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This weekend concludes the 2016 Chicago Auto Show, the country’s biggest and longest-running car show. Sponsored by Motor Age magazine, Chicago’s first official auto show opened on March 23, 1901 at the Chicago Coliseum. Exhibiting just 100 cars, the second annual show charged visitors $0.50—an amount, when adjusted for inflation, slightly higher than the price of the ticket to the 2016 Chicago Auto Show. A total of 332 exhibits were crammed into the Coliseum and the First Regiment Armory, both of which were festooned with bronze-colored papier-mâché and stucco ornamentation....

The problem with Oscar Wilde’s 1895 potboiler An Ideal Husband is precisely the thing for which its author is routinely praised: its flood of exquisite witticisms. They come fast and furious in the play’s opening, as a coterie of Victorian aristocratic types gather in the octagon room of parliamentarian Sir Robert Chiltern’s home, apparently for no other purpose than to skewer the superficiality and hypocrisy of London society. It’s such a giddy, farcical world that the sudden intrusion of mysterious, scheming Mrs....

It helps to think of “The Sympathetic Imagination,” Diana Thater’s new retrospective show at the MCA, the same way Hemingway encouraged readers to approach his own work—as an iceberg. Only 10 percent of the material is easily accessible, and it looks like a big, white sheet of ice that makes you say, “Yes, and?” The remaining 90 percent lies below the surface and requires special tools to excavate and appreciate....

Chicago Light Brigade chicagolightbrigade.org, @ChiLightBrigade The Chicago Light Brigade performs creative protests the group has dubbed “light actions”—using projectors, battery-powered LEDs, paper lanterns, and the like—to make literally brilliant political statements. Inspired by a similar Milwaukee-based project called the Overpass Light Brigade, CLB supports grassroots activism by appearing at various events and helping other organizations build illuminated props, the most common being boards mounted with lights, each one carrying letters spelling out calls for change: fund public education, free the nato 3, fair housing now....

Friends of the Parks fotp.org, @FOTPChicago The fight to keep the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art and the Obama Presidential Library off land owned by the Chicago Park District was a David and Goliath match from the get-go, with the tiny nonprofit Friends of the Parks facing off against the mayor of Chicago and a billionaire maker of iconic movies on the museum project and the mayor, the University of Chicago, the president of the United States, and virtually the entire south side on the library....

The General Yesterday, the Silent Film Society of Chicago presented a special screening of Buster Keaton’s 1928 film The Cameraman at Saint John Cantius Church, complete with organist Jay Warren’s accompaniment on the church’s vintage 1924 Wurlitzer. Few cinematic experiences are as joyous as watching Keaton’s films with fresh eyes. His shorts and his incredible run of features during the 1920s are revelations, filled with clever social insights and, of course, an array of how-did-he-just-do-that stunt work....

Earlier this week the Chicago Data Collaborative quietly launched a website offering first of its kind access to local criminal justice data. Information about Chicago police stops and arrests, Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office charges, and Cook County Jail demographics is already public in theory, but it’s often costly and time-consuming to access. Getting that info sometimes requires trips to special computer terminals at county offices or protracted negotiations with FOIA officers....

At the end of May, Che “Rhymefest” Smith, creative director of local youth mentorship nonprofit Donda’s House—which has since been rebranded Art of Culture Inc.—went through a heated Twitter debate with Kim Kardashian West over Kanye’s alleged lack of financial and spiritual support for the nonprofit organization named for his late mother. Rapper Matt Muse, who joined Donda’s House in spring 2015, voiced his support for the embattled organization that weekend, and he continues to champion it as often as he can, as he did in a recent interview with local hip-hop outlet Elevator....

On Sunday, January 13, a 57-year-old Japanese singer named Anri will play a rare midwestern show for a sold-out crowd at the Renaissance Schaumburg Convention Center. In the mid-80s, while Japan was enjoying the final years of its long postwar boom, Anri became one of the crucial voices of “City Pop”—a fizzy, euphoric form of electronic disco, that was imbued with the optimistic spirit of a New Japan and also took cues from American superstars such as Michael Jackson and Donna Summer....

On January 7, one day after Georgia’s runoff election resulted in its first Black senator and a white supremacist insurrection disrupted the presidential confirmation at the U.S. Capitol, dancers, dancemakers, presenters, and arts organizations convened at “Dance in Chicago 2021: Collecting. Hibernating. Emerging.,” a citywide virtual gathering and information session peer-produced by Chicago Dancemakers Forum, Chicago Dancers United, The Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago, Harris Theater for Music and Dance, High Concept Labs, Links Hall, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Pivot Arts, and See Chicago Dance....

On June 9, 2017, Yingying Zhang, a 26-year-old visiting Chinese scholar at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, disappeared. The story of her family’s search for her, and their fight for justice in what tragically became a case of abduction and murder, made international news. The University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign has the largest population of Chinese students in the U.S. It remains to be seen what long-term impact this might have on enrollment, but the film shows Chinese students on campus taking more precautions and curtailing their activities....

The name “Breezy Rodio” might sound like it belongs to an alt-country band. In reality, it’s the moniker of a bluesman who just released his third album. Sometimes the Blues Got Me (Delmark) has a straight-ahead big-band sound that does a great job of highlighting the musician’s passionate, Italian-accented vocals and understated guitar. Originally from Rome, Rodio played behind Chicago bluesman Linsey Alexander for a decade before striking out on his own in 2017....

Few indie-rock artists are more prolific than singer-songwriter Mike Kinsella, who’s been playing in Illinois bands since the late 80s, including Cap’n Jazz, Joan of Arc, and American Football. The latter band reunited in 2014 following a 14-year break and subsequently released two acclaimed albums, 2016’s American Football (or LP2) and last year’s American Football (LP3). Now the singer and multi-instrumentalist is set to release The Avalanche (Polyvinyl), the tenth studio album from his solo project, Owen....

How did you find out about iO closing? The moment I read the shared post I sent a DM to Charna: “say it ain’t so, Charna this makes me sad if its true.” “The community is really hurting right now,” Plummer continues, adding that she created a GoFundMe campaign “to help staff members of iO who are struggling. Help them get through a few more months if their unemployment benefits end....

Last Flag Flying, now entering its second week in Chicago theaters, reminds me of Neil Young’s 1990 album Ragged Glory. It’s a rough, but casual, meditation on American themes, made with relaxed, subtle mastery. If the film feels a bit underwhelming on first encounter, I suspect it will gain from repeat viewings—it’s full of subtle characterizations and charming grace notes, and these things can become more resonant once they’re more familiar....

Nikko Washington looks like any other student coming in to Café Logan on the University of Chicago campus to grab a bite between classes. But the 25-year-old finished his studies at the School of the Art Institute three years ago. And there’s another difference: the oil paintings on the wall are all by Washington, together comprising an exhibit called 53 ’til Infinity, on display through March 31. These are his most recent works, mostly portraits, all characterized by bold colors and the serious but joyous expressions on the subjects’ faces....

On a bare stage, a sea of spandex roils, shining with that 1970s luster. A director calls out counts and steps and the group moves in rough coordination—a dropped step here, a stumble there, pirouettes, jazz hands, pelvic thrusts. He refers to them individually by number, collectively as “the kids.” It’s an audition, and everyone is dancing for permission to dance, and their thoughts, like the steps, are mostly the same: “God, I hope I get it,” “God, I really blew it,” “I really need this job....

If Saturday night’s baseball game had been an ordinary game, we might have said it was settled in the first inning, when a double, a single, and a dropped fly ball put the Cubs up 2-0 against the Dodgers, and the pitcher who’d shut them out the last time, Clayton Kershaw. Already the Cubs had one more run than they’d need. I was telling a friend of mine about these women....

Q: I’m a middle-aged gay man and I was recently diagnosed with sleep apnea. This is a disorder caused by the soft tissue in the throat collapsing during sleep. On top of making me feeling tired and awful all the time, sleep apnea is associated with a long list of health complications. I’m writing you because I’m into very rough oral. I like it when a guy treats my throat like a Fleshlight....

In that sad little circle of social-media hell reserved for the compulsively indignant, some bloggers have been decrying the fact that apparently able-bodied actors Eddie Redmayne and Julianne Moore won Oscars Sunday for playing disabled characters—Redmayne for impersonating ALS-afflicted Stephen Hawking, Moore for pretending to be a woman with early-onset dementia. “You know who would be remarkable at transforming themselves into disabled people? Of really getting into the mind of someone in that situation and understanding their motivations?...