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When people visit the Bean in Millennium Park, the first thing they see is themselves. The large, warped bodies and surroundings reflecting off the surface of the sculpture are a significant part of the artwork’s appeal. Tony Tasset‘s Artists Monument—which will be unveiled this Saturday, February 20, in Grant Park, in a ceremony presented by the Chicago Park District, the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events, and Kavi Gupta Gallery—is also informed by self-absorption....

Architectural preservation? Admirable! Especially in Chicago now, with the built environment giving Al Capone some competition as the city’s global identity. It’s a feel-good thing. And it’s environmentally correct. A case in point is playing out in Edgewater. At least one developer would like to save the Nordine house. Andrew Ahitow, of City Pads, has a plan that would repurpose the mansion while expanding it into an apartment complex. Ahitow told me his company put in a “competitive” but unsuccessful purchase offer contingent on getting landmark status (which could allow for possible government financial incentives)....

Most Western narratives reduce Africa to a monolith of wanting and lack. Africa is (just) a (single) country. Africa is corrupt. Africa is backward, savage, dirty, diseased—a shithole. Tales of its wealth, innovation, diversity, and history apart from colonization are often dismissed as mythmaking and hyperbole. “It was an opportunity to really think about history in a wholly new way and also to ensure that it was not just told by Europeans because the witnesses—the chroniclers—were often writing in Arabic,” Lisa Corrin, the director of the Block Museum, explains....

Cecile Richards has been president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund for 12 years, but this May she’ll step down. Richards would later experience a bit of deja vu, if only just in the sense of feeling part of a conspiracy, after meeting with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump at a Trump golf course in New Jersey in February 2017 about federal funding for the nonprofit....

Richard A. Chapman/Sun-Times Alyx Pattison, a candidate for alderman in the Second Ward, says the parking meter was a horrible idea, though it made her former law firm a good chunk of money. Nobody likes the parking meter deal—especially at election time. Six and a half years after the City Council signed off on former mayor Richard M. Daley’s plan to sell off the metered parking system, candidates are still campaigning against it....

Sue Kwong This winter, the Reader has set a humble goal for itself: to determine the Greatest Chicago Book Ever Written. We chose 16 books that reflected the wide range of books that have come out of Chicago and the wide range of people who live here and assembled them into an NCAA-style bracket. Then we recruited a crack team of writers, editors, booksellers, and scholars as well as a few Reader staffers to judge each bout....

Few contemporary musicians can simultaneously disturb me and get me dancing quite like Jack Brockman. The Chicagoan fronts industrial trio Civic Center, whose recent vinyl debut for American Dreams (June’s The Ground Below) tamps down its members’ more aggressively deranged inclinations but still manages to sound pretty surreal. He also makes solo EBM tracks as Understudy, and much of his catalog sounds like he recorded it at the bottom of a deep stone well that hasn’t seen sunlight in centuries....

Waltzer founder Sophie Sputnik spent half the 2010s fronting Fort Lauderdale blues-punk duo Killmama from behind a drum kit—she anchored the band’s sparse arrangements in time while lighting them up with her fire-breathing vocals. After Sputnik moved to Chicago a few years ago, she got down to work on Waltzer, a solo project that fuses her grungy garage attitude with her love of neosoul. Late last month, she emerged with Waltzer’s debut album, Time Traveler (Side Hustle), which bundles together 50s doo-wop melodies, weathered blues riffs, and surging rock climaxes in red-hot, rambunctious songs that feel up-to-the-minute but unmoored in time—they’re a great complement to the ghostly neo-pop that former Chicagoan Meghan Remy makes as U....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Tuesday, March 22, 2016. CPD chief finalist criticized Rahm Emanuel in CNN article Cedric Alexander, one of three finalists to become Chicago Police Department superintendent, criticized Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s and Cook County state’s attorney Anita Alvarez’s controversial decision to fight the release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video in an article written for CNN in February. Alexander echoed the sentiments of many other Emanuel and Alvarez critics: “When the news is bad, our leaders have a duty to deliver it....

Fibromyalgia is one of the most prevalent chronic pain conditions in the world. According to the CDC, fibromyalgia affects four million adults in the United States, about two percent of the population. Living with fibromyalgia can be frustrating and have an effect on your overall quality of life. The most common symptoms we see in the patients we treat include prolonged chronic pain, extreme fatigue, difficulty sleeping, and problems with cognition and memory (often referred to as “fibro fog”)....

I’m a conservative,” Frank Zappa told Washington Times columnist John Lofton when they debated each other on the CNN program Crossfire in 1986. “You might not like that, but I am.” Lofton didn’t like it, and some of Zappa’s fans may not have either. But Zappa would surely have told them—as he told Lofton on that same broadcast—to kiss his ass. Eat That Question—Frank Zappa in His Own Words includes some performance clips, but German filmmaker Thorsten Schütte concentrates on a cornucopia of Zappa interview footage he’s collected over the years, and his documentary paints a vivid and often surprising portrait of the iconoclastic rocker and classical composer....

On November 25, less than 24 hours after the Chicago Police Department belatedly released a dashcam recording of officer Jason Van Dyke shooting and killing Laquan McDonald, local rapper Ty Money dropped “United Center,” whose video consists exclusively of edited footage from that recording. The song’s instrumental track accompanies its solemn piano melody with sizzling guitars and muffled, ominous bass that booms like an underground explosives test, and in his lyrics Money mulls over the systemic injustices that afflict Chicago’s black community and make the city’s racial divide feel like the Grand Canyon....

In 1991, drummers Martin Atkins (Public Image Ltd, Ministry, Killing Joke) and William Rieflin (Ministry, KMFDM, Revolting Cocks) launched Chicago-based industrial supergroup Pigface, whose revolving-door lineup has since included literally dozens of musicians, including members of Swans, Nine Inch Nails, Skinny Puppy, the Jesus Lizard, and the Sugarcubes. During an epic, cameo-crazy set that Gossip Wolf caught at Metro in November 1994, it seemed like they all got onstage at some point!...

If the roots of Jewish humor are anger and disappointment, then the Chicago Cubs may be the funniest, most Semitic team in sports history. This helps to explain why Judith Sherwin is such a big Cubs fan. The 71-year-old attorney’s Rogers Park apartment and her Loop office are filled with Cubs memorabilia: a baseball signed by Ernie Banks, a jersey autographed by Sammy Sosa, Cubs teddy bears and other charms intended to help the team win....

Coffee is one of the reasons that more Guatemalans are caught trying to get into the United States than migrants from any other country. According to the Washington Post , the falling price of coffee has made it so difficult to eke out a living growing beans in Guatemala that even premium fair-trade prices paid by large buyers like Starbucks can’t stop workers from throwing up their hands and risking everything for better lives in the U....

While wounds can be stitched and broken bones may mend, other types of injuries never fully heal; perhaps they linger as phantom pain or burrow deep into the brain’s pathways. It’s these imperceptible traumas—and the impossibility of recovery—that consume Julianna Barwick on her new fourth solo album, Healing Is a Miracle. The Los Angeles-based composer and vocalist cultivated her voice as a church chorister while growing up in Louisiana, and she began crafting her own music in the mid-2000s—building gauzy atmospheres in solitude with little more than her reverb-armored soprano....

The good news is that we can now read Robert Feder’s media blog for nothing. The bad news is that Feder—for the moment, at least—is now writing it for nothing, as the Tribune has stopped paying him a fee to put it behind its paywall. Feder had no more to say about those “business reasons,” much less about why no one should have been surprised the Trib showed him the door....

It’s no longer particularly remarkable when a rock band continues to soldier on more than four decades after it started, but it’s another matter when a group continues to produce strong new music rather than exploit nostalgia. David Thomas is the only member left from the original lineup of Pere Ubu, but despite the stunning cast of musicians that have played in the band over the years, including synthesizer master Allen Ravenstine and guitarist Jim Jones, among others, it would be hard to dispute that it’s always been his outfit—no element has defined the band’s music more than his slightly unhinged yawp....

Police close Kenneka Jenkins investigation, but family lawyer says photos of her body “raise more questions than answers” Law enforcement authorities in Rosemont have closed the investigation into the death of Kenneka Jenkins. Jenkins, 19, was found dead in a freezer at a Rosemont hotel September 10, and police have ruled her death accidental. There has been intense public interest in the case, most focused on foul play, and the photos released by officials have fueled further speculation about her death: “Frankly, the photos depicting how Kenneka was found raise more questions about what happened to Kenneka Jenkins than they answer,” Jenkins family lawyer Larry Rogers Jr....

The world is becoming more and more digitized, but choreographer Reggie Wilson doesn’t see technology as a threat to the dance world at least. On the contrary, “the more technology is present, people have more of a need for contact,” he says. “For physical relationships, and real present activity. Live activity.” For the past year, Wilson and his dance company, Fist + Heel Performance Group, have been touring with Citizen, a piece that uses extended solo performances to explore themes of identity and belonging....