Albeit, music that buzzes and whines, thrums and fizzes. Music that crackles and pulses, rustles and hums like an industrial fan set too high. Music that clomps along with a rhythmic ththththththth, and a wooawhoowooa whoowooawhoo, and sometimes an Eee….erer Eee…erer Eee…erer. Music goes WEEEooo WEEEooo and sounds like a metal sheet in the wind.

That may not sound like music to many of you, but know that in the South, there have been news reports recently of residents calling 911 to complain about the incessant shrill of the cicadas. And that is exactly how a lot of people react to loud, discordant sounds that they don’t understand.

Also known as … music.

But this, you can’t dance to, and there is no melody nor lyrics.

Unless you count the word “pharaoh,” which some say is the sound of the cicadas. “You just can’t hear the tail end of the word, so it all blends together into a wave of ‘pharaohs,’ ” said David Rothenberg, a professor of philosophy at the New Jersey Institute of Technology who has a side gig as an experimental musician. He likes to collaborate with nature. Mockingbirds, whales. He’s arriving in Chicago on Wednesday to spend a week jamming with midwestern cicadas in public parks and open fields. He began playing with Illinois insects — him on clarinets and flutes, them on their buggy anatomy — about 13 years ago, and returns whenever a cicada brood emerges.

As collaborators, cicadas are patient, he said.

They don’t fly away. “It’s actually humbling,” he said. “You become one musician among millions, billions. You are one more sound. You fade into their drone. A lot of people think it’s ridiculous, of course, but I always think it’s good for a musician to recognize they are not the center of attention. People will say that this is not music, but then someone else is completely moved by the sound.”

Rothenberg even regards the 13- and 17-year sleep of cicadas as making a form of music, “if you think of it as being performed at a very slow rhythm.” Or, perhaps, as cicadas covering composer John Cage, whose famous piece, “4’33”,” was the long silence and incidental environmental sounds that came from just sitting in front an audience for four minutes and 33 seconds.

As for me, depending on where I am in the Chicago area these days, I also hear a theremin, that weird electronic instrument that requires its player to wave around their arms like a conductor.

Think: the spooky ethereal whirring of UFOs in 1950s sci-fi.

But sometimes I hear the hypnotic oscillation of the great 1970s punk act Suicide. And when several breeds of cicadas clash at once, I imagine the feedback tsunamis of Sonic Youth and Neil Young‘s Crazy Horse. Or even Lou Reed’s noise rock landmark “Metal Machine Music.” Other times I hear the synth soundtracks of old John Carpenter movies, or Michael Mann’s “Thief,” which blew up the Green Mill lounge in Uptown, arguably, symbolically, dislodging jazz.

You get musical variety with cicadas because different breeds produce different kinds of sounds. The result can be a wall of sound, which is also the name given to the recording style of Phil Spector, the famous producer and convicted murderer, whose 1960s classics came off so crowded with instrumentation it was hard to tell where one player ended and another began.

Cicadas sound like that.

Ryan Dunn, whose longtime Wicker Park art space Tritriangle occasionally plays host to hard-to-categorize noise makers, sees a degree of overlap with the music of cicadas: “In many ways, (experimental music) tends to have so much more in common with natural soundscapes, because it doesn’t hem to familiar, preestablished structures of Western music. And animals and insects in nature don’t, either. They are just trying to find a way to be heard the best.”

Chicago-based sound artist Kiku Hibino, whose work is typically heard in spaces like the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the Lincoln Park Conservatory, has made a career of drawing connections between the sounds created by nature and electronically created music. He grew up in Japan, often surrounded by cicadas, he said. He would collect their light green shells,  and he remembers the way cicadas chirped playfully whenever he tried to catch them. He describes their late summer song as going something like: “tsuku tsuku boshi.”

The analog synthesizer he favors for his art sounds suspiciously like the high-frequency calls of cicadas. He figures that’s because he never really shook loose childhood memories of the bugs.

In tone and sound, he said, “they are the complete opposite of electronic music in the fundamental way they produce sound. Electronic musicians think with our brains, and create sounds with synthesizers and then send them out to speakers. The cicada is different. Its entire body is a synthesizer with speakers.”

Specifically, a cicada contains a drum-like organ called a tymbal that includes a set of muscles that it pulls inward and snaps back at a rate of 300 to 400 times a second to create its songs.

The result — assuming their volume is quieter than a jet engine — can be meditative, and indistinguishable from the ambient soundscapes of artists like Brian Eno and Philip Glass.

Chicago-based StretchMetal is a record label and booking business that focuses on ambient music. Its signature project is an eight-hour-long Drone Sleepover during which the audience curls up — and usually sleeps — for a dusk-to-dawn concert of uninterrupted electronic droning. Once a month at the Hideout, StretchMetal also stages Drone Rodeo, a two-hour version.

Unlike many electronic artists, Gray Schiller, who curates and runs StretchMetal, said he doesn’t really distinguish between naturally-created and synthesized ambient sounds. The buzz of the cicada may be a “more literal manifestation of the natural world,” he said, but then, “the capacitors inside our synthesizers are made of clay. Our electronics wouldn’t hold power if they weren’t connected to ground or batteries composed of wet earth.”

Take comfort: Cicada season may be nearing its peak in Illinois, but the song of the (recorded) cicada plays on forever, no further than Spotify, where the ambient “First Summer Cicadas” has been streamed more than 181,000 times and “Cicada Sounds” has more than 168,000 listens.

On the other hand, you know who didn’t have Spotify?

The Greek poet Meleager of Gadara, who called the cicada “shrill-voiced.” Or Aesop, who thought of the cicada’s music as a free symphony. Or Margaret Atwood, way up in Canada, who probably has Spotify, but also once wrote of the insect perfectly, as emerging with “the yammer of desire, the piercing one note of a jackhammer, vibrating like a slow bolt of lightning.”

Each of those artists heard a natural performer where others heard a natural pest.

When Hibino was studying music in college, a professor in his first composition course played him a piece of abstract music and asked what he heard. He said he heard a giraffe. He heard a pepper mill grinding. Also, he heard cicadas. No, the professor revealed, it was just white noise.

But for Hibino, “It was my big aha moment, knowing sound can capture a human imagination.”

cborrelli@chicagotribune.com

The university filed a petition in Porter Superior Court on May 28 seeking to modify a trust established by the late Percy H. Sloan, which provided the paintings or the funding for them, to allow for the sale.

The paintings are “Mountain Landscape” by Frederic E. Church; “Rust Red Hills” by Georgia O’Keeffe; and “The Silver Veil and Golden Gate” by Frederick Childe Hassam.

According to appraisals received by the university, the fair market value of the O’Keeffe is estimated at $10.5 million to $15 million; the Hassam, between $1 million and $3.5 million; and the Church at $1 million to $3 million.

“The Attorney General has received and reviewed many documents and other information from the University and those in the Valparaiso community opposed to the sale in the months leading up to this Petition and has conducted additional research on the gift and the constraints placed upon it pursuant to the Gift Agreement, Will, and Trust,” the office’s filing states.

“The Attorney General does not object to the University’s requested relief as outlined in its Petition.”

Valparaiso University President José Padilla first announced the possible sale to the campus in February 2023, setting off a controversy on campus and drawing criticism from students, faculty and the greater university community, as well as opening the museum to censure or sanctions from other museums for lending or borrowing artwork.

The proposal also drew the ire of Richard Brauer, the museum’s namesake and founder, who has threatened to remove his name from the building if the sale moves forward.

The paintings were moved to a secure, off-campus location on Sept. 12.

In an email to the campus community last week, Padilla said the university had filed the petition and pledged to update the campus once the court makes a ruling.

“We will continue to take steps that we believe are in the best interest of all our students, in support of our mission and the University’s future — our highest priorities,” Padilla said in the email.

The Attorney General’s Office got the weight of the decision on the paintings’ fate after Brauer and the late Philipp Brockington, a retired VU law professor and museum benefactor, filed a lawsuit to halt the sale of the artwork last spring.

Porter Superior Court Judge Jeffrey Thode ruled in October that Brauer and Brockington did not have standing in the case, leaving the matter up to Rokita’s office. Brockington died in November.

Brauer and John Ruff, a senior English professor at Valparaiso University who has been long involved with the museum and also is a close friend of Brauer’s, filed a notice to intervene in the university’s petition to auction the artwork on Thursday.

The filing included an evaluation from Yale University-educated art scholar Wendy Greenhouse and the request that two or more art experts be heard on the petition before the university’s request is granted.

The university has demanded the petition to intervene be withdrawn, said Portage attorney Patrick McEuen, who has worked with Brauer, Brockington and now Ruff to stop the sale

The university claims that since Brauer and Brockington did not have standing in the lawsuit filed last year to stop the sale, an attempt to intervene now is therefore frivolous, McEuen said.

“We’re discussing any and all available options to contest this sale now that the university has demanded we withdraw the petition to intervene, including whether we need to withdraw the petition,” McEuen said.

Rokita’s office was tasked with determining whether the auction of the artwork to raise funds for dorm renovations for first-year students would be a violation of the tenets of the trust from Sloan.

“I don’t think this proposed sale is consistent with this trust, period,” said Boston attorney Nicholas O’Donnell, an expert on art law and author on the subject.

He added that as far as the university’s claim that two of the three paintings weren’t consistent with the intent of the trust to begin with, “I think it’s about 60 years too late” to make that argument. “That seems a bit much to me.”

As to Valparaiso University’s plans to use the proceeds from the auction to renovate the dorms and to construct the “Sloan Gallery of American Paintings” to display other, less valuable works from Sloan’s collection on a rotating basis, “I think that is an acknowledgment that a restriction (on the trust) exists, which also means they’re bound by it.”

“The university is the recipient of this charitable gift, and the university is bound by it,” O’Donnell said.

When Brandeis University lost a huge portion of its endowment because the scheming of financier Bernie Madoff brought down several of its large benefactors, the university argued that it had to sell the artwork in its expansive collection to survive, O’Donnell said, though Brandeis officials later backed down.

While Valparaiso University officials note declining enrollment — which they hope renovated housing can help rectify — and a $9 million deficit for the 2023/34 fiscal year, as well as the cost of storing the paintings in a secure location off campus and the expense to protect them at the Brauer Museum, the two campuses differ, O’Donnell said.

“Brandeis could credibly say, we’re facing an existential crisis because of the 2008 financial crisis” and Madoff’s actions, O’Donnell said.

He does not see the same thing at Valparaiso University, summarizing their argument: “We’re operating at a loss. We have important priorities.”

That’s not an argument for the cy pres doctrine, he said.

Under Indiana Code, and according to the petition filed by Valparaiso University, if property is given to a charitable trust “and it is or becomes impossible, impracticable, wasteful, or illegal to carry out the particular purpose,” the court “may direct the application of the property to some charitable purpose which falls within the general charitable intention of the settlor.”

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In simpler terms, Valparaiso University argues that keeping the paintings is too expensive and impractical to follow the terms of the trust and is therefore asking the court to sell the paintings and use the proceeds for the dorm renovations and a gallery of other paintings from the Sloan collection.

“The O’Keeffe, Hassam, and Church paintings have all substantially appreciated in value such that Valparaiso University can no longer, as a practical matter, securely display them in accordance with the Gift Agreement without incurring substantial capital improvement costs to its current art museum,” the petition states.

Renovating the museum to securely store the paintings would cost $50,000 to $100,000, with museum security guards and front desk staff costing $150,000 in salaries annually, according to the petition.

Additionally, the university claims in the petition that its enrollment has dropped by “nearly one-third over the past five years from 4,500 to less than 2,800 students.”

That and the operating deficit make it “impractical and wasteful for Valparaiso University to spend funds on the capital improvements needed to securely display the O’Keeffe, Hassam, and Church paintings. It is likewise wasteful for those three paintings to remain in storage.”

Part of the university’s argument is that keeping the paintings in storage does not serve the trust’s intention of educational purposes but creating a gallery within the renovated dorms would do that.

The university also argues that the new dorms will bring in more students, helping erase its budget deficit and also providing a larger audience to view the paintings in the collection.

The university, according to its petition, proposes renovating its freshman dormitories, Brandt and Wehrenberg halls, as part of its strategic plan. “The estimated cost of such renovations and capital improvements is between $12-20 million depending on final scope of work and material costs.”

The university’s argument for selling the paintings also hinges on its claim that two of the paintings, those by O’Keeffe and Hassam, do not fit in with the “conservative” art movement that was at the forefront of Sloan’s collection, and therefore should be deaccessioned.

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Brauer and Ruff disagree, as does Greenhouse, who is familiar with the museum’s collection, Brauer’s work and the paintings in question.

The university’s petition and the two art experts who provided supporting opinions claim that the O’Keeffe painting is abstract art and the one by Hassam is Impressionist, and neither, therefore, fits the definition of conservative art.

The petition also notes that Richard Brauer knew O’Keeffe’s work was not a conservative painting and purchased it anyway.

“I think the petition grossly misrepresents the narrative and maligns Richard Brauer, the committee he served with and the trustee, Louis Miller,” said Ruff, adding all of Brauer’s purchases for the museum were approved by Miller. “The narrative they tell about the acquisition is false.”

Miller, who was Sloan’s trustee, was involved in every purchase and guided the museum’s committee.

“He expressed gratitude for how they did their work,” Ruff said. “If the trustee were alive today, he would have no tolerance for this idea of selling artwork and using the proceeds for a dorm with gallery space.”

Ruff also scoffed at the idea that Brauer was working outside the limits of the trust.

“His guidance was instrumental but he wasn’t working alone,” he said.

Sloan talks a lot about the beauty of artwork in his trust and the value of art for educational purposes, said Greenhouse, of Oak Park, Illinois, who is familiar with the Brauer Museum’s collection.

The paintings by O’Keeffe and Hassam are beautiful, she said, also pointing out that the definition of “conservative” art has shifted over time, and therefore shouldn’t be a factor in whether the paintings remain in the collection.

“How come nobody realized they violated the trust until they needed the money?” she said, adding the Church painting, which is not under question for whether it’s a conservative painting, has been deemed too expensive to store or safely display.

From the university’s standpoint, the only way to honor the trust is to sell the artwork, renovate the dorms and fulfill the educational mission of the trust with a gallery in the dorms, Greenhouse said. Even Miller, the executor of the trust, understood the value of the paintings.

“Their argument is so convoluted and misguided,” she said of the university’s petition.

In the long run, Greenhouse said, selling the paintings will undermine the university’s educational mission.

“This is such an example of cutting your nose off to spite your face,” she said, “and unfortunately, it’s going on across the country.”

alavalley@chicagotribune.com

The genesis of the Field Museum 130 years ago may seem today like a mishmash of items — animals in skeleton and taxidermied forms; precious gemstones, minerals and jewels; insects and invertebrate collections; fossils and meteorites from dig sites near and far and a smattering of other rarely seen curiosities — but it soon became a leading institution dedicated to scientific exploration and educational experiences for visitors about the people, creatures, habits and habitats that have shaped our planet.

Here’s a look back at highlights in the museum’s continuing evolution.

‘We need people power:’ How visitors to the Field Museum are helping with scientific research

May 31, 1890: Chicago’s World’s Fair — ‘perfect ethnolographical exhibition of the past and present peoples of America’

Frederic Ward Putnam, one of America’s first anthropologists and professor and curator of the Peabody Museum at Harvard University, suggested Chicago look to Paris for a key element to incorporate into its 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition — “the study of man.”

“The reproduction of the habitations of man, showing the development of architecture from the primitive shelters of savages to the elaborate dwellings of barbaric times, and finally to the early classical architecture, was a grand conception and count but impress upon the mind the trials and struggles through which the civilization of today has been attained,” Putname wrote in the Tribune.

The fair’s organizers agreed and put Putnam on their payroll. Just a few days after commissioners for the World’s Columbian Exposition settled on Jackson Park as the site for the event, Putnam recommended the fair dedicate $300,000 (or roughly about $10 million in today’s dollars) for archaeological expeditions — from Greenland to Patagonia — to collect artifacts which would then be housed in a large, permanent ethnological museum on the grounds.

Inside the Field Museum’s hidden flesh-eating beetle room

But the Tribune’s Editorial Board scoffed at the potential cost — calling it “prehistoric crankery” — for the cash-strapped undertaking.

“If the archaeological enthusiasts think that the public has a wild, yearning desire to see skeletons from the glacial gravels or detritus from the cave floors and shell heaps, let them spend their own money,” they wrote. “The directors have no money to waste on the man of the ice sheet or stone monstrosities from serpent mounds. … All that is necessary can be supplied by the Smithsonian Institution, and if Mexico, Greenland, or Peru pride themselves on this prehistoric stuff they can easily be induced to send it.

Putnam, given $100,000, hired two young assistants who would go on to become legends in anthropological history, German-trained Franz Boas and George Dorsey, Putnam’s prize graduate student at Harvard who in 1894 earned the first anthropology doctorate degree granted in the U.S.

The three men selected 100 men — graduate students, soldiers, sailors, diplomats and missionaries — to fan out through 50 countries to seek out and bring home outstanding artifacts for display in the 157,000 square foot Anthropology Building.

Each of the collectors was given detailed instructions on how to properly excavate and scientifically record a prehistoric ruin. If the expedition was visiting living tribal cultures, collectors were told what sorts of items to acquire:

“Particular attention should be paid to the fact that the most important things to be collected are those of genuine native manufacture, and especially those objects connected with the olden times. Objects traded to the natives by whites are of no importance, and are not desired.”

It was an unprecedented undertaking for its time, not exacting or professional by today’s standards, but more scientifically rigorous than other expeditions of that period.

May 1, 1893: Ethnic village opens with the exhibition — but without Putnam’s guidance

Beyond boxes of artifacts, many of the expeditions returned with groups of people they had studied, along with whole houses and portions of their villages to be displayed at the fair — a practice that would horrify today’s anthropologists. Among the 3,000 indigenous peoples were Laplanders, Alaskan Eskimos, North and South American Indians, Melanesians, Maoris, Javanese, Sri Lankans, Africans, Arabs and Egyptians. Putnam planned to install “a dignified and decorous ethnological display” on an 80-acre strip of land called the Midway Plaisance.

Vintage Chicago Tribune: World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893 and Century of Progress, 1933-1934

Fair directors, however, were looking for ways to recover the millions of dollars in Chicago money invested in the fair. They took control of the Midway away from Putnam and gave it to Sol Bloom, a young protege of showman P.T. Barnum.

Under Bloom, who sold concessions to entertainment vendors, the “native” villages were tucked among beer halls and restaurants featuring food and music from around the world, a huge circus of performing wild animals, Buffalo Bill Cody’s internationally famous “Wild West Show,” and notorious entertainers, including belly-dancing “hoochie-coochie” girls. The area became an instant hit with visitors and the salvation of investors — but did not at all represent Putnam’s “dignified” plan.

Oct. 27, 1893: A home for the rare — and the odds and ends — gets a major influx of cash

Discussions began in late August 1893, on what to do with all the artifacts that had been assembled in Chicago for the exposition after it closed. A committee of trustees for the project began to solicit financial requests to establish a permanent museum that would memorialize the exposition. Originally dubbed the Columbian Museum of Chicago, the collection was set to occupy the exposition’s Palace of Fine Arts.

Marshall Field, founder of his namesake department store, heeded the call by giving the largest donation — $1 million (or more than $30 million in today’s dollars). The Tribune reported Field’s generosity was made “with as little ceremony as he would pay an admission fee to Jackson Park.” It was lumberman Edward E. Ayer who persuaded Field to make the generous contribution — and proposed the museum be named after Field.

Soon, wealthy Chicagoans rushed to support the project. George Pullman promised $100,000.  Ayer, who would become the museum’s first director, donated his extensive collection of Native American artifacts and purchased the museum’s original collection of Egyptian artifacts.

Off display: As new rules about Native American artifacts go into effect, the Field Museum and others in Illinois must comply

Yet, the common man who attended the exposition also looked to donate his items to the museum out of frugality, “It gets their names in the papers and saves the expense of packing and carting away,” the Tribune reported.

Among the museum’s earliest acquisitions were the following items from the exposition: Ward’s Natural Science Establishment collection of fossil invertebrates, the entire Tiffany & Co. gem display, a collection of pre-Columbian gold ornaments and musical instruments from Samoa and Java.

June 2, 1894: Field Museum opens

Six thousand people gathered to view the museum’s collections after a simple ceremony featured “a prayer, two speeches, a single word spoken to a man holding a lanyard, a colored streamer rose to masthead, throwing a fluttering shadow downward, and the Field Columbian Museum was given to the people,” the Tribune reported.

Visitors who entered the building’s rotunda could walk along the evolution of the earth before man’s appearance — baked vegetation covered with lichen, then a cross section of a California redwood tree that was nearly 6 feet in diameter, followed by animal including a mastodon, mammoth and a whale.

May 2, 1921: Antiquities get a new home

The museum quickly outgrew its Jackson Park home, which also needed major repairs. (It reopened as the Museum of Science and Industry on July 1, 1933, as part of the Century of Progress exposition.) Construction began in July 1915, on the museum’s current site at Roosevelt Road near Northerly Island and was expected to take two to three years. Costs were estimated at $5 million (or roughly $156 million in today’s dollars).

One year prior to its opening, the museum’s exhibits were carefully removed from their first home and transported about 6 miles north to their new home.

Why the Field Museum wasn’t built on Chicago’s lakefront

More than 8,000 visitors braved a “biting wind and drizzly rain” to enter what the Tribune called “the greatest natural history museum in the west, and one of the finest examples of Ionic architecture in this country.” For the first time they could view the the exhibits — including prehistoric animals, skeletons, Egyptian relics and mummies and Native American handcrafted works — in spacious accommodations.

Then, just as now, the museum was open every day except Thanksgiving and Christmas.

1924: Lions of Tsavo land in Chicago

In 1898, two “devil” lions inexplicably began attacking laborers constructing the Uganda Railway near the Kenyan city of Tsavo. Before the beasts’ nine-month reign of terror was over, an estimated 135 men (though that total was later challenged) were slaughtered and the progress of the monumental project was halted.

Field Museum scientists use X-rays to examine infamous man-eating lions to settle skull mystery

Col. J.H. Patterson, an engineer, had to subdue the animals before construction could continue, and the British empire could expand its colonial reach. He wrote a book titled “The Man-Eaters of Tsavo and Other East African Adventures,” about the experience, which was later adapted into the 1996 film “The Ghost and the Darkness.”

Nearly three decades later, in 1924, Patterson would journey to Chicago to lecture on the incident.

The museum’s chairman of the board, Stanley Field, asked his friend if he knew what had become of the lions. Patterson told him they were serving as rugs in his home.

LEGENDARY LIONS

Field offered to purchase the bullet-riddled skins — and the cats’ skulls — for $5,000. The deal struck, taxidermist Julius Friesser was given the task of getting them in shape for display.

Other talented men who have worked with the institution’s animal displays include “Father of Modern Taxidermy” Carl Akeley, Carl Cotton and Sinclair Clark.

1951: Bushman — ‘the most famous animal to ever call Chicago home’

Bushman, a gorilla born in Cameroon then brought to Chicago by American missionaries, was the highlight of a visit to the Lincoln Park Zoo. In the 1930s and 1940s he so firmly embedded himself into the hearts and minds of our citizenry that by 1950, Time magazine could accurately write that he was “the best known and most popular civic feature in Chicago.” During his lifetime, Bushman was seen by an estimated 100 million people.

Bushman, Lincoln Park Zoo gorilla (1928-1951)

After his death on New Year’s Day 1951, the massive 6-foot-2, 550-pound gorilla was brought to the Field Museum where its expert taxidermists carefully preserved and encased in glass the beloved animal who greets visitors at the museum’s East Entrance.

Another monumental animal who lived in Chicago is tucked away in a back corner on the museum’s main level. Su-Lin was the first live panda brought to the United States from China.

April 15, 1977: King Tut’s tomb treasures attract thousands

The Field Museum was one of six institutions in the United States chosen to host 55 objects that once belonged to the young King Tutankhamun. The exhibit idea was formed during the administration of President Richard Nixon, who wanted the American people to associate Egypt with something more than oil and water, according to the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Unlike his possessions, King Tut didn’t make the trip to Chicago — his mummy remained in the Valley of the Kings outside Luxor, Egypt. Chicago was the second stop of “The Treasures of Tutankhamun” tour, which remained incredibly popular during its four months at the Field Museum. Long lines of eager visitors regularly snaked outside the museum and down its front entrance steps. Once inside, each paid the $1.50 admission then waited for TV monitors announcing when they could enter the Tut exhibit.

More than 1.3 million people — at a rate of more than 1,000 per hour — viewed the King Tut exhibit.

May 17, 2000: Here’s looking at Sue

After years of hype and hullabaloo, dinosaur fans finally got to see the biggest, most complete and the most expensive at the time ($8.36 million) Tyrannosaurus rex fossil ever found — on permanent display in Chicago.

The dinosaur’s skeleton was discovered in 1990 near Faith, S.D., by Black Hills Institute of Geology worker Sue Hendrickson — earning it the nickname “Sue.” Federal authorities seized the fossil in 1992, claiming it was illegally removed from a Sioux ranch held in trust by the government. The government chose to sell the fossil at auction — the first T.rex to be sold in this way — in New York on Oct. 4, 1997.

The Field Museum, with McDonald’s and Walt Disney corporations helping bankroll the purchase, bought the specimen during the dramatic, high-stakes auction hosted by Sotheby’s. The money went to the rancher. The Black Hills Institute, left with nothing, claimed trademark and licensing rights to the Sue name. When the institute and the Field Museum could not come to an agreement on the use of the name, the museum dropped the Sue name in January 1998, announcing a contest for elementary-school children to find a new name (who chose the name “Dakota”). A few weeks later, however, the institute agreed to drop all claims on the name Sue.

Sue is no longer the priciest T. rex ever, but is it still the best specimen? Let’s go to the tape

Many paleontologists feared that if the 65-million-year-old fossil were purchased by a private buyer, then it would not be made available for scientific study. But they celebrated the specimen’s arrival at the museum, where it has undergone a variety of CAT scans and other technological tests that continue today.

Originally Sue occupied a prime position in Stanley Field Hall, the institution’s grand entrance. Since December 2018, Sue has lived in a second-floor gallery on the path through the “Evolving Planet” exhibit.

May 2022: ‘Native Truths’ exhibit shifts the narrative where it belongs — straight to Indigenous people

From the 1950s until 2019, the Field Museum’s Native North America Hall was a haphazard collection of everyday Indigenous American items. Vague, terse descriptions rendered the artifacts as faceless as the mannequins on display. Field anthropologists had hastily collected the items in the late 19th century, assuming, chillingly, that the cultures of their origin wouldn’t last.

‘Apsáalooke Women and Warriors’ is Field Museum’s first major show curated by a Native American scholar

“Native Truths: Our Voices, Our Stories,” was a long-awaited corrective. A four-year project, the permanent exhibit replaced the former Native North America displays bringing the history of Native American life in dialogue with its kaleidoscopic present.

The exhibit’s writer-curators — representing about 100 of the 574 federally recognized Native American tribes in the U.S. — contextualize items from the Field’s holdings through first-person descriptions, mostly relayed via touch screen. Fifty of the 400-plus items on display were commissioned by contemporary Native artists specifically for the exhibit, where they’re juxtaposed with historical artworks and artifacts.

May 2024: Archaeopteryx arrives

The museum’s most important fossil acquisition since Sue the T. rex has feathers, hollow bones, a long tail and 50 teeth — and is the earliest known avian dinosaur, a link between dinosaurs and modern birds.

Field Museum welcomes world’s largest predatory dinosaur

The fossil is accompanied by a hologram-like projection showing how the Archaeopteryx would have looked in life. It’s one of two Archaeopteryx specimens in the United States — and only a dozen others have been found.

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Stewart, a prominent film scholar and Turner Classic Movies host, has helped steer the Academy Museum through its opening phase, serving as its chief artistic and programming officer from 2020-2022, when she became its leader. During her tenure, she helped make new galleries bilingual and oversaw the opening of many exhibitions, including one on Black Cinema between 1989 and 1971.

Homma has been with the Los Angeles based museum for five years, most recently as its chief audience officer.

The film academy, the organization behind the Oscars, also announced several more promotions in its executive ranks to unite teams within the Academy, including the foundation, the museum and the Oscars. In May, the film academy launched a $500 million fundraising campaign in the leadup to the 100th Oscars in 2028.

“As the Academy evolves, we are bringing teams together to create a better sense of shared purpose across the organization,” Academy CEO Bill Kramer said in a statement.

Jennifer Davidson was promoted to lead marketing and communications in a newly created role overseeing all arms of the academy and Jenny Galante will serve as the chief revenue officer, leading the Academy100 fundraising campaign.

The organization also said that longtime academy archivist Randy Haberkamp is retiring after 23 years. Matt Severson will succeed him in a new role in which he will oversee the collections and preservation efforts for all 23 million items in the Academy Collection.

Not all the exhibitions below are free, but enough are to prove, yet again, that Chicago is the very best major American city to spend a summer. (Then again, we’re biased, aren’t we?)

Chicago’s hottest club is … the Shedd Aquarium? Heck, it might be, with a full slate of after-hours events plotted for the summer. Lindy-hop with a rockhopper and get down with the gobies. All at the Shedd Aquarium, 1200 S. DuSable Lake Shore Drive, and $20-$40 for non-members: Pride Night 6 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. June 1; Jazzin’ at the Shedd every Wednesday, 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. from June 5 to Aug. 28.; Shedd House Party, 6 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. June 8, June 14, July 13 and July 19; and Ritmo del Mar, 6 p.m. to 10:30 p.m. July 27.

If you can’t beat ’em, eat ’em: Thomas Jefferson was president and ground had been barely broken on Fort Dearborn the last time two cicada broods emerged simultaneously in northern Illinois, in 1803. Another convergence is taking place for this summer. On the off-chance a ’round-the-clock chorus of 100,000 miniature air raid sirens makes you say, “More, please!”, the Field Museum has a slate of events related to nature’s favorite alarm clocks. For example: in the spirit of those who have resorted to cooking up cicadas in other flush years, an offsite collaboration with Big Star puts grasshopper tacos and ant mole on the menu. Before you sup, pay your respects to another esteemed insect-eater before it’s retired for the summer: the Field’s recently acquired Chicago Archaeopteryx goes off display June 9.

• Cicada Pinning Workshop, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. May 29 at the Field Museum of Natural History, 1400 S. DuSable Lake Shore Drive; tickets $30.
• Bug Bites, 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. June 11 at Big Star West Town, 551 N. Ogden Ave.; first come, first serve, or reserve a spot at OpenTable.com.
• PlayLab PlayDate: Cicadas Take Flight Storytime & Craft, 11 a.m. to noon June 26 at the Field Museum of Natural History, 1400 S. DuSable Lake Shore Drive; free with museum admission; recommended for children ages 2-6.

A newspaper man gets an exhibit: On April 30, 1997, Mike Royko’s weekday Tribune column ran in its usual spot. But instead of his arrowhead prose — short, straight and piercing — it ran letters from readers grieving his death three days before. This exhibition draws from Royko’s papers at the Newberry Library, including clippings from his stints at all three major then-Chicago dailies and other ephemera. “Chicago Style: Mike Royko and Windy City Journalism,” June 20 to Sept. 28, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tues.-Thurs., and 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays at the Newberry Library, 60 W. Walton St.; free, newberry.org.

Brookfield’s birthday bash: Now rebranded Brookfield Zoo Chicago and undertaking an ambitious redevelopment project, the suburban institution is ringing in its 90th year in a big way with three major musical acts, over three concerts. The Barenaked Ladies have already sold out, but tickets are still available for The Fray and Gin Blossoms. “Roaring Nights,” featuring The Fray June 22 and Gin Blossoms July 27, both 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.; tickets $45-$55, one child 12 and under gets in free.

This planet is not like the others: Through models, dioramas, and touchable meteorites, a new permanent exhibition slated to open later this summer at Adler Planetarium uses groundbreaking research on exoplanets — planets outside our solar system — to inform our understanding of Earth. “Other Worlds,” opening mid-July at the Adler Planetarium, 1300 S. DuSable Lake Shore Drive; basic entry $8-$19.

A picture is worth … Two photography exhibitions take over the Cultural Center this summer. A citywide exhibition anchored at the Cultural Center, “Opening Passages” captures the twin urban landscapes of Chicago and Paris (sister cities, by the way). After that, block off an entire afternoon for “Images on which to build,” which occupies the entire first-floor east exhibition wing. This commanding exhibition features a different photographer or organization in each room, telling queer history through a chorus of voices. A special highlight: an overdue local retrospective of Mexican-American photographer and activist Diana Solís, once a photojournalist for the Tribune. Both at the Chicago Cultural Center, 78 E. Washington St., 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily, free admission: “Images on which to build,” through Aug. 4, and “Opening Passages,” through Aug. 25, with additional installations at 6018|North (6018 N. Kenmore Ave.), BUILD Chicago (5100 W. Harrison St.), and Experimental Station (6100 S. Blackstone Ave.).

Saving children from war: The Illinois Holocaust Museum hosts what is somehow the first major American exhibition about the Kindertransport, a coordinated effort to evacuate nearly 10,000 children from Europe to the United Kingdom. There could be some sheepishness involved: a bill that would have allowed for a similar program in the U.S. stalled before even reaching a congressional vote. “Kindertransport: Rescuing Children on the Brink of War,” Weds.-Mon. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Nov. 17 at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, 9603 Woods Drive, Skokie; free to $18.

Urban paradigms: The Chicago Architecture Center’s latest exhibition uses the Loop as a lens to examine American downtowns, facing an identity crisis after getting rocked by COVID. The exhibition includes interviews with downtown residents and a “ballot box” for sounding off on whatever urban-planning gripes are on your mind. “Loop as Lab: Reshaping Downtowns,” daily 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Jan. 5, 2025 at the Chicago Architecture Center, 111 E. Wacker Drive; free to $14.

Illustrating a movement: With the DNC on the tip of everyone’s tongue, and the aftertaste of 1968 still lingering on it, the Chicago History Museum’s new gallery of protest art of the 1960s and 1970s feels apropos, to say the least. “Designing for Change: Chicago Protest Art of the 1960s-70s,” 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Tues.–Sat and noon to 5 p.m. Sundays through May 4, 2025 at the Chicago History Museum, 1601 N. Clark St.; admission free to $19.

The other kind of bard: If you’ve ever unwound with a video game or weekly Dungeons & Dragons campaign, thank a writer. The American Writers Museum champions an undersung pocket of the literary community with a spotlight on game writers. The museum will stock up on board games and card decks for visitors to play onsite, and is welcoming reservations from RPG campaigns in conjunction with the yearlong exhibition. “Level Up: Writers & Gamers,” Thurs.-Mon. 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. through May 5, 2025 at the American Writers Museum, 180 N. Michigan Ave., 2nd floor; admission free to $16.

A marvelous migration: Larger-than-life butterfly statues will wing to public parks all over the city in July, thanks to an art commissioning project by the Nature Museum. Before they scatter, check out the whole array onsite at the museum, or on Mag Mile, where a few were installed earlier this month. “Flight of Butterflies,” daily 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. through Sept. 2025 at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum, 2430 N. Cannon Drive; admission free to $17.

Song science: Why do we find music so irresistible, anyway? A new timed-entry experience at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry — which just joined the ranks of scores of cultural entities renamed for billionaire donor Kenneth C. Griffin — answers, using immersive visuals to show the neuroscience behind our love of rhythm. “Notes to Neurons,” daily 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, 5700 S. DuSable Lake Shore Drive; general admission $26 for adults, $15 for children, but requires a free onsite RSVP.

Hannah Edgar is a freelance writer.

Nathan died May 5 at the age of 98. She is remembered by artists, fellow gallery owners and others for having made an indelible mark on Chicago.

In the mid-’70s, an enterprising real estate developer dubbed an industrial part of the city River North, and it grew into a hip arts-and-restaurant district. Within a decade, it hosted the largest concentration of art galleries outside of Manhattan. Opening in 1986, Nathan’s Objects Gallery was one of the first along with Zolla/Lieberman, Roy Boyd and Carl Hammer. “Ann was a fixture in River North, and her gallery important all through the years,” says Natalie van Straaten, founder of the publication Chicago Gallery News. “A stellar figure to colleagues, collectors, and artists, Ann had a unique interest in three-dimensional and figural art.”

Moreover, Nathan sold things that people could actually afford, and she represented up-and-coming creatives who were not yet blue-chip artists.

Her gallery was one of several destroyed by a devastating 1989 fire. “If I were 10 years younger, I’d go west,” Nathan told Tribune critic Alan Artner at the time. “But I am in the autumn of my life and cannot envision pioneering another neighborhood. I won’t leave the others.” She and other gallery owners found temporary quarters in the first floor of the Merchandise Mart.

In April 1993, the Objects Gallery moved to 210 W. Superior and changed its name to Ann Nathan Gallery. Hovering in an elegant, artsy space a half-story above sidewalk level, it was an anchor for the neighborhood. For many years, it was one of the stops on the popular “First Friday” events that introduced real art to so many people.

But it was a far cry from her roots as a Chicago gallerist. Nathan began in a nearly closet-sized space in the Ravenswood neighborhood, which she rented from the renowned sculptor Ruth Duckworth. That first iteration of Objects opened in 1983 — after establishing an employment agency, she gave it up in her mid-50s to open an art gallery.

Visitors to River North may remember the welcoming atmosphere of the Nathan Gallery, which was an extension of Ann’s personality. Long-time associate director Victor Armendariz remembered that she “talked with the building’s maintenance people just as she would with the wealthiest collector.” But this in no way meant that Nathan lowered her standards or her critical faculties. “Everything had to be of a certain quality, had to be serious,” Armendariz recalled, “including the people she surrounded herself with. She would even teach people how to take themselves seriously.”

Her twinkling eyes and apple cheeks belied her intense business savvy. “She was wonderfully tough,” recalled van Straaten.

In her gallery, Nathan showed a cozy medley of artists and styles — from realistic paintings and sculpture to African tribal art, from folk and what was then called outsider pieces to jewelry and ceramics. She also demonstrated a deep commitment to hometown artists. Artist Mark Bowers, one of Nathan’s rising stars, reflected, “Ann was not only my gallery owner, but a friend who pushed the growth of my art making while taking a sincere interest in my family and life.” She also supported a roster of women and artists of color long before it was popular to do so. Never a fan of pure abstraction, her galleries specialized in showing figurative and craft works. Because of this, she fostered and encouraged what has become Chicago’s signature style: Think the Hairy Who collective, Imagism and other figure-based expression.

Nathan also rejected the elitist distinction between art and design, between purely aesthetic and solely functional objects. Her gallery featured beautiful pieces of crafted furniture on which visitors were invited to sit. Another of Nathan’s contributions to art was to blur the line between styles, between media, and to flout the rules about which objects could be seen together. It affected how she lived. Those who visited her home attest to its intriguing — to some, perplexing — eclecticism. Legendary is the account of Nathan’s four-day Glencoe house sale in the late 1980s to clear the object-choked home for a move into a downtown Streeterville apartment.

Although her devotion to objects never changed, her vision for the gallery evolved over the years. Her focus narrowed from showing all manner of craft pieces to more traditional figurative art and representational artworks, including photography. Nathan’s philosophy for representing artists and selling art was simple: she took on what she liked, what she herself might have bought. “Things look at you and they speak,” she cleverly observed in a 1988 Tribune interview. “When it (a piece) starts talking to you, buy it.” Linking the artist to the viewer, she advised people to “buy from your heart, just as the artist paints from the soul.”

Many stars of figurative and narrative realistic art had their first solo shows with her, including Rose Freymuth-Frazier, Mary Borgman, the sculptor-ceramicist Cristina Córdova and art-furniture maker Jim Rose. David Becker, originally known as a printmaker, first showed his haunting paintings there. Also part of Nathan’s stable were the figurative realist Bruno Surdo and the landscape master Deborah Ebbers. Her exhibitions of the late Chicago photographer Art Shay helped consolidate his historical reputation. But not just a promoter of individual artists, Nathan was a tastemaker, too. With the painter-collector Roger Brown, Nathan was a founder of what became Intuit: The Center for Intuitive and Outsider Art, and she encouraged other galleries to become involved as well. Sensitive to this aesthetic early on, her former Objects Gallery featured important pieces by self-taught artists like Howard Finster and now highly sought-after Southern moonshine jugs.

Nathan’s presence lives on in River North. Armendariz, her capable lieutenant of two decades, has established his own River North gallery (Gallery Victor at 300 Superior St.), which features many of the artists previously represented at Nathan’s gallery.

Towards the end of her career, she and her husband Walter Nathan stayed busy with their social and industry contacts; Walter died in 2018 after a marriage of 68 years. Ever the thoughtful curator, Ann moved things around in her own home, finding new relationships between them and bringing others out of storage to experience them afresh. She couldn’t stop appreciating things. Indeed, for many years her gallery announcements included the injunction: “Don’t stop looking at Art.”

Nathan helped teach Chicago how to look.

Mark B. Pohlad is an associate professor of history of art and architecture at DePaul University.

Over 42,000 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, have passed through Chicago in close to two years on buses and planes from the southern border. When they arrive, they often have little room to think of anything but how to survive — how to find a house, file their asylum papers and make enough money to feed their children.

Yamin said she understands this feeling. She moved to the United States seven years ago with her husband to study violin performance at DePaul University.

In their home country, they were part of El Sistema, a state-funded music education program in Venezuela that trains hundreds of thousands of musicians across social classes how to play classical music, among other genres.

El Sistema has been bringing music education to vulnerable communities in Venezuela since 1975. Patricia Abdelnour, former deputy director of internal relations of the organization, said it operates in hundreds of small nucleos, or practice groups that provide safe havens and resources at a neighborhood level.

The music program is touted as one of the most successful in Latin America, despite the crisis in Venezuela brought on by the country’s far-left leader and tanking oil industry.

“In a way, when everything else seems to be failing, the only thing that has kept going has been El Sistema,” Abdelnour said.

Yamin joined El Sistema when she was 7 years old and said her participation in classical music gave her a path out of her country in 2017 when tensions and protests against the president were escalating. But she said her adjustment to Chicago was hard.

“At that time, we were so busy studying and working that we actually didn’t give any importance to enjoying music,” she said.

Yamin is now one of 11 participants in the Civic Orchestra of Chicago’s fellowship program, which funds musicians to design and execute an independent project.

She wanted to give the new arrivals — many focused singularly on meeting their own basic needs — the space to “reconnect with themselves” through music.

She coordinated with city officials to find a space inside a shelter and selected eight pieces that combined traditional and classical music styles. The songs were originally meant to be sung, she said, but her former music teacher and Venezuelan cellist German Marcano arranged them for string instruments.

Rachael Cohen, program manager for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Negaunee Music Institute, said the Chicago Symphony Orchestra is currently looking for more ways to interact with the migrant community in Chicago.

“It’s so special that Lina took that initiative. It’s part of her story too,” Cohen said.

Most of the musicians who performed are also from Latin America. Yamin’s husband and fellow violinist Nelson Mendoza, the cellist Omkara Gil and the maracas player Karel Zambrano are from Venezuela. Cuatro player Jose Luis Posada is from Colombia and violist Carlos Lozano is from Mexico. Only the bassist Ben Foerster is from the United States.

The concert started with “Lejania,” a piece composed in 1946 when Venezuelans migrated from the country to big cities.

“More than anything, it’s about melancholy and longing for where you come from,” Yamin said to the audience.

When the music started, a few dozen migrants took videos of the stringed instruments and shakers. Some nodded along.

The second song, “El Norte es una Quimera,” was about a man who moved from Venezuela to New York in the ‘50s and went home after struggling to make it. One song used the familiar sounds of an ice cream seller in Venezuela. Another, “Pajarillo,” combined bits of a traditional Venezuelan dance tune with the classical notes of a fugue.

During the second to last song, “Alma Llanera,” Domarys Acosta, a 37-year-old mother from Venezuela, stood up in her chair and clapped.

Acosta, who worked at a day care in Valencia, Venezuela, left her country in February to make it to Chicago with her husband and two kids. She said she spends her days asking for money on the streets because she has few options, and doesn’t have time to seek out music.

“It lifted my spirits. A mí me subió el ánimo,” she said.

The concert ended with the song “Venezuela” — a slower melody reminding those in attendance of everything they have to be proud of in Venezuela. Some migrants closed their eyes as they listened. 

“It’s been a long time since I’ve felt that pride,” Acosta said. “In my country, we danced all the time.” 

The Venezuelan music tradition is a unique mixture of Indigenous, African and European influences. And the El Sistema program — which has spread classical music to widespread communities — makes it more distinct, said Dr. Pedro Aponte, professor of musicology at James Madison University. 

“We talk about classical music the same way we talk about baseball in this country,” he said.

Yamin lamented that she couldn’t play songs from all genres. But for her, the act of sitting and listening to classical music embodies hope.

And her work was well received. People smiled. Children came up to the stage to hug Yamin afterward.

“!Uno más! One more!” they cheered.

nsalzman@chicagotribune.com

U.S. Ambassador Jack Markell, Matthew Bogdanos, the head of the antiquities trafficking unit of the New York district attorney’s office, and members of the U.S. Homeland Security Investigations department were on hand for the presentation alongside the leadership of Italy’s Culture Ministry and Carabinieri art squad.

It was the latest presentation of the fruits of Italy’s decades-old effort to recover antiquities that were looted or stolen from its territory by “tombaroli” tomb raiders, sold to antiquities dealers who often forged or fudged provenance records to resell the loot to high-end buyers, auction houses and museums.

Markell said that Washington was committed to returning the stolen loot “to where it belongs” as a sign of respect for Italy and its cultural and artistic heritage.

“We know that safeguarding this history requires care and vigilance, and this is why we do what we do,” he said, adding that the U.S. was keeping a close eye on the latest target for art traffickers: Ukraine.

Not included in the latest haul from the U.S. was the “Victorious Youth” ancient Greek bronze statue, the object of a decades-long court battle between Italy and the Malibu, California-based Getty Museum. The prized statue recently made headlines anew when the European Court of Human Rights strongly backed Italy’s right to seize it, reaffirming that it had been illegally exported from Italy.

Bogdanos and Homeland Security officials declined to comment on whether or when the “Victorious Youth” might be returned, saying it’s part of an ongoing investigation.

Among the most valuable artifacts on display Tuesday was a fourth-century Naxos silver coin depicting god of wine Dionysius that was looted from an illicit excavation site in Sicily before 2013 and smuggled to the United Kingdom. Bogdanos said the coin, which was being offered for sale for $500,000, was found in New York last year as part of an investigation into a noted British coin dealer.

He said that other items were returned from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and some of the well-known New York philanthropists who donated artifacts to its collections that turned out to have been stolen.

The returned artifacts, ranging from the ninth century B.C. to the second century, also included a life-sized bronze figure, as well as bronze heads and multiple Etruscan vases. Other items, including oil paintings from the 16th and 19th centuries, had been stolen from Italian museums, religious institutions and private homes in well-documented thefts, the carabinieri said.

Bogdanos, who forged an alliance with the Italian carabinieri art squad as they tried to recover Iraq’s stolen antiquities after the U.S. invasion, said that Washington doesn’t distinguish between items taken during illicit excavations or those stolen in thefts: it all amounts to looting.

“Looting is local,” Bogdanos said. Locals “know when the security guards come on, they know when they come off. They know when the security guards are guarding particular sites and not others. They know when there are scientific, proper, approved archeological excavations, and then they know when those archaeological excavations close for example, for the winter or for lack of funding.”

Given that, he said, there will always be looting.

“Our job is to minimize it, increase the risk to those who would engage in this traffic, convict them and where appropriate, sentence them,” Bogdanos said.

“Chryssa & New York”: The mononymous Athens-born artist, a sensation in the 1960s for her experiments with neon, commercial signage and industrial materials, gets art-historically resuscitated with her first major American exhibit since 1982. Featuring 62 sculptures that dismantle language and presage the innovations of Minimalism and Pop Art, jointly organized by the Dia Art Foundation and the Menil Collection. Through July 27 at Wrightwood 659, 659 W. Wrightwood Ave., 773-437-6601 and wrightwood659.org

“Christina Ramberg: A Retrospective”: Some of the kinkiest, funniest artworks made in Chicago in the 1970s were Ramberg’s fastidiously painted female body parts, from tightly coiffed heads to lacily corseted torsos. Less well-known are her experimental quilts of the ’80s and the dark geometries produced before her untimely death at the age of 49. All of it, plus personal archives, is included in the first comprehensive exhibit of her oeuvre in 30 years. Through Aug. 11 at the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Ave., 312-443-3600 and artic.edu

“Opening Passages: Photographers Respond to Chicago and Paris”: Dynamic social landscapes are the chosen subject for the 10 artists — five American, five French — in this multisite exhibit. Highlights include Sasha Phyars-Burgess’s efforts to teach traditional darkroom techniques to residents in Clichy-sous-Bois, Marzena Abrahamik’s chronicling of Polish-Chicago migration in reverse, and Rebecca Topakian’s research into the rose-ringed parakeets that entered France via an airport cargo accident. Through Aug. 25 at the Chicago Cultural Center and other venues; more information at artdesignchicago.org

“Nicole Eisenman: What Happened”: There’s no question mark in the title of this first major survey of one of the most celebrated figurative painters of the past two decades; her compositions are statements, not queries. More than 100 large and small canvases, plus a few oddball sculptures, reveal her anarchically wry take on people and the way we live today. Through September 22 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, 220 E. Chicago Ave., 312-280-2660 and visit.mcachicago.org

“What Is Seen and Unseen”: Guest curator Shelly Bahl traces the under-documented history of South Asian American art in Chicago, from the Indian Pavilion at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition; to the rising interest in Asian antiquities during the 1920s, ’30s and ’40s; to contemporary artists practicing in the city today, including Brendan Fernandes, Kushala Vora and Sayera Anwar. Through October 26 at the South Asia Institute, 1925 S. Michigan Ave., 312-929-3911, saichicago.org

“The United Colors of Robert Earl Paige”: The 87-year-old Woodlawn resident gets his largest exhibition to date, full of recent clay sculptures, cardboard collages, an exuberant mural, and decades of iconic fabric designs, merging Bauhaus modernism with West African symbology and Chicago jazz. “Parapluie,” an ancillary exhibit, includes the work of Paige’s “umbrella,” a group of makers who create in sync with his own love for pattern, color and purpose. Through Oct. 27 at the Hyde Park Art Center, 5020 S. Cornell Ave., 773-324-5520 and hydeparkart.org

“Georgia O’Keeffe: ‘My New Yorks’”: Before she became famous for her flowers and Southwestern landscapes, O’Keeffe lived on the 30th floor of an apartment building in midtown Manhattan. From there, she began a series of mesmerizingly modern paintings of skyscrapers, the smokestacks along the East River, and other keenly felt urban sights. “My New Yorks,” as she called them, are here seriously examined for the first time, amid her abstractions and still lifes of the 1920s and early ’30s. June 2 to Sept. 22 at the Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Ave., 312-443-3600 and artic.edu

“Art on the Mart: Cory Arcangel and Yinka Illori”: Arcangel came to fame 20-odd years ago for his irreverent re-coding of the Super Mario Brothers video game, eliminating all elements except the clouds. Illori runs a studio designing exuberant graphics, products and spaces for clients ranging from the county of Kent to Courvoisier VSOP. Whatever these two artists do in their newly commissioned videos will be colorful, clever, free to watch, and very, very big,  broadcast nightly across the 2.5-acre façade of the Merchandise Mart, one of the world’s largest digital art canvases. June 6 to Sept. 11 at Art on the Mart, best viewed from the Riverwalk on Wacker Drive between Wells Street and Franklin Street; more information at artonthemart.com

“Teresa Baker: Shift in the Clouds”: Truly contemporary painting looks something like what Baker does on large, shaped pieces of colored Astroturf, embellishing them with yarn, buffalo hide, artificial sinew, corn husk and other materials. Evoked are maps and shadows, the Northern Plains where she was raised, the Los Angeles where she currently lives, her Mandan/Hidatsa culture, and so much more both real and impossible. June 26 through August 16 at the Arts Club of Chicago, 201 E. Ontario St., 312-787-3997 and artsclubchicago.org

“vanessa german”: The self-proclaimed citizen artist has been in residence at the University of Chicago since January, working with local communities and their objects to fashion a new series of “power figures,” sculptures that align Black power, spirituality, mysticism and feminism in ways as clever and tender as they are comedic and bold. They’ll debut in her sermonically titled solo show, “At the end of this reality there is a bridge — the bridge is inside of you but not inside of your body. Take this bridge to get to the next ______, all of your friends are there; death is not real and we are all dj’s.” July 19 through December 15 at the Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th St., 773-834-8377 and  loganexhibitions.uchicago.edu

That’s proper flag protocol.

The United States, perhaps you didn’t realize, is rich in flag protocol. In fact, I was talking the other day with James Ferrigan, chief protocol expert for the North American Vexillological Association — vexillology being the study of flags — and he said, “In terms of our flag awareness, the United States is the second-most flag-conscious country. We have a code for handling the flag, and a national song about the flag, and millions of us pledge allegiance to their flag daily.” In many countries, the national flag is “just window dressing, and not even allowed to be owned by its citizens unless they get permission.”

If we’re the second-most flag-conscious nation, who’s first?

“Probably North Korea.”

Maybe it’s better to be second then?

“I’m not going there.”

Being such a flag-friendly population — particularly Chicago, having woven its own starred city flag into more T-shirts than Tommy Hilfiger — I bet many of you have noticed something odd about the U.S. flag lately: It seems to be flying at half-staff all the time.

It’s not, not really, and yet it kinda feels like it, right?

You could argue that the Stars and Stripes flies at half-staff so often these days — mourning not only politicians, but police officers, firefighters, members of the military, mass-shooting victims, national tragedies, anniversaries of national tragedies — our half-staff flags are evolving into a new symbol, a reminder of a country in perpetual distress.

A flag at half-staff, at its most basic function, is a sign of mourning, Ferrigan explained. Many vexillologists hate when a politician says the gesture “honors” someone. (“There’s no honor in dying,” Ferrigan insisted.) Half-staff should be about our sadness. Its origins likely date to the use of half-mast flags in the 17th-century Anglo-Dutch Wars, when ships vying for control of the North Sea signaled the death of crew members by letting flags and riggings luff in the wind. “It meant, literally, everything was not shipshape.”

So if a country’s flag flies in mourning constantly, is a larger message being sent?

Ferrigan considered this, then asked: “Or is the importance of the gesture fading?”

This is no simple conversation.

It’s hard to begrudge anyone for wanting to recognize a death, a life of public service or a national tragedy. There are thoughtful reasons why the flag now flies at half-staff more often than it did generations ago, when a flag at half-staff was generally reserved for dead presidents, Supreme Court justices, senators and major disasters. We still have holidays in which the flag has always been flown half-staff, such as Memorial Day and Veterans Day. Some states fly the flag at half-staff on, for starters, Columbus Day, Flag Day and Thanksgiving. And since the 1990s, more days have been added in which the flag must be flown nationally at half-staff: President Bill Clinton added National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day (Dec. 7) and Peace Officers Day (May 15). After Sept. 11, 2001, George W. Bush added Patriot Day (Sept. 11) and a day to remember fallen firefighters (May 4).

Then, about 16 years ago, Illinois and other states began a tradition of flying the U.S. flag at half-staff whenever an Illinois military member, police officer, firefighter or EMS worker was killed in service. Meaning, no matter where in Illinois, say, a firefighter is killed now, the governor gives notice for government buildings to fly the flag at half-staff. The flag must fly for two days, plus the day of the funeral. This meant, in April alone, the flag flew nine days at half-staff for fallen Illinois first responders, or roughly once a week.

It’s a well-meaning gesture, especially touching if you knew the dead.

But in a pragmatic, everyday sense, said Carl “Gus” Porter III, owner of Chicago’s WGN Flag & Decorating Co. (which predates WGN media and has been around since 1916), “Some degree of white noise sets in among the public and people maintaining flags.” While his business does not perform half-staff duties for the city of Chicago’s official flags, it does service many of the city’s flags and poles — and also lowers flags to half-staff for private businesses in the city and suburbs, including offices to hotels. He said that sometime during the waning days of the war in Afghanistan, there was a change.

“People didn’t want us to come lower a flag if we’d have to come again days later,” he said. “Now it’s gotten to the point where we seem to lower the flag for everything, so unless it’s a flag on a government building, I see people starting to ignore half-staff directives. That’s what happens if you take away the uniqueness of the gesture itself.”

Brandon Rottinghaus, a professor of political studies at the University of Houston, has studied presidential proclamations, including those about flying the U.S. flag, and he said you’re not imagining this: Historically, politicians are lowering the flag more often, partly because “there’s more willingness from presidents to politicize.” One study he conducted found that half-staff has become “a way of narrowcasting support to specific groups that’s politically useful.” (For instance, firefighters and police.) “It reflects the polarization of the country,” so much so that “not lowering a flag is now political action.”

President Donald Trump’s administration, for instance, refused to make half-staff directives in recognition of the death of Sen. John McCain, police officers who died because of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and the shooting of journalists at the Capital newspaper in Maryland.

But then relented.

To be fair, other than McCain, there is little guidance in the U.S. Flag Code on how to approach flying a half-staff flag for anyone who isn’t a government official. The code is specific on certain things: Only a president, state governor or mayor of the District of Columbia can order flags flown half-staff. A president gets 30 days of half-staff; a vice president or Supreme Court chief justice gets 10; a member of Congress two. There are more rules, but the code offers no guidance for who, what or how long a flag can be lowered.

Governors are the quickest to exploit this. Former Gov. John Kasich of Ohio twice ordered flags lowered for police dogs. Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey lowered flags for “Sopranos” star James Gandolfini, Whitney Houston, Yogi Berra and E Street Band member Clarence Clemons. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis lowered flags for Rush Limbaugh (though several local government officials refused to follow the order). In Oklahoma, flags were lowered for a highway worker killed while filling a sinkhole. In Illinois, Gov. J.B. Pritzker ordered flags lowered for one year during the pandemic.

That didn’t sit well with James Schultz, former trustee of the village of Vernon Hills. “Frankly, it stuck in my craw.” He’s an Army veteran and service officer for American Legion Post 1247 in Vernon Hills and the American Veterans Post 66 in Wheeling.

“We were seeing first responders who died during that period and there was no real lowering of the flag for them because it had already already lowered,” he remembered.

So a few years ago he began working with state Rep. Daniel Didech and state Sen. Adriane Johnson on amending the Illinois Flag Display Act to limit the length of time an Illinois governor could leave the U.S. flag at half-staff. Their tweaks passed the Illinois General Assembly in 2021, and now (though the language in the act remains a bit vague) the flag will likely not remain lowered for longer than a late president would receive — 30 days.

Still, technically, do whatever you want.

There’s no penalty for flying the flag too often at half-staff (other than perhaps in the court of opinion). Mayors do not have the right to order U.S. flags to half-staff, but many do anyway. In fact, outside of government, private homes or businesses can lower flags (or leave them in place) whenever they feel like it. Cleveland’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame lowered the flag to mark the deaths of David Bowie, Little Richard and Eddie Van Halen.

The United States has used half-staff traditions since the death of George Washington, but national standards weren’t codified until the Eisenhower administration. Incidentally, President Dwight Eisenhower issued just 13 half-staff proclamations in eight years. John F. Kennedy issued three; Lyndon Johnson nine; Richard Nixon 16. That number ticked upward during the Ronald Reagan years, with flags lowered for the death of Anwar el-Sadat and the Challenger explosion, among other tragedies. Clinton issued more than 50. George W. Bush issued about 60. And Barack Obama broke everyone’s record with more than 70, marking the death of figures such as South Africa’s Nelson Mandela and Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, both the 150th anniversary of the Lincoln assassination and the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination, and mass shootings in Connecticut, Colorado and elsewhere; he also lowered flags for the embassy bombing in Benghazi and the Boston Marathon bombing.

The length of an administration matters.

Trump, who issued directives for the Las Vegas mass shooting, the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the first 100,000 COVID deaths, made a few dozen such proclamations. President Joe Biden, who ordered flags lowered for the mass shooting in Highland Park, is on track for roughly the same number of orders as George W. Bush, Rottinghaus said.

“On the other hand,” he added, “if we now overdo the use of half-staff, maybe that in itself should be telling us something, particularly about the frequencies of our tragedies.”

In other words, do we limit the number of days we publicly express empathy?

Or reconsider the problems that are handing us more tragedies to mourn?

After all, if the crew is not happy, let those sails luff.

cborrelli@chicagotribune.com