on how to avert traffic tie-ups. His $10,000 annual salary was paid to the Chicago Policemen’s Benevolent Association since he couldn’t receive money for his public service under Chicago police rules.

Also in 1960: Evangelist Billy Graham told a group of more than 1,000 clergymen at a breakfast in the Hilton Hotel that “it is the Lord’s time for a religious revival among Chicagoans.” He cited the city’s police and traffic court scandals as evidence.

May 2, 1983: Chicago Mayor Harold Washington abruptly adjourned his first City Council meeting. Before he left, Washington told the group that anything that happened afterward was illegal.

A white majority of 29 aldermen who opposed Washington — led by Ald. Ed Vrdolyak and supported by Ald. Edward Burke — then seized control of City Council and approved a new lineup of committee chairs and leaders. Burke was named chair of the powerful City Council Committee on Finance and retained the title until 1986. He picked it up again in 1989. Mostly left off the list were Washington’s supporters — who loudly screamed and chanted in the gallery.

The “Council Wars” — pitting a weak mayoral system against a strong council — continued until 1986, when a federal judge ordered that the city’s ward map be redrawn to better reflect the city’s racial demographics. That gave Washington’s supporters 25 of the 50 seats in the City Council, and with the mayor casting a tiebreaking vote, the stalemate was broken.

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“We regret to inform you,” it read, “that your IMLS grant has been terminated.”

A termination notice from the institute’s new acting Director Keith Sonderling was attached to the 38-word email.

“Best wishes,” the message concluded.

IMLS provides significant funding to libraries, museums and other educational institutions across the country. Amid Trump’s order to shutter the agency, several Illinois museums have had their grants terminated, including the DuPage Children’s Museum, Morton Arboretum in Lisle, the National Museum of Mexican Art in the Pilsen neighborhood, the Chicago History Museum, the McLean County Museum of History in Bloomington and the Galena and U.S. Grant Museum in western Illinois.

The agency did not respond to repeated requests for comment, making it difficult to know how much funding has been terminated in recent weeks.

DuPage Children’s Museum was awarded an $84,729 grant to help create a traveling exhibit it could bring to area libraries, according to Andrea Ingram, the museum’s president and CEO. The venture would have been an extension of a standing exhibit at the Naperville museum called, “The Questioneers: Read. Question. Think. PLAY!”

The exhibit is inspired by a book series from local author Andrea Beaty. Ingram described the books as “just beautiful stories (about) these second graders who are all different.”

But in the termination notice to DuPage Children’s Museum, the institution was told that upon further review, its grant “is unfortunately no longer consistent with the agency’s priorities and no longer serves the interest of the United States and the IMLS Program.”

Ingram, in an interview at the museum’s three-story location near downtown Naperville, said, “I don’t think that this is the type of bureaucracy reduction anybody believed was going to be forthcoming.”

“My job is joy,” she said, children’s shouts and laughter sounding off in the background. “I mean, the very definition of what we do here is joyful learning.”

Over the past decade, Ingram estimated the DuPage Children’s Museum has received about $1 million in IMLS competitive grants for various projects.

Ingram said she doesn’t know what’s going to happen to the museum’s defunded exhibit. But to her, the matter is bigger than her museum’s programming alone, she said.

“We must keep (in mind) that this is not about $80,000 to (DuPage Children’s Museum),” she said. “It’s about the systems that we depend on. … I bet most Americans didn’t know what IMLS is, and that’s OK. We don’t need to know that there is a backbone that makes this work.”

Chicago’s National Museum of Mexican Art had three active multiyear grants terminated by IMLS, according to the museum’s Chief Development Officer Barbara Engelskirchen. Among those was a $556,726 grant that would have paid for an internship program over a three-year period, Engelskirchen said. Without the funding, the program will be canceled, she said.

Other active grants included a two-year $475,000 grant to help make the National Museum of Mexican Art more accessible to people with disabilities as well as a three-year $245,341 grant to support programming the museum does in partnership with Chicago Public Schools, Engelskirchen said.

Both are set to move forward despite the loss in funding. For the accessibility project, the National Museum of Mexican Art has received and spent about half of its funding, Engelskirchen said. The museum will pay for the rest of the project’s costs itself, she said.

As for CPS programming, the initiative — whose focus is helping teachers incorporate Mexican art and culture into their curriculum — is supported through other funding sources. Lack of IMLS funding will likely just “decrease the number of children we’ll be able to reach,” Engelskirchen said.

At the Chicago History Museum, an IMLS grant was recently terminated, according to Michael Anderson, the museum’s vice president of external engagement and development. The museum had received some of the $241,759 it was promised, but the remainder was canceled. IMLS money was funding about one-fourth of the total project, an exhibition about the Latino community in Chicago called “Aquí en Chicago.”

“There’s, I think, a sense right now that if you’re too DEI-focused or if you’re too inclusive or if you are supporting stories or narratives that don’t align with the current politics, you will either be punished or defunded,” Anderson said.

The museum had already begun building out the exhibition space when they learned their grant had been terminated, Anderson said. The exhibit is still on track to open in the fall, although they may need to look for additional funding sources from the museum’s donor base or modify some aspects of the exhibition.

Beyond “Aquí en Chicago,” Anderson worries about funding for future programs.

“There is value in history,” Anderson said. “There is value in knowing where we’ve come from, and it helps inform where we’re going. And it does feel a little bit like a gutting of, or a singling out of, history and the value of history … it’s a slippery slope.”

In Aurora, the Grand Army of the Republic Museum received IMLS grant funding in 2023 to pay for equipment meant to help preserve the museum’s wartime artifacts, according to a spokesperson from the city. The grant, which totaled just under $42,000, is set to expire Aug. 31.

The city of Aurora said it has been unable to request an extension of the grant to continue the project since IMLS staff were placed on leave March 31 as part of Trump’s dismantling of the agency. Officials also do not know how to request a reimbursement once they’ve spent the funds. However, the city set aside $50,000 for the project, so they expect it to move forward regardless of hold-ups with the IMLS funding, although the grant would “certainly amplify the scope of the project,” the city spokesperson said.

Along the Illinois-Iowa border, the Galena and U.S. Grant Museum had been counting on more than $576,000 from IMLS. But earlier this month, the museum received the same termination letter sent to DuPage Children’s Museum, well wishes and all.

The allocation was slated to help with collection care as the museum transitions to a new facility, according to Tessa Flak, executive director of the Galena-Jo Daviess County Historical Society,.

The museum — which has exhibits honoring hometown hero Ulysses S. Grant, the Civil War general and 18th president of the United States — has been housed in a 10,000 square-foot building owned by the city of Galena since 1938. For the past 18 years, the museum has slowly been working toward building its own facility, Flak said. An $11 million venture, the museum just broke ground on its new facility April 3.

IMLS funding would have helped move the museum’s 14,000-plus artifacts to its new facility, as well as establish an archives room and museum-rate exhibit cases at the burgeoning space, Flak said.

On April 21, Flak sent a letter to IMLS appealing the museum’s grant termination.

“Sudden and unexplained cancellation of active grants undermine the trust in the federal process, especially for small and mid-sized institutions that rely on these partnerships to serve their communities,” the letter read.  “We are concerned that this will have a chilling effect, not just for our museum, but for cultural institutions across the country that play a vital role in public education and civic life.”

In the meantime, the museum will be launching a GoFundMe to try to make up for the cuts.

tkenny@chicagotribune.com

mmorrow@chicagotribune.com

The drawing “Russian War Prisoner” was purchased by the Art Institute in 1966, but investigators for the Manhattan district attorney’s office had asserted that it and other works once owned by entertainer and art collector Fritz Grünbaum had been looted by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Many of the works created by Schiele, the Austrian Expressionist, that Grünbaum owned ended up in the hands of museums and collectors around the world. Grünbaum’s heirs have spent years working to reclaim them.

In her ruling, New York Supreme Court Judge Althea Drysdale said she agreed that the work had been stolen from Grünbaum by the Nazis. “ ‘Russian War Prisoner’ has been stolen property for the last 86 years,” she said in a 25-minute reading of her order from the bench.

Over the past two years, other museums and private collectors had returned Schiele works to the heirs after being presented evidence by the investigators that they had been seized by the Nazis. But the Art Institute disputed that evidence and challenged the jurisdiction of the Manhattan district attorney to bring what was a criminal proceeding that treated the museum’s Schiele as stolen property.

In hearings last year, the district attorney’s office accused the Chicago museum of ignoring evidence of an elaborate fraud undertaken to conceal that the artwork had been stolen from Grünbaum by the Nazis on the eve of World War II.

The museum insisted there was no evidence to suggest the work had been stolen, and it challenged the authority of the investigators to lay claim to a painting that had been located beyond New York for 60 years, arguing that disputes like this are civil matters and that New York criminal law has no place in the discussion. Instead, it said, the drawing had legitimately passed from Grünbaum to his sister-in-law, who had sold it to a Swiss dealer after the war.

Its refusal of the art unit’s claims represented a sustained and very public battle threatening to undercut the trafficking unit’s authority in this case — and by extension, many others. But in her 79-page ruling, Drysdale agreed with the investigators on all points.

She found that the work could still be considered stolen property under New York law, that the criminal laws applied and that New York investigators had jurisdiction over the matter. The Manhattan investigators had argued they had jurisdiction because the Schiele works were owned by a New York gallery before being sold on to other owners.

She also found that the Art Institute had failed to make reasonable inquiries about the work’s provenance when it acquired the work and did not live up to its own standards for provenance research.

“We are disappointed with the ruling,” Megan Michienzi, a spokesperson for the museum, said in a statement. “We are reviewing the court’s decision and will look at all available options for appeal.” These options include applying for a stay on the handover of the work to investigators.

Raymond Dowd, the lawyer for the Grünbaum heirs, welcomed the decision. “This judge wrote a clear warning call to any people in the world who are hiding Nazi looted art that you had better not bring it anywhere near New York. Ever,” he said.

The Art Institute routinely displayed the work during its many years at the museum until it was seized in place by investigators in 2023 on the basis of a warrant signed by Drysdale.

In her decision, she not only discussed the law but also the history of the work, of Grünbaum and of the artist who created the drawing.

“Throughout his storied career, Grünbaum was an outspoken critic of the treatment of Jews in Austria,” she wrote. “This advocacy, coupled with his Jewish heritage and his fame within Vienna’s performing arts industry, would lead to his capture, imprisonment at Dachau Concentration Camp, and murder at the hands of the Nazis during World War II.”

At the center of the dispute was the question of what happened to the drawing and other Schiele works when they were deposited by Grünbaum’s family at a storage facility in Vienna in 1938. Investigators in the Manhattan district attorney’s art trafficking unit maintained that this was tantamount to surrendering them to the Nazis, who they say controlled the warehouse.

The museum said that while the storage company had been “affiliated” with the Nazi regime, it “also provided lawful storage and moving services to Jewish families” including to Grünbaum’s sister-in-law, Mathilde Lukacs, who the museum argued had inherited the drawing and others from the entertainer’s collection.

The dealer who brought “Russian War Prisoner” and other Schieles once owned by Grünbaum to the New York art market in the 1950s, Eberhard Kornfeld, said he had bought them from Lukacs. The museum said it believed his account to be credible.

But the New York investigators worked to compile evidence that the judge embraced as a convincing rebuttal of Kornfeld’s account. She noted that investigators dismissed as forgeries the several invoices that Kornfeld produced as evidence of his transactions with Lukacs. On some the signature for her name was misspelled, for example.

“It’s highly improbable that Mathilde Lukacs ever obtained proper title to ‘Russian War Prisoner,’ ” Drysdale said, and she suggested the museum needed to have done more to investigate the work’s ownership trail.

“They instead relied upon the assurances of a discredited art dealer with an obvious self-serving agenda,” she wrote in her ruling.

Before Manhattan investigators entered the debate, the Grünbaum artworks had already been the subject of considerable civil litigation in which other courts have come to varying conclusions.

In 2018, a New York Supreme Court judge ruled in the case of two other Schiele drawings that Grünbaum never sold or surrendered any works before his death, and that they were indeed looted by the Nazis, making his heirs their true owners.

In another civil case, a federal court ruled on procedural grounds that the Grünbaum heirs came forward too late to lay claim to the works and described Kornfeld’s account as credible. “Russian War Prisoner” is also the subject of a separate civil case in federal court in New York in which the Art Institute is arguing it has good title to the drawing.

Dowd, who represents the Grünbaum heirs, said that he did not think “the federal procedure survives” Drysdale’s decision.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

He arrived by evening on April 16 outside the White House, carrying a sign that called for for “Reparations Now.”

This time, Turner added another stop on his long day’s journey — the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

Turner knelt in prayer and laid a wreath at the entrance of the museum in support of its mission, which incurred President Donald Trump’s criticism alongside other Smithsonian Institution sites. In a March 27 executive order, Trump alleged that Smithsonian exhibits had disparaged the nation’s history via a “divisive, race-centered ideology.”

Turner wanted to show support for the museum, which opened in 2016 and received its 10 millionth visitor in 2023. The museum tells the history of chattel slavery, Jim Crow segregation and its lingering effects, but it also highlights the determination, successes and contributions of Black Americans and Black institutions.

“I laid my wreath down there to show solidarity with the museum and the history that they present every day,” said Turner, pastor of Empowerment Temple African Methodist Episcopal Church in Baltimore.

He said his church has committed to becoming a museum member, and he’s encouraged church members to do the same. Membership costs start at $25 per year, according to an online form on the museum site.

His church is not alone, as other predominantly Black congregations are taking similar steps.

Clergy calls for support

Turner said he got the idea from the Rev. Otis Moss III of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, whose church also joined the museum and who urged members to do the same. “For only $25 a year, you can protect Black history,” Moss told his church.

Two other Black pastors said they also supported the effort.

One was the Rev. Jacqui J. Lewis, senior minister at Middle Church in New York City — home to a multiracial congregation affiliated with the United Church of Christ.

“We belonged to the museum since its opening, and we just made another donation to them in light of this administration’s policies,” she said. The gift, she said, was a $1,000 “Easter Love donation.”

Bishop Timothy Clarke of the First Church of God in Columbus, Ohio, said he would be emulating Moss in making an appeal to his predominantly African American congregation.

“Our grandson is in DC on a field trip,” Clarke said in an email. “The highlight of his trip has been the visit to the Museum.”

Trump’s order didn’t specifically talk about budget cuts, though it tasked Vice President JD Vance, a member of the Smithsonian Board of Regents by virtue of his office, to lead the effort to purge “improper ideology” from such institutions. He pledged to “restore the Smithsonian Institution to its rightful place as a symbol of inspiration and American greatness.” Critics say he’s trying to force a distorted national narrative that glosses over slavery and other historical wrongs.

Pastor marching for reparations

Turner said he has been making his walk to Washington one day for each of the past 31 months. He’s calling for the U.S. to make reparations for the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow segregation and other systemic suffering inflicted on Black people, ranging from housing and medical discrimination to mass incarceration. When he was previously a pastor in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he similarly demonstrated for reparations for the 1921 race massacre.

Turner said when he arrived last week outside the White House, a crowd of visitors was milling about, and one child who noticed his sign asked a parent, “What is reparations?”

“That to me is a perfect manifestation about why we need to be teaching more true history of America, and not taking away certain subjects because they make people feel uncomfortable,” Turner said.

Moss, in a social media post, held out hope that the museum could continue its current course, noting that Vance is just one member of the board.

Trinity has long been socially active with a wide array of community outreaches, and Moss describes it as “a church that is unashamedly Black and unapologetically Christian.”

Former President Barack Obama had been a member of Trinity but resigned during the 2008 campaign, citing the “divisive” statements of its previous pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, while affirming the Black Church tradition of speaking out against injustice.

Democrats criticize executive order

The African American museum, one of 21 Smithsonian museums, has also seen a recent shake-up in leadership. Shanita Beckett, who was previously the head of operations at the museum, has been widely reported to be serving as interim director.

Kevin Young, a poet and scholar of African American history, left his role as museum director in early April, following a leave of absence, according to a notice to staff. The museum did not return the AP’s requests for comment this week.

On Friday, Democrats on the House Administration Committee, which has oversight over the Smithsonian Institution, expressed concern over the executive order in a letter addressed to Vance.

“This flagrant attempt to erase Black history is unacceptable and must be stopped,” said the letter signed by Reps. Joseph Morelle of New York, Terri Sewell of Alabama and Norma Torres of California.

“The attempt to paper over elements of American history is both cowardly and unpatriotic,” the letter said.

The letter, posted to Instagram Wednesday as a petition people can sign, harshly criticizes Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events Commissioner Clinée Hedspeth, appointed by Johnson a year ago. As Chicago artists and cultural institutions face “a unique and critical time” amid inflation, federal funding cuts and declining attendance, “needs are not being met” under Hedspeth’s leadership, the letter reads.

“The department’s budget, staff, and influence have diminished during your tenure, and the department has lost invaluable talent—as well as the confidence of Chicago’s creative sector,” the self-dubbed “Artists for Chicago” told Johnson in the letter.

The rare public condemnation from 100 named arts and culture industry signees comes two months after the Tribune first reported allegations that Hedspeth bullied staff and did not communicate with arts leaders.

The signees span a range of positions and organizations in the local arts and culture world, from DCASE grantees and actors to curators and former department employees, according to the petition. The still-circulating letter references reports of bullying, staff-turnover and nonengagement in the department. It also alleges lapses in the department’s “essential functions.”

“Artists and cultural organizations have not received timely payments, grant opportunities have been postponed, and reporting portals have not opened,” it says. “These lapses have led to individuals and organizations being denied adequate time to apply and unable to complete the work they have been contracted to produce.”

Hedspeth acknowledged the concerns in a statement to the Tribune Wednesday. She reaffirmed a commitment “to the thriving cultural landscape of Chicago” and said she took the complaints seriously.

“The arts and culture sector are vital to the heart and soul of Chicago, and I remain steadfast in my pledge to supporting and empowering this community,” she said.

Karla Estela Rivera, a spokesperson for Artists for Chicago, said a group of seven lead organizers and 35 “strategic partners” came together in recent weeks after Hedspeth did not come to a public meeting she had been expected to attend that followed earlier calls for better community engagement. The leaders and partners are all “artists, arts administrators, arts educators, all who have either interfaced or who DCASE’s moves directly impact,” she said.

Before that “last straw,” some in the arts community had already felt “ghosted” by Hedspeth, said Rivera, who previously led the Free Street Theater and now works as an independent artist and consultant. The mayor has the right to appoint whomever he chooses to head the department, she said.

“It is the subsequent shifts that have occurred,” she said. “We really need a strong ally and advocate at DCASE that is supporting us vocally. And writ large, folks are not feeling that.”

“That’s really what’s driving this,” Rivera continued. “It isn’t about an axe to grind over people feeling some kind of way about the personnel decisions he made. It’s that this change created a sea-change in the department that has deep impact at the community level.”

The petition’s sign-on form was circulated by its organizers before it was shared publicly on social media Wednesday. People who want to sign it must log in with an email and select their role in the arts and culture community from a list provided. Signees can add a name or opt to remain anonymous before their names are placed by organizers on the letter.

Rivera contended the form was secure and the signees are people affected by DCASE policy.

The letter comes after a tumultuous few months at DCASE, during which Hedspeth faced several allegations against her and oversaw the display of a pro-Palestinian protest puppet that aldermen called for the removal of in a letter of their own.

A recent formal complaint made to the Office of Inspector General Deborah Witzburg against Hedspeth by an anonymous former DCASE worker alleged Hedspeth forced several staff members to resign under threat of firing.

The complaint, made in January, shares broad allegations similar to four more complaints previously reported by the Tribune. In those, anonymous employees alleged Hedspeth shouted curses at them in public and warned them to “watch your back” at work. One complaint alleged Hedspeth wanted a retaliatory “witchhunt” against an arts organization whose leader criticized the mayor, while another said she treated staffers “like a personal assistant.”

In all five complaints, city investigators determined investigations should not move forward. They cited a lack of witness cooperation, “speculative” allegations and an absence of violations of “protected categories.”

As complaints mount, so do staff exits. The department’s full-time head count dropped from 72 employees just before Hedspeth’s appointment to 59 in April. At least 23 employees left the department in that time, the Tribune previously reported.

Hedspeth called the turnover “unfortunate” in her statement, but said it’s “a natural part of any leadership transition.”

“I understand the concerns regarding the impact of this turnover on the department’s operations, and I want to assure the public that we are in the process of recruiting and retaining talented professionals to ensure DCASE functions at the highest level,” she said.

She also committed to enhancing the department’s grant distribution process.

Some of the city’s top appointed arts advisers also previously alleged Hedspeth failed to listen to and work with cultural leaders. Amina Dickerson, a member of the city’s Cultural Advisory Council who signed on to the letter, cited a pattern of noncommunication in early February when Hedspeth cancelled one of the council’s quarterly meetings.

The commissioner’s staff pointed to a newly scheduled meeting when asked about the accusation. The advisory council typically meets with the DCASE commissioner quarterly, giving its appointed members — currently nonprofit directors, artists, theater executives, museum leaders, magazine editors and more — the opportunity to help steer and implement the city’s cultural work in an open, public discussion. But when the group finally met in late February, Hedspeth was a no-show.

The council consisted at the time exclusively of members appointed by former Mayor Lori Lightfoot. In March, Johnson appointed six new members, though the council’s 29 members remain primarily arts leaders he did not appoint.

The meeting began with Joanna Furnans, executive director of Chicago Dancemakers Forum, taking what was then a lone public stance to criticize Hedspeth during a public comment period. Furnans highlighted delayed grant payments, poor communication and reports of “unacceptable treatment” of department staff.

“I’m concerned, and I know others are as well,” Furnans said. “Will the commissioner, whom I don’t see at the moment, and will the council respond to these concerns?”

Instead, the commissioner didn’t come to the meeting in person and appeared only via video. She spoke for two minutes and did not address Furnans’ concerns.

“Not sure that people didn’t know that I was not going to be in person, so apologies, I thought that was communicated, that I will have to have a hard stop,” Hedspeth said before quickly touting department highlights.

Staff said she then logged off.

The meeting continued with council members airing their frustration with Hedspeth’s unexplained decision to not meet with them. In comment after comment, they blasted the commissioner for failing to show up as Donald Trump’s new presidency threatened to upend their already deeply destabilized industries.

Esther Grimm, former executive director of 3Arts, spoke toward the end of the meeting to criticize DCASE for not leading the way on a response to Trump.

“I’m feeling in my gut a lot of distress right now,” she said. “There is urgency here. This is our beloved city department of arts and culture, and it has to start here. We have got to proceed more swiftly than we are.”

Grimm’s foreboding message has so far proved prescient. Sudden cuts in federal funding have left Illinois Humanities, a statewide nonprofit that funds humanities work, with a $1 million budget gap.

Department spokesperson Bria Purdiman said she could not confirm when asked that day and again later where Hedspeth was during the February meeting.

A FOIA request for the commissioner’s schedule revealed she planned to tour an Art Institute exhibit with Johnson’s wife, first lady Stacie Johnson, during that time. Purdiman said she did not attend that scheduled visit, which would have occurred two blocks from where the council simultaneously met.

Coya Paz, chair of the advisory council, said she had not been alerted that Hedspeth would not attend the meeting. Afterward, she noted that the mayor was elected “with a strong push from artists.” She added that she does not doubt the mayor or Hedspeth care about arts and culture.

“I think what we’re missing is communication about what that means in this particular administration and leadership,” Paz said. “We are all waiting for them with really open arms.”

The day after the meeting, Hedspeth emailed the city’s top attorney, Mary Richardson-Lowry, to request a meeting “to discuss a few items,” according to records obtained by the Tribune.

Hedspeth said in her Wednesday statement that she deeply values the council and recognizes “the wealth of experience it brings.”

Asked in February if he was aware of the allegations of bullying and nonengagement against Hedspeth, Johnson declined to answer.

“So, I don’t discuss personnel issues,” he said. Hedspeth served as the mayor’s legislative director for over two years when he was a Cook County commissioner.

Johnson fired former Commissioner Erin Harkey, a Lightfoot appointee, a year into his term to make space for Hedspeth. The decision to oust the popular commissioner surprised many in the arts community. Harkey was named CEO of the Washington, D.C., nonprofit Americans for the Arts in February.

The letter publicly shared Wednesday, which also included 23 anonymous signees, called on Hedspeth to commit to attending the council’s meeting in person and answering questions. It also asked her to communicate a vision for the department, citing a Tribune interview shared shortly after her appointment in which she declined to elaborate on her goals as commissioner.

The group also raised the alarm about staff turnover and called for Johnson to “audit essential operations” and called on the mayor and others to address the bullying allegations reported by the Tribune.

The letter marks a sharp turn for several of its signees. The group noted that many among its ranks proudly supported Johnson as he ran for mayor.

Johnson spoke passionately about the arts and promised to make Chicago a “rich destination for culture and creativity” while campaigning, the letter said. He has continued to laud community-based artists and organizations since, it continued.

“The commissioner’s actions and inactions move antithetically to these expressed values,” it said.

Here were his five sisters, proudly donning caps and gowns in graduation portraits framed on the wall. There, the family’s World Book Encyclopedia set — a favorite of his mother, Helen Holmes Jackson. A petite pair of boxing gloves, a relic from when he was obsessed with Muhammad Ali, and the plush velvet couch that doubled as his bed. Across it: the television on which he watched Martin Luther King Jr.’s funeral.

“It’s probably how I ended up in ministry,” Hatch Sr., a pastor in West Garfield Park, tells his son, Marshall Hatch Jr., who’s filming the walkthrough on his phone. He points at a spot on the couch. “Our father was sitting right there. I looked at him and saw a single tear roll down his cheek.”

The Hatches are standing in the last surviving building of the former Jane Addams Homes, in an apartment unit eerily like the one Hatch Sr. and his family lived in until he turned 16. It’s not quite the same layout — their unit was down a level and across the hall, meaning this recreation is a mirror image of their actual unit. And there’s no way the Hatches, with their matriarch’s suspicion of television generally, would have gotten a color TV. (“Cellophane paper was blue at the top, green on the bottom, and orange in the middle. You put that on, and that was our first color television,” he jokes.) But all else is uncannily accurate, down to the minty shade of green in the hallway.

“Project green!” Hatch declares when he sees it. “Either that, or peach.”

The Hatches’ time machine comes courtesy of the National Public Housing Museum, the only museum of its kind in the country. The museum opened its first brick-and-mortar space last week after years of being “a museum in the streets,” in the words of board chair Sunny Fischer.  Between now and the museum’s incorporation in 2007, Fischer — a former executive of the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and a child of a Bronx public housing project herself — says the museum hosted education programs, walking tours and pop-up exhibitions “wherever they would let us,” including an early installation at the Merchandise Mart.

The museum’s new space offers a permanent home for its roving presentations — now free of charge to visitors — which trace the history of public housing from its origins in the New Deal to the present day. But unlike the typical museum, the National Public Housing Museum offers a deeper, more personal engagement through $25 tours of its recreated apartment spaces. The Hatch family apartment is one of two recreated units in the new museum, with the other, representing the Jewish Turovitz family, who were among the Addams Homes’ earliest tenants in the 1930s. A third unit has been transformed into a presentation on redlining, with visuals by local shadow-puppet theater Manual Cinema and a script by Princeton University scholar Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.

The National Public Housing Museum was profoundly inspired by New York City’s Tenement Museum, a cluster of well-preserved and partially recreated tenement apartments on the city’s Lower East Side. That museum, which National Public Housing Museum Executive Director Lisa Yun Lee considers a “sister” institution, also incorporates oral histories from tenement residents and their descendants.

But the interactivity of the Chicago experience is largely without precedent. Tour-goers are invited to sample Jackson’s peanut brittle recipe, held in a cookie tin in the Hatch family kitchen. And visitors who tour the Turovitz unit next week will notice an empty space above the sink: the family’s gefilte fish bowl, on display there most of the year, will have been pulled off the shelf for their present-day Passover celebrations. Elsewhere, visitors can spin vinyl records and learn more about the public housing pasts of famous musicians in a “rec room” curated by DJ Spinderella, of Salt-N-Pepa fame, or listen to archival interviews in a studio named for late Chicago historian Dr. Timuel Black Jr.

At every turn, the National Public Housing Museum wants to dispel, or at least complicate, voyeuristic, “Candyman”-inspired notions of what public housing is. Public housing could be the fantastical, Edgar Miller-designed sculpture garden at the Addams Homes’ heart. It could be the hardworking, wisecracking Evans family in the 1970s sitcom “Good Times,” set in Cabrini-Green. It could be the varied lives and hobbies of Baltimore public housing residents, pictured in an ecstatic mural by Marisa Morán Jahn in the museum stairwell.

To that end, eight current public housing residents have joined the staff as museum “ambassadors,” leading education programs and guiding guests through exhibitions. And textile artist Dorothy Burge, whose family lived in LeClaire Courts and the Washington Park Homes, was commissioned to create a quilt portrait of late housing commissioner and museum co-founder Deverra Beverly, which now greets passersby on Taylor Street. Burge remembers rushing to finish her homework early so she could participate in after-school art programs in the Courts.

“In public housing, we always did a lot of collective art.  There was quilting, there was collage work,” Burge says.

That the museum building at Ada and Taylor survives, much less hosts the National Public Housing Museum, is a testament to Beverly’s efforts. She and other public housing residents stridently opposed the Chicago Housing Authority’s 1999 Plan of Transformation, which responded to the disrepair of its public housing projects by razing them. According to the museum, the plan precipitated the largest net loss of affordable housing in the country’s history, destroying 11 developments and more than 20,000 units in the Jane Addams Homes, Cabrini-Green Homes, Robert Taylor Homes, Henry Horner Homes, Ida B. Wells Homes and others.

In many cases, the mixed-income units that the CHA vowed would replace them never materialized as planned. Even today, the museum, whose north wing now includes just 15 units of mixed-income housing, is surrounded by yawning blocks of undeveloped lawn, barren but for no-trespassing signs posted by the CHA.

Though these empty city blocks appear overlooked and forgotten, the National Public Housing Museum is a significant step in ensuring their former residents — like Hatch Sr.’s mother, Helen Holmes Jackson — are not. When the elder Hatch walked through the apartment, “his” apartment, he was overcome with emotion when he spotted the peanut brittle tin full of “Helen’s Surprise.”

“The night she died, I wanted to watch a Western, and she wanted to watch the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. She had a high school diploma, but she was such a smart person — literally cultured. And all she did was have babies and die,” he says. “Her being in this museum brings it full circle.”

Hannah Edgar is a freelance writer.

The National Public Housing Museum is open Wednesdays-Sundays 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Thursdays 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. (closed Mondays and Tuesdays) at 919 S. Ada St.; admission free; guided apartment tours $15-$25 and scheduled online at nphm.org

But a few months later, Thomas, who is widely known as Chicago’s urban historian with his catchphrase “everything dope about America comes from Chicago,” is starting to settle into a new role as the brand ambassador and chief of social media for the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center.

During his career with ComEd, Thomas said, he was comfortable with a stable income and benefits while he pursued his personal projects on the side. He said he held several positions at the utility company and most recently served as the manager of digital content “and then ended up getting laid off.”

“Promises were made that I would be put in a secure position that wouldn’t be subject to budgetary constraints, and the exact opposite happened,” Thomas said.

He said he also lost out on his retirement plan, which was a double whammy considering the loss “hurts me now and it’s going to hurt me when I’m 65.”

The layoff was “very much unexpected,” Thomas said, as he had come in for work one day and was handed a letter giving him the news. He was one of 70 people laid off at the time.

ComEd declined a request for comment.

After his layoff, Thomas said he was contacted by the DuSable Museum and told that he had “a home here” if he wanted it. He has been working at the museum since late January, a partnership he said had “naturally formed” through his work as a historian.

Kim Dulaney, vice president of education and programs at the museum, said she first met Thomas at the museum a few years back and the two connected over a shared “love for history and a love for knowledge.”

“I always thought he would be an extremely valuable asset considering he’s a great visual representation of Chicago while being his authentic self,” Dulaney said. “He’s done so much for this city by sharing his passion and the positive influence that his messaging has had on individuals in the city.”

Dulaney said she is looking forward to seeing what Thomas will make of his formal role at the museum, adding that “he is such a solid, decent guy who is intentional about navigating spaces and crossing lines and bridging gaps.”

Thomas said he is still developing his role after going through the new hire process and is figuring out what exactly he can do for the museum.

“I want to highlight the work the museum is doing and use my social media platform to get more bodies through the door,” Thomas said. “Those are some of the aspects, but we’re mapping it out right now and seeing how to go about things.”

He said he hopes to increase the museum’s social media footprint, specifically to engage with a younger audience. He also would like to dive deeper into the stories behind the exhibits and share new information online that could draw people in.

Perri Irmer, president and CEO of the museum, said in a statement after Thomas’ hiring in January that the team is “thrilled” to have Thomas onboard.

“His knowledge of Chicago’s rich history and his dynamic approach to social media and storytelling will be a wonderful avenue to reach and engage with our community and with new audiences,” Irmer said in the statement.

Thomas is known for sharing his knowledge of Chicago’s history, such as how the Loop got the area code 312, on his Instagram and TikTok accounts. He started posting historical content in 2020 and gained a solid following under his moniker @6figga_dilla.

Thomas also continues to run his bus tour company, Chicago Mahogany, which he started in 2021 as a way to fight segregation by encouraging city natives, transplants and tourists to move beyond their screens, off their blocks and into Chicago’s diverse communities. The tours began as a byproduct of the historical content he was putting together, he said.

His social media presence and tour company are rooted in Chicago and its history, especially facts that he said may be “lesser known” or things people might not think about in a certain way. He enjoys sharing these tidbits about the city where he was born and raised and has always “loved exploring.”

He said giving tours allowed him to show locals and visitors alike parts of the city that are often overlooked when it comes to Chicago tourism, such as the South and West sides, which Thomas also toured with some of the delegates and politicians visiting in August during the Democratic National Convention.

Thomas’ favorite parts about leading tours are meeting different kinds of people and watching anyone with a negative or preconceived notion about certain parts of Chicago change their opinion over the course of a tour.

Thomas is continuing to put out a new YouTube series he started late last year called “You Don’t Know Chi,” which he is hoping to have aired on a few local television networks in the coming months. The series offers longer-format versions of the shorter videos he posts elsewhere.

He said he sees himself hosting tours for the foreseeable future because he is “always in a perpetual cycle of learning” and looks forward to sharing his knowledge.

The museum will be a nice change of pace, Thomas said, as it’s a space where he can learn even more about history and how the museum operates, from selecting exhibits to fundraising.

Before starting the job at DuSable, Thomas said he already had a working relationship with the museum because some of his bus tours, particularly the South Side tours, start at the museum. He has also hosted several events at the museum in the past, he said, all to increase the museum’s visibility.

His favorite part about working within the museum is, in fact, its history. Thomas said he loved learning the origin story of the museum, founded in 1961 by educator and artist Margaret Burroughs in her South Side home, as well as the history of the Washington Park building, which was designed by another well-known urbanite, Daniel Burnham.

Deputy director and chief curator Joey Orr said in an interview that the gift will establish a new MCA Performance Fund that will allow the museum to expand its offerings in the live arts. He declined to provide more specific information about the donor, citing their wish to remain anonymous, but described the gift as large and transformational.

“It’s going to make a lot of new things possible, he said.  To that end, he said, the museum has hired Moira Brennan, a former Chicagoan who became a noted administrator in the worlds of arts philanthropy and presenting. She will be the MCA’s director of performance and public programs.

The MCA had a rigorous performance program under former director of performance programming Peter Taub, a man known for excellent artistic taste and a desire to present eclectic work from top-tier performers including such artists as Mikhail Baryshnikov, Laurie Anderson, the Elevator Repair Service (whose hit show “Gatz” was seen at the MCA months before New York), and Spalding Gray, as well as South Africa’s Handspring Puppet Company and numerous dance companies with global reputations.  Some performances have continued. But by the time of Taub’s departure in 2016, following a 20-year tenure, the museum had come to see the space more as an adjunct to its visual arts exhibitions, and diminished resources further constrained independent live performance at the museum, a situation that the new grant clearly has the potential to change.

Orr said that the MCA had, in essence, re-created its performance department and planned to present local, national and international work as well as to return to the business of commissioning performance artists, one of Taub’s signatures.

Precisely what will be presented remains to be finalized. “We don’t feel everything that happens in the theater has to be directly related to the galleries,” Orr said. “Our perception is that our community is looking for deep support of local groups, as well as things that come from far away from home that they could never get their hands on without the support of a presenting organization.”

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

cjones5@chicagotribune.com

The world is on fire, and night is day, and war is peace.

And yet, the Chicago Humanities Festival is doubling down.

You might even say its Spring Festival, which begins later this week and runs through early June, looks so committed to rallying a defense to the New Reality, it’s provocative.

How else to read a festival of ideas featuring best-selling historian Timothy Snyder on freedom, plus historian Heather Cox Richardson (of the popular newsletter “Letters From an American”) on the need to revitalize democracy? (Both are part of the festival’s Lakeview Day at the Athenaeum on April 27.) Want to hear directly from the front lines? David Rubenstein, always the most interesting person in the room, owner of the Baltimore Orioles, former chair at the Smithsonian, current chair of the board of trustees at the University of Chicago and chair emeritus of the Brookings Institution, will likely talk about being fired by President Donald Trump from his position as chairman of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. (That’s April 21.) Activist Tamika Mallory (May 18) will discuss the creation of the Women’s March. Deborah N. Archer (April 24) will talk about what it’s like to be president of the ACLU now, and Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (May 18) will talk about facing armed protestors in 2020 who insisted that Trump won the election.

A single afternoon at Bridgeport Day (May 10, at the Ramova Theater and the Co-Prosperity gallery) plays like its own pointed argument for the importance of the free thinking, featuring an all-star group of 21st-century intellectuals: At 4 p.m., Chicago’s Eve Ewing discusses her excellent new book, “Original Sins,” on the history of how American schools fail Black and Indigenous students; at 1 p.m., Maggie Nelson links personal jaw pain with the current need to connect socially; and at 2:30 p.m., essayist Rebecca Solnit talks a bit of everything — abuse of power, climate change, democracy …

In fact, if you’re feeling excessively distracted by social media lately, there’s also a chat for that: MSNBC’s Chris Hayes on March 17. Issues with capitalism? That’s the New Yorker’s John Cassidy on May 18. Just don’t know how to argue with people anymore? University of Chicago philosopher Agnes Callard makes a case for Socrates on April 27.

Thoughtful-palooza?

Sanctuary City Limits?

Maybe the Chicago Humanities Festival just needs a better name now, a reminder the humanities is the study of culture. For instance, May 18 (Lincoln Park Day, at the Chicago History Museum), you could hear Chicago cartoonist Chris Ware discuss R. Crumb with his new biographer Dan Nadel, then return that afternoon for Ibram X. Kendi (“How to Be an Antiracist”) talking about his new young-adult biography of Malcolm X — and a conversation with Broadway producer Jeffrey Seller, of “Hamilton” and “Rent.”

I almost feel bad for the festival’s relatively lightweight opener: Paul Reiser, at the Music Box on Thursday. Speaking of “Hamilton” — Leslie Odom Jr. (he won a Tony Award for playing Aaron Burr in the original cast) sings at an Art Institute of Chicago Day on June 7. That same day at the museum, there’s a chat with cartoonist Alison Bechdel (“Fun Home”), and, apologies to hipsters for burying the lede here: Director Jim Jarmusch (on guitar) will deliver a very rare concert with experimental lute player Jozef van Wissem.

Should art for art’s sake prove too slight right now, might I suggest comedian Ed Helms, who brings his popular “SNAFU” podcast to Chicago (May 3) to discuss the history of huge (and quite real) fiascos, from CIA-trained feline spies to Project A119, an United States Air Force plan to detonate a nuke on the moon, as a show of military strength.

See? The world has always been full of wackos.

The question is, after the chatting, discussing and thinking — are we going to do something?

The Chicago Humanities Spring Festival begins March 13 and runs through early June. For information on additonal events, times, locations and ticket prices, visit chicagohumanities.org. 

cborrelli@chicagotribune.com