Programming

A grand piano sits on an elevated black stage with wooden chairs on each side. Dining tables and chairs rest on the lower level.

Since 1916, The Arts Club of Chicago has been a preeminent exhibitor of international art, a forum for both established and emerging artists, and a celebrated venue for performers from around the world. Among the many artists and scholars who have made appearances at The Arts Club through its many decades of avant-garde programs are: W. H. Auden, Leonard Bernstein, Daniel Buren, John Cage, Le Corbusier, Merce Cunningham, Jean Dubuffet, Philip Glass, Martha Graham, David Hockney, Phyllis Lambert, David Mamet, Esa-Pekka Salonen, Gertrude Stein, Robert Storr, Igor Stravinsky, Studs Terkel, Dylan Thomas, and Billie Tsien.

Click on the decades below for a chronology of programs and events in The Arts Club’s history. If you would like to have your email added to our public programming list, email us at information@artsclubchicago.org.

1916-1919

1916

  • The Arts Club of Chicago founded by Mrs. John Alden Carpenter, serving as Chairman of the Art Committee; Mrs. McGann, serving as President; Mrs. Jacob Bauer, serving as Chairman of the Excecutive Committee; Miss Katherine Dudley; Mr. Arthur Heun; Mrs. George Higginson; Mr. Eames MacVeagh; Mr. Arthur Aldis; Mr. Frederick Bartlett; Mr. Robert Allerton; Mr. John Alden Carpenter; Mr. F. J. Reichman; Mrs. Arthur Ryerson; Dr. Frederick Stock; Mrs. Erich Gerstenberg; Miss Alice Gerstenberg, Chairman of the Drama Committee; and Mr. Charles Dewey
  • Between 1916 and 1918, The Arts Club was located on two different floors of the Fine Arts Building at 401 S. Michigan Avenue. The Club’s rooms at the Fine Arts Building—like 610 S. Michigan Avenue (1918–24) and the Wrigley Building, north tower (1924–36)—were created by architect Arthur Heun along with interior designer and then-president, Rue Winterbotham Carpenter.

1918

  • Mrs. Rue Winterbotham Carpenter (Mrs. John Alden Carpenter) elected President
  • Miss Alice Roullier becomes Chairman of the Exhibition Committee
  • The Arts Club moves into its first club rooms, at 610 South Michigan Avenue. The Club’s rooms at 610 S. Michigan Avenue (1918–24)—like those at the Fine Arts Building and the Wrigley Building, north tower (1924–36)—were created by architect Arthur Heun along with interior designer and then president, Rue Winterbotham Carpenter.

1920 – 1929

1920

  • Harriet Monroe: poet, editor
  • Carl Sandburg: poet, biographer
  • Edgar Lee Masters: poet

1921

  • Forbes Watson: art critic, editor

1922

  • The Arts Club Exhibition Room is established at the Art Institute of Chicago, which hosts exhibitions until 1927
  • James Henry Breasted: archaeologist

1923

  • The Arts Club Gift Purchase Fund inaugurated, continues through 1932
  • Osvald Siren: orientalist
  • Dr. Phyllis Ackerman: art scholar

1924

  • The Arts Club moves to the North Tower of the Wrigley Building, at 400 North Michigan Avenue. The Club’s location in the Wrigley Building’s north tower—like the Fine Arts Building at 401 S. Michigan Avenue (1916 – 1918) and 610 S. Michigan Avenue (1918–24)—was created by architect Arthur Heun along with interior designer and then president, Rue Winterbotham Carpenter.
  • Arthur Rubinstein: pianist
  • Edna St. Vincent Millay: poet

1925

  • Maurice Dumesnil: pianist
  • Igor Stravinsky: composer
  • Paul Albert Besnard: artist
  • Anna Pavlova: ballerina

1926

  • Ottorino Respighi: composer
  • Dr. Arthur Upham Pope: Asian scholar
  • Laurence Binyon: poet, orientalist

1927

  • The Arts Club purchases Brancusi’s Golden Bird, which will be shown in its rooms until 1990, when it is acquired by the Art Institute of Chicago through purchase and partial gift of The Arts Club
  • Darius Milhaud: composer
  • Robert Frost: poet
  • Walter Pach: artist, author
  • Ford Maddox Ford: novelist, poet

1928

  • Marsden Hartley: artist, poet

1929

  • Arthur Honegger: composer
  • Bertrand Russell: philosopher, author
  • Harold Kreutzberg: novelist, poet

1930 – 1939

1930

  • Aaron Copland: composer
  • Martha Graham: dancer
  • Roth Quartet of Budapest
  • Serge Prokofiev: composer
  • Thomas Munroe: aesthetics scholar

1931

  • Leonide Massine: dancer
  • Andres Segovia: guitarist
  • Mrs. Patrick Campbell: actress
  • Leonide Massine: choreographer
  • Archibald MacLeish: poet, dramatist

1932

  • Mrs. Charles Goodspeed (“Bobsy”), elected President
  • Budapest String Quartet
  • Vicente Escudero: dancer
  • Galka Scheyer: “The Blue Four” expert
  • Vicki Baum: novelist

1933

  • Nathan Milstein: violist
  • Olin Downes: music critic
  • Maurice Sachs: writer, biographer

1934

  • Dr. Frederick Stock: conductor
  • Alexander Tcherepnin: pianist
  • Arnold Schönberg: composer
  • Dr. Erwin Panofsky: historian
  • James Johnson Sweeney: museum director
  • Daniel Catton Rich: museum director
  • Gertrude Stein: author, critic

1935

  • Emanual Feuermann: cellist
  • Igor Stravinsky: composer
  • Le Corbusier: architect, artist

1936

  • The Arts Club of Chicago moves into larger quarters in the South Wrigley Building Tower, at 410 North Michigan Avenue. The Wrigley Building, south tower was designed by architect Arthur Heun and then president Elizabeth “Bobsy” Goodspeed Chapman, with the dining room by interior designers Samuel Marx and Noel Flint.
  • Kolisch Quartet
  • Hilla Rebay: modern art writer

1937

  • Frederick Stock: conductor
  • Paul Hindemith: composer
  • Carleton Smith: musicologist

1938

  • Victor Babin, Vitya Vronsky: pianists
  • Argentinita: dancer
  • Frank Crowninshield: editor, critic
  • Nicholas Nabakov: composer

1939

  • Nadia Boulanger: teacher, composer
  • Devi Dja: dancer
  • Martha Graham: choreographer
  • André Maurois: novelist, biographer
  • George Biddle: artist, teacher

1940 – 1949

1940

  • Mrs. Rue Winterbotham Shaw (Rue Winterbotham Carpenter’s niece and namesake) elected President
  • Bela Bartok: composer
  • Sir John Rothenstein: museum director
  • Frederick A. Sweet: museum curator
  • Darius Milhaud: composer
  • Roy Harris: composer

1941

  • Virgil Thomson: composer
  • Fernand Leger: painter

1942

  • The Arts Club commissions the Alexander Calder mobile, Red Petals, a bequest by Elizabeth Wakeman
  • The Arts Club also recieves a bequest of the entire collection of drawings and paintings formed by Arthur Heun, one of The Arts Club’s founding members
  • Claudio Arrau: pianist
  • John Cage: composer
  • Alexander Tansman: pianist

1943

  • Merce Cunningham: dancer
  • William Kapell: pianist
  • Anton Dolin: choreographer
  • Sidney Janis: art dealer

1944

  • Martial Singher: singer
  • Sir Thomas Beechman: conductor
  • Wyndham Lewis: artist, author
  • Anthony Tudor: choreographer

1945

  • Arthur Gold, Robert Fizdale: pianists
  • Ted Shawn: dancer
  • James Thurber: author, artist

1946

  • Gaby Casadesus: pianist
  • Ruth St. Denis: dancer
  • Jean Casadesus: pianist
  • Sir Kenneth Clark: museum director

1947

  • The Arts Club loses its lease on the Wrigley Building space and is forced to sharply reduce activities for four years during the war while seeking new quarters
  • Griller String Quartet

1948

  • Francois Poulenc: composer

1949

  • Daniel Kahnweiler: art dealer

1950 – 1959

1951

  • The Arts Club moves into 109 East Ontario Street, the interior is designed by Club member Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. It was the only interior space executed for a building he did not design.
  • Leonard Bernstein: composer
  • Jean Dubuffet: artist, author

1952

  • The Julliard String Quartet
  • Naum Gabo: artist
  • Dylan Thomas: poet
  • W. H. Auden: poet, librettist

1953

  • Arthur Grumiaux: violinist
  • Wilma Lipp: soprano
  • Sacheverell Sitwell: poet, essayist
  • Jacques Barzun: author, literary critic
  • Marianne Moore: poet

1954

  • Grant Johannesen: pianist
  • Sir Herbert Read: museum director
  • Ben Shahn: artist

1955

  • Sylvia Marlow: harpsichordist
  • Fritz Reiner: conductor
  • Leo Lionni: art director, artist
  • Dame Alicia Markova: ballerina

1956

  • Lisa Della Casa: soprano
  • Katherine Anne Porter: fiction writer

1957

  • Quartetto Italiano
  • Isolisti Di Zagreb
  • Lucas Foss: composer, conductor

1958

  • Elana Nikolaidi: contralto
  • Richard Wilbur: poet, translator

1959

  • Julian Bream: lutanist, guitarist
  • Cesare Siepi: basso
  • John Ciardi: poet, teacher, lecturer

1960 – 1969

1960

  • Gerald Moore: pianist, accompanist
  • Hilton Kramer: art critic
  • Alexandra Danilova: ballerina

1961

  • Donald Gramm: bass-baritone
  • Malcolm Frager: pianist
  • Alan Hovhaness: pianist
  • Philippe Entremont: pianist

1962

  • John Browning: pianist
  • Vladimir Ashkenazy: pianist
  • Henry Cowell: composer, pianist

1963

  • Nicolai Gedda: tenor
  • Stephen Spender: poet, critic

1964

  • Grant Johannesen: pianist
  • Malcolm Muggeridge: author

1965

  • Shirley Verett: mezzo-soprano
  • I Solisti Veneti: chamber orchestra
  • Abram Chasins: pianist

1966

  • Jaime Laredo: violinist
  • Vera Zorina: dancer, actress
  • Robert Graves: poet, novelist

1967

  • Lili Chookasian: contralto
  • Gregor Piatigorsky: cellist
  • John Houseman: film director

1968

  • The Bach Aria Group
  • Gary Graffman: pianist
  • Richard Goode: pianist

1969

  • John Ogdon: pianist
  • Judith Raskin: soprano
  • Kay Boyle: novelist
  • Gunther Schuller: composer

1970 – 1979

1970

  • Christoph Eschenbach: pianist
  • Felicia Weathers: soprano
  • Murray Louis: choreographer

1971

  • Bruno Leonardo Gelber: pianist
  • Minoru Nojima: pianist
  • Marya Mannes: author

1972

  • Pinchas Zukerman: violinist
  • Judith Blegen: soprano
  • Anthony Burgess: author, producer
  • Phyllis Curtin: singer

1973

  • Maurizio Pollini: pianist

1974

  • Lynn Harrel: cellist
  • Maurice André: trumpet
  • Rosamond Bernier: author, lecturer

1975

  • Joseph Kalichstein: pianist

1976

  • Sybil Shearer: choreographer, dancer
  • Tom Wolfe: novelist

1977

  • Emanuel Ax: pianist
  • Alex Haley: author

1978

  • Mark Kaplan: violinist

1979

  • J. Phinney Baxter elected President
  • Katherine Kuh: art curator, critic

1980 – 1989

1980

  • Michel Block: pianist
  • Kathleen Battle: soprano
  • New York Woodwind Quintet
  • James Newton: flutist
  • Alfred Kazin: author, literary critic
  • John Cage: composer, poet, artist

1981

  • Stanley M. Freehling elected President
  • Mark Westcott: pianist
  • William Parker: baritone
  • Arlene Croce: dance critic
  • Isamu Noguchi: artist

1982

  • Claude Frank: pianist
  • Paul Hume: music critic
  • John Updike: novelist, literary critic

1983

  • American Brass Quintet
  • Ken Noda: pianist
  • Arnold Steinhardt: violinist

1984

  • New Arts Trio
  • Vincent Scully: architect

1985

  • Timothy Jenkins: tenor
  • Emerson String Quartet
  • Stephen Hough: pianist
  • Dick Hyman: pianist

1986

  • Young Uck Kim: violinist
  • Marvis Martin: soprano
  • Lee Luvisi: pianist
  • Hugo Weisgall: composer, pianist
  • Robert Wilson: theatre artist, director
  • Russell Lynes: author, columnist

1987

  • Andreas Bach: pianist
  • Dawn Upshaw: soprano
  • Maurice Tuchman: museum curator
  • David Mamet: playwright, film maker

1988

  • Richard Peña: museum film director
  • William Wixom: museum director

1989

  • Mendelssohn String Quartet
  • Christopher O’Reilly: pianist
  • Lydia Artymiw: pianist

1990 – 1999

1990

  • Suzanne Mentzer: mezzo-soprano
  • Dorothy Donegan: jazz piano
  • Kenneth Branagh: actor

1991

  • Junior Membership Council formed
  • Donald Kuspit: art scholar, critic
  • John Szarkowski: museum curator
  • Robert Brustein: theatre director
  • Brendan Gill: author, critic

1992

  • John Heskett: associate professor, Institute of Design, columnist, International Design magazine, “Forces Shaping Design from the Industrial Revolution to the Present”
  • Robert Marsh: music critic, columnist, Chicago Sun-Times, “One Hundred Forty Years of Opera in Chicago”
  • Sir Simon Hornby: chairman, Association for Business Sponsorship of the Arts, member, Council of the Royal Society of Arts, “Design and the Wealth of Nations”
  • John Cage: avant-garde composer, author
  • John Cage with Anthony de Mare and Nan Matoba: pianists, and Karen Bogardus: flutist (performance)
  • The Ysaÿe Quartet: international award-winning string ensemble (performance)
  • Ralph Caplan: former editor, International Design magazine, author, By Design, “Why This is Not the Design Club of Chicago”
  • Calvin Trillin: columnist, author, “Uncivil Liberties”
  • Bonnie Silver: harpsichordist with Norbert Kraft: guitarist, both members, Royal Conservatory of Music, Toronto
  • Gerald Arpino: co-founder, director, choreographer, Joffrey Ballet
  • Charles Johnson: Pollock Professor of English, University of Washington, Seattle, author, cartoonist
  • The Arts Club 75th Anniversary Supper Cabaret, directed by Bernie Sahlins with an all-Member cast (performance)
  • Daniel Pollack: international award-winning pianist (performance)
  • Robert Fizdale: pianist, author, Divine Sarah: A Life of Sarah Bernhardt, “In Search of Sarah Bernhardt”
  • Akasha Dance Company with Claire Bataille: choreographer (performance)
  • Andreas Haefliger: pianist (chamber musician)
  • Peter Shelton: sculptor, discussing his life and works
  • The Chicago Vocal Quartet: “Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868)” (performance)
  • Nicholas Rudall: founding director, Court Theater, actor, reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

1993

  • Daniel Duell: artistic director with Gordon Peirce Schmidt: resident choreographer, Ballet Chicago, “Creative Process: How One Makes a Dance”
  • Robert V. Remini: professor emeritus of history, University of Illinois at Chicago, United States House of Representatives, comparing the inaugurations of Bill Clinton and Andrew Jackson
  • Brendan Devallance: performance artist, discussing his life and work
  • Bernie Sahlins: founder, The Second City with Nicholas Rudall: founding director, Court Theater discussing the plays “Creation” and “The Passion”
  • Chang Lin-Sheng: deputy director, The National Palace Museum, Taipei, Taiwan, “Through the Emperors’ Eyes: Treasures of China”
  • Kathryn Hixson: art critic, associate editor, New Art Examiner, “The Anti-Sensible and the Ephemeral”
  • Ross Miller: professor of comparative literature, University of Connecticut at Storrs, “Architectural Meltdown on Block 37: Where the Real Estate Bomb First Went off in Chicago”
  • Joaquín Achúcarro: internationally acclaimed pianist (performance)
  • Neil Penesis: internationally acclaimed pianist (performance)
  • Mortimer Adler: philosopher, author, chairman, board of editors, Encyclopedia Britannica
  • Judy Friel: director, “Dancing with Lughnasa,” “Living with Lughnasa”
  • Richard Martin: curator, The Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, “Elective Apparel: The Uncommon and Unconventional in Contemporary Dress”
  • Paul Andriesse: gallerist
  • Franz Schulze: Hollender Professor of Art, Emeritus, Lake Forest College, “Writing the Life of Philip Johnson”
  • George Danforth: architect, “The Arts Club of Chicago: From the Beginning”
  • John O’Conor: pianist (performance)
  • Michael Croydon: sculptor, chair, Lake Forest College Art Department, “Shadows of the Real: The Vision of Ivan Albright”
  • Andrew Patner: writer, art critic, WBEZ host, “Six Crises in Search of…What?” or “Waiting for an American Theatre”
  • David Travis: curator of photography, Art Institute of Chicago, “The Gaiety of Genius: André Kertész and Piet Mondrian”
  • Hannah Higgins: scholar with Simon Anderson: assistant professor of art history, Art Institute of Chicago,Fluxus Vivus
  • Joaquin Soriano: pianist (performance)
  • Valery Kuleshov: pianist (performance)
  • Arthur Lazar: photographer, professor of contemporary photography, Lake Forest College, “Photography: a personal point of view”
  • Nicholas Rudall: founding director, Court Theater, actor, reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

1994

  • Michael Anania: professor of English, University of Illinois at Chicago, author, Selected Poems, “Figures in a Landscape”
  • Stephen Wade: banjo player, composer (performance)
  • Richard Wang: associate professor of music and director of jazz ensemble, University of Illinois at Chicago “Jazz, Chicago Style”
  • Mike Kelley: performance artist (University of Illinois at Chicago School of Art and Design Lecture Series, Part I)
  • Yvonne Rainer: modern dancer, choreographer (University of Illinois at Chicago School of Art and Design Lecture Series, Part II)
  • Chris Pullman: vice president for design, WGBH, Boston (University of Illinois at Chicago School of Art and Design Lecture Series, Part III)
  • Leon Forrest: professor of English, Northwestern University, author, Divine Days
  • Patricia Barber: vocalist, and Orbert Davis: trumpeter (performance)
  • Fabio Bidini: pianist (performance)
  • David Sedaris: radio commentator, author
  • Charles Nicholl: author, The Reckoning
  • John MacManus: architect, planning supervisor, Chicago Park District Office of Research and Planning, “The Wall and the Garden: Michigan Avenue and Grant Park”
  • Philip Gossett: dean of the division of the Humanities, the University of Chicago, Verdi’s Stiffelio
  • DePaul Student Chamber Ensemble, under the direction of Dr. Kurt Westerberg, featuring Julia Hurn: soprano and the DePaul Faculty Jazz Quintet (performance)
  • Homer Bryant: principal dancer, Dance Theatre of Harlem, Dance Theatre, Chicago City Ballet, ballet for the 21st century
  • Kenneth Koch: poet, professor, Columbia University, author, One Train and On the Great Atlantic Rainway/Selected Poems
  • Bruce Saylor: composer-in-residence, Lyric Opera of Chicago, “Orpheus Descending”
  • Alan Ayckbourn: playwright, “Communicating Doors”
  • The Arts Club Supper Cabaret directed by Bernie Sahlins with an all-Member cast (performance)
  • Jean-Marie Bettembourg: director, stained glass department, Paris Ministry of Culture, director, Scientific Committee, Corpus Vitrearum
  • Lawrence Ferlinghetti: founder, City Lights Book Store and City Lights Publishing, poet
  • Timothy Samuelson: curator of architecture, Chicago Historical Society, architectural preservation specialist (NoBS)
  • Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times, “Introduction to the Lieder Recital Series”
  • Morton Gould: pianist, president, American Society of Composers and Publishers (performance)
  • Dannie Abse: poet with Joan Abse: art historian, author, The Passionate Moralist and Guide to the Galleries of Britain and Ireland, “Voices in the Gallery”
  • Victoria Lautman: art critic, WBEZ arts and culture reporter, author, The New Tattoo, “The History of the Tattoo”
  • “Angels in America, Part I: Millennium Approaches,” performed by the Royal George Theatre with preview byRichard Christiansen: chief critic, Chicago Tribune (theatre visit)
  • April Sinclair, Anchee Min, Angela Jackson, and Karen Cushman: authors, 1994 Carl Sandburg Literary Winners
  • Jorma Hynninen: baritone, and Ralf Gothoni: pianist and recipient, 1994 Gilmore Artist Award (performance)
  • Richard Francis: chief curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (NoBS)
  • Ruth Golden: soprano with Ken Merrill: pianist, associate (performance)
  • John Guare: Tony-nominated playwright, Six Degrees of Separation and Four Baboons Adoring the Sun
  • “Don Juan in Hell” directed by Bernie Sahlins, founder The Second City, co-founder, International Theatre Festival of Chicago (performance)
  • Nicholas Rudall: founding director, Court Theater, actor, reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

1995

  • The Arts Club moves into 222 W. Superior Street, which was the interim space while The Arts Club’s current building was being built.
  • Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times (NoBS)
  • Wendy Doniger: Mircea Eliade Professor of History of Religions, University of Chicago Divinity School, “The Bed Trick: Myths of Sexual Masquerade”
  • “Angels in America, Part 2: Perestroika,” performed by the Royal George Theatre with preview by Richard Christiansen: chief critic, Chicago Tribune (theatre visit)
  • Michael Craig Martin: artist, trustee, Tate Gallery
  • Michael Anania: author, professor of English, University of Illinois at Chicago (NoBS)
  • Robert White: tenor with Samuel Sanders: pianist (performance)
  • Catharine R. Stimpson: director, fellows division, MacArthur Foundation, Chicago, “Gertrude Stein in Chicago”
  • Christopher Marcus: actor, director, “Staging the Invisible”
  • Richard Cahan: picture editor, Chicago Sun-Times, author, They All Fall Down, Richard Nickel’s Struggle to Save America’s Architecture
  • Derek Lee Ragin: countertenor with Mark Markham: pianist (performance)
  • Kathryn Hixson: art historian, critic, professor of contemporary art, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (NoBS)
  • Studs Terkel: author
  • Homi Bhabha: professor of English literature and cultural theory, University of Chicago the effect of underlying sociological trends on art
  • Claudine Carlson: mezzo-soprano with Armen Guzelimian: piano (performance)
  • Robert Coles: research psychiatrist, professor, Harvard University, 1973 Pulitzer Prize recipient “Writers and Our Seeing”
  • Ray Smith: artist
  • Valerie Shields: collector, Alice Hargrave: photographer, Jean-Brice Wallon: painter (OnLocation series)
  • Mary Hunt Kahlenberg: president, Textile Arts, Inc., research associate, Museums of New Mexico “Matisse’s Secret: Kuba Textiles of Zaire”
  • Robert D. Kleinschmidt: architect, discussing the life and work of interior designer Benjamin Baldwin
  • Rafael Chacón: assistant professor of art history and criticism, University of Montana, Missoula, “The Latin American Presence in the United States”
  • Norman Perman: graphic designer, photographer, “Pakistan: Baltoro Glacier to K-2”
  • Craig Bergmann: landscape architect, and James Grigsby: former professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, “A Garden Walk”
  • Lady Valerie Solti: arts patron, “The Art of Living with the Arts”
  • John Vinci: principal architect, Vinci|Hamp Architects, discussing the designs for the new Arts Club building
  • “Celimente & The Cardinal,” performed by the Court Theatre with preview by Gavin Witt: resident dramaturge, Court Theatre (theatre visit)
  • David Ruttenberg: collector, Ruttenberg Arts Foundation (NoBS)
  • Richard Hunt: sculptor, Richard Hull: painter (OnLocation series)
  • Gail Levin: professor of art history, Baruch College, The Graduate School of the City University of New York, author, Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography; Edward Hopper: A Catalogue Raisonné, “Edward Hopper and American Literature”
  • “Buried Child” performed by Steppenwolf Theatre (theatre visit)
  • Jonathan Rosenbaum: film critic, Chicago Reader, author, Placing Movies: The Practice of Film Criticism,“The Invisible Orson Wells: A second Inventory”
  • Sylvia Wolf: associate curator of photography, Art Institute of Chicago (NoBS)
  • Herbert Mitgang: journalist, author, Words Still Count With Me: A Chronicle of Literary Conversations
  • Alexander Korsantiya: pianist (performance)
  • “On the Verge” performed by the Court Theatre (theatre visit)
  • Helyn Goldenberg: collector, senior vice president and fine arts director, Sotheby’s Midwest (NoBS)
  • Nicholas Rudall: founding director, Court Theater, actor, reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

1996

    • James Wells: former vice president and curator, The Newberry Library, Arts Club Historian (NoBS)
    • Wendy Nielsen: soprano with Michael McMahon: pianist (performance)
    • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media (OnLocation series)
    • Catherine Malfitano: soprano InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
    • Julia Fish: artist with Hamza Walker: education director, The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (OnLocation series)
    • The Ahn Trio: Lucia, pianist; Maria, cellist; Angella, violinist (performance)
    • Sybil Shearer: dancer, critic, Ballet Review (NoBS)
    • The Royal Shakespeare Company members: Stratford-upon-Avon, Barbican Centre, London
    • Molissa Fenley: dancer, choreographer, founder, Molissa Fenley and Dancers
    • Danny Hoch: actor, faculty member, New York University Creative Arts Team “Dialogue on the Art of Monologue”
    • Leon Forrest: author, chair, African-American studies, Northwestern University and Sterling Plumpp: author, professor, African-American studies, English, University of Illinois at Chicago
    • Charles Rosen: pianist, author, The Romantic Generation, “Was Beethoven a Romantic” (lecture and performance)
    • Michael Maggio: associate artistic director, The Goodman Theatre, “Arcadia: A Production Casebook”
    • Peter Alson: author, Confessions of an Ivy League Bookie: A Memoir
    • Ruth Horwich: collector, honorary chairman, Hyde Park Art Center (NoBS)
    • “Arcadia,” performaed by the Goodman Theatre (theatre visit)
    • Gary Hoffman: cellist with David Golub: pianist (performance)
    • “The Libertine,” performed by Steppenwolf Theatre (theatre visit)
    • David Ireland: artist, discussing his life and works
    • Douglas Hoerr: landscape architect
    • Stuart Dybek: author, The Coast of Chicago
    • Franz Schulze: Hollender Professor of Art, Emeritus, Lake Forest College (NoBS)
    • Honor Moore: playwright, author, The White Blackbird
    • Robert Pack: poet, Minding the Sun, College Professor of Literature and Creative Writing, Middlebury College,
    • Bertrand Goldberg: architect (NoBS)
    • Jennifer Egan: author, The Invisible Circus
    • Jim Nutt and Gladys Nilsson: artists (NoBS)
    • Norman Perman: photographer, “Southern India: Art and Life”
    • “Supple in Combat” performed by Steppenwolf Theatre (theatre visit)
    • Maya Moran: artist, author, Down to Earth, “Down To Earth: An Insider’s View of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Tomek House”
    • Reginald Gibbons: poet, professor of English, Classics, and Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University, editor, TriQuarterly (NoBS)
    • Adolph Herseth: principal trumpet, Chicago Symphony Orchestra InConversation with Andrew Patner: writer, art critic, WBEZ host
    • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “The Double Life of Drzysztof Kieslowski” (film series)
    • James Park Sloan: author, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography
    • James McManus: author, Going to the Sun InConversation with Victoria Lautman: writer, critic, WBEZ arts and culture reporter
    • Ken Nordine: word jazz artist
    • Lucinda Barnes: curator of collections, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
    • Robert Falls: artistic director, Goodman Theatre InConversation with Andrew Patner: writer, art critic, WBEZ host
    • Hope Abelson: theatrical producer, patron (NoBS)
    • John Browning: pianist (performance)
    • Ron Padgett: poet
    • Bobby Baker: monologist
    • Martha Lavey: artistic director, Steppenwolf Theatre Company InConversation with Andrew Patner: writer, art critic, WBEZ host
    • James Robinson: director, Carmen, Court Theatre
    • Nicholas Rudall: founding director, Court Theater, actor, reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
    • Helyn Goldenberg: senior vice president, fine arts director, Sotheby’s Midwest (NoBS)

1997

      • The Arts Club moves into its current location at 201 E. Ontario Street. The Vinci|Hamp Architects, Inc.-designed building at 201 E. Ontario Street opened in 1997. It is the first building owned by The Arts Club and houses the famous Mies van der Rohe-designed steel “floating staircase,” preserved from the demolition of the 109 E. Ontario Street site in 1995.
      • Orbert Davis Quintet (performance)
      • Esther Parada: artist InConversation with Michael Anania: poet, author
      • Alicia de Larrocha: pianist (performance)
      • Kathryn Hixson: editor, New Art Examiner
      • Colin Amery: architectural correspondent, London Financial Times
      • Mary Zimmerman: director, The Goodman Theatre, Mirror of the Invisible World (theatre visit)
      • William Russo: composer, jazz performer, professor of music, Columbia College InConversation with Michael Anania: poet, author
      • Ralph Mills: poet
      • Charles Ray: artist
      • Barbara Gaines: artistic director, Shakespeare Repertory InConversation with Bernie Sahlins: founder, The Second City
      • Thom Gunn: poet
      • Guy Cooper: landscape designer, author
      • Curt Columbus: director, University Theater, University of Chicago
      • Scott Zigler: director, A Fair Country InConversation with Martha Lavey: artistic director, Steppenwolf Theatre Company
      • Marion McPartland: jazz pianist (performance)
      • Steppenwolf Theatre Company (performance)
      • Franz Schulze: Hollender Professor of Art, Emeritus, Lake Forest College, discussing the exhibition A. James Speyer: Architect, Curator, Exhibition Designer
      • Leslie Hindman: senior vice president for business development Midwest, Sotheby’s (NoBS)
      • John Zukowsky: curator of architecture, Art Institute of Chicago
      • Bernard Sahlins: founder, The Second City InConversation with Marshall Sahlins: Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor, University of Chicago
      • Amanda Cruz: Manilow Curator of Exhibitions, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (NoBS)
      • Donald Powell and Robert Kleinschmidt: architects, Powell/Kleinschmidt Interior Architects
      • Seamus Heaney: poet, writer, reading The Cure at the Troy
      • Ronald Krueck and Mark Sexton: architects, Krueck + Sexton Architects
      • Cris Mazza: author
      • Bertrand Goldberg: architect
      • Douglas Hoerr: landscape architect
      • Helmut Jahn: architect
      • Zarin Mehta: executive director and chief operating director, Ravinia Festival Association InConversation withBernard Sahlins: director, producer
      • Ursula Oppens: pianist (performance)
      • Helmut Lachenmann: composer (performance)
      • Jeremy Strick: curator of 20th century art, Art Institute of Chicago, discussing artist Louise Bourgeois
      • Thomas Blackman: president, Thomas Blackman Associates (NoBS)
      • Danny Newman: press agent, Lyric Opera of Chicago InConversation with Andrew Patner: writer, art critic, WBEZ host
      • Gregory Knight: director of visual art/chief curator, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs (NoBS)
      • Robert Loescher: art historian
      • Nicholas Rudall: founding director, Court Theater, actor, reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

1998

      • William Elliott Hazelgrove: author InConversation with Victoria Lautman: writer, critic, WBEZ arts and culture reporter
      • Suzanne Ghez: director, The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (NoBS)
      • John Corigliano: composer
      • Elizabeth Futral: soprano with Steven White: baritone (performance)
      • Pacifica Quartet (performance)
      • Mary Zimmerman: artistic associate, Goodman Theatre InConversation with Richard Christiansen: chief critic,Chicago Tribune
      • Shanghai Quartet (performance)
      • Carter Manny, Jr.: architect, director emeritus, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts (NoBS)
      • Naomi Pollock: curator, “Japan 2000: Architecture of the Japanese Public”
      • David Finckel: cellist with Wu Han: pianist (performance)
      • Donna Robertson: dean, College of Architecture, ITT with Richard Solomon: director, Graham Foundation, “The New ITT Campus Design”
      • Alice Hayes: poet, founder, Ragdale Foundation with John Holabird: architect, advisory board member, Ragdale Foundation, discussing the 100th Year Anniversary of the artist colony
      • Judith Kirshner: interim dean, College of Architecture and Arts, University of Illinois at Chicago (NoBS)
      • Patricia Morehead: composer, oboist, co-artistic director, CUBE InConversation with Wynne Delacoma:classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
      • Julian Rachlin: violinist and Itamar Golan: pianist (performance)
      • Tony Jones: president and director, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, discussing designer Archibald Knox
      • Jonathan Biss: pianist (performance)
      • Celia Marriott: associate director, museum education, Art Institute of Chicago, “From Kiefer to Renoir in 15 Minutes Flat: Making Videos on Artists”
      • Ken Smith: poet
      • Ward Just: author, Echo House InConversation with Helen Harvey Mills: photographer
      • Dianne Harris: architectural historian, “Making Your Private World: Modern Landscape Architecture andHouse Beautiful 1945–65″
      • William Mason: general director, Lyric Opera InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic,Chicago Sun-Times
      • Jeff Mendoza: landscape architect, J. Mendoza Gardens, “An Unfinished Garden”
      • Edith Gaines: director of membership programs, Art Institute of Chicago (NoBS)
      • Beppie Blankert and Dancers Studio
      • Ted Beattie: president, Shedd Aquarium, John McCarter, Jr.: president, Field Museum, and Paul Knappenberger, Jr.: president, Adler Planetarium, “The New Museum Campus”
      • Stephan Balkenhol: sculptor InConversation with Jeremy Strick: curator of 20th century painting and sculpture, Art Institute of Chicago
      • Pierre Boulez: principle guest conductor, Chicago Symphony Orchestra InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
      • Elliott Golub: violinist (performance)
      • Albert Cook: author, critic, poet, “Space and Culture”
      • Shulamit Ran: composer InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
      • Ellen Gilchrist: author
      • Peter Taub: director of performance programs, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (NoBS)
      • Barbara Stafford: art historian, William B. Ogden distinguished service professor, University of Chicago, “The New Imagist: From Curiosities to Computers”
      • Helyn Goldenberg: chairman, fine arts director, Sotheby’s Midwest (NoBS)
      • George Gardner Herrick: author, Winter Rules: A Commonplace Book
      • Gene Coleman: composer, bass clarinetist, founding artistic director, Ensemble Noamnesia
      • Terra Museum of American Art, “1998: New Artists in Chicago” panel discussion (public lecture)
      • Ann Barzel: dancer, critic, collector InConversation with Andrew Patner: writer, art critic, WBEZ host
      • Rosellen Brown: author, poet
      • Peter Lindsay Schaudt: landscape architect, “Landscape as Artifact”
      • George Danforth: architect, professor emeritus, Illinois Institute of Technology
      • Polwechsel: Austrian music group, with Gene Coleman: composer, bass clarinetist, founding artistic director, Ensemble Noamnesia (performance)
      • Maria Smithburg: landscape architect
      • Marilynn B. Alsdorf: accumulator, collector (NoBS)
      • Michael Ondaatje: author, poet
      • Edwin Schlossberg: designer, author, Interactive Excellence: Defining and Developing New Standards for the Twenty-first Century InConversation with Victoria Lautman: writer, critic, WBEZ arts and culture reporter
      • Richard Hunt: sculptor (NoBS)
      • Anthony Tommasini: music critic, The New York Times, author, Virgil Thomson: Composer on the Aisle
      • Kisho Kurokawa: architect
      • Meg Stuart: dancer, choreographer
      • Yuri Tsivian: William Colvin professor, University of Chicago, “Soviet Montage: a Cryptogram, or the Universal Language?” (film series)
      • Misha Dichter: pianist (performance)
      • Russell Braun: baritone (performance)
      • Ronne Hartfield: Woman’s Board endowed executive director of museum education, Art Institute of Chicago (NoBS)
      • Judith Tick: professor of music, Northwestern University in Boston, author, American Women Composers Before 1870
      • Speak Low When You Speak Love: The Letters of Kurt Weill & Lotte Lenya, directed by Bernard Sahlins, with Nicholas Rudall and the Lyric Opera Center (performance)
      • Alisa Weilerstein: cellist (performance)
      • Jane Scovell: author, Oona: Living in the Shadows InConversation with Victoria Lautman: writer, critic, WBEZ arts and culture reporter
      • John Hallmark Neff: director, curator of collections, Terra Museum of American Art (NoBS)
      • John Carswell: art historian, curator, artist, “Brancusi At Home: Tirgu Jui”
      • Gil Shaham: violinist InConversation with Andrew Patner: writer, art critic, WBEZ host
      • Nicholas Rudall: founding director, Court Theater, actor, reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
      • Kathy Cottong: director, The Arts Club of Chicago, on artist Paul Thek
      • Aubrey Morris Trio (performance)

1999

    • David Bordwell: film theorist, educator, author, on The Hollywood Sound Film II: His Girl Friday (film series)
    • Bernard Bobrowski: dean, Northwestern University School of Music (NoBS)
    • Helen Huang: pianist (performance)
    • Harry Sparnaay: bass clarinetist with Gene Coleman: composer, bass clarinetist, founding artistic director, Ensemble Noamnesia (performance)
    • Tom Gunning: film theorist, lecturer, film screened: M by Fritz Lang (film series)
    • Frank Rich: author, Hot Seat: Theater Criticism for the New York Times, 1980–1993
    • Suzanne F. McCullagh: curator of earlier prints and drawings, Art Institute of Chicago (NoBS)
    • Fred Camper: art and film writer, lecturer, “Avant-Garde Filmmaking, short films by Brakhage, Breer, Frampton, Kubelka” (film series)
    • Orbert Davis Double Quartet (performance)
    • Julian Harvey: composer (performance and lecture)
    • David M. Sokol: art historian, “The Exclusion of Women in the Narrative of Frank Lloyd Wright”
    • Fred Camper: art and film writer, lecturer, “Outside Filmmaking, short films by Nelson, Benally, Anderson, Richardson, Adams and Pickering” (film series)
    • Simon Bainbridge: composer InConversation with Andrew Patner: writer, art critic, WFMT host
    • Eileen Mackevich: president and executive producer, Chicago Humanities Festival (NoBS)
    • Anthony Molinaro: pianist (performance)
    • Gene Coleman and Ensemble Noamnesia with Mike Svoboda: trombonist, composer (performance)
    • Vadim Gluzman: pianist (performance)
    • Margaret Jenkins: choreographer, educator
    • James Rondeau: associate curator of 20th century art, Art Institute of Chicago, “Generosity: Art That Loves You Back”
    • Donna Blue Lachman: playwright, director, actress, The Trouble with Peggy: Pieces of Guggenheim(performance)
    • David Sedaris: author, NPR contributor (performance)
    • Kimberly Rorschach: director, David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art, “The University Art Museum: Past, Present and Future”
    • Kerri Sakamoto: author
    • Borromeo Quartet (performance)
    • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, film screened: Dear Diaries by Nanni Moretti (film series)
    • Mei-Mei Berssenrugge: poet
    • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, film screened: Ulysses’ Gaze by Theo Angelopoulos (film series)
    • Francesco Bonami: Manilow senior curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
    • Richard Francis: curator, critic, “Serendipitous and Inadvertent: A Talk on Richard Tuttle”
    • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, film screened: Ulysses’ Gaze by Theo Angelopoulos, continued (film series)
    • Elisabeth Batiashvili: violinist (performance)
    • Ted Beattie: president and CEO, John G. Shedd Aquarium (NoBS)
    • Tina Landau: playwright, director, The Berlin Circle InConversation with Richard Christiansen: chief critic,Chicago Tribune
    • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, film screened: Taste of the Cherry by Abbas Kiarostami (film series)
    • Virgil Johnson: costume designer
    • John Adams: conductor, composer InConversation with Andrew Patner: writer, art critic, WFMT host
    • Martyl: artist (NoBS)
    • Michael Anania: poet and Reginald Gibbons: poet (reading)
    • Tom Raworth: poet
    • Frank Gibney: author, “Japan’s Bewildering Modern Culture”
    • Reginald Shephard: poet
    • Angelina Réaux: soprano, Leonard Bernstein specialist
    • CUBE Contemporary Chamber Ensemble (performance)
    • Robert C. Marsh: author, My Years with James Levine: Man & Artist
    • Tina De Rosa: author
    • Bill Zwecker: columnist, Chicago Sun-Times, entertainment reporter, film critic, WMAQ-TV (NoBS)
    • Robert Falls: artistic director InConversation with Roche Schulfer: executive director, Goodman Theatre
    • Wally Goodman: collector, raconteur (NoBS)
    • Esther Sparks: educator, art historian, “Native Talent: American Folk Art in the 19th Century”
    • Sainkho Namtchylak: Siberian throat singer InConversation with Peter Margasak: music critic, Chicago Reader
    • Barbara Guest: poet
    • Anna D. Shapiro: director, Side Man, Steppenwolf Theatre Company InConversation with Richard Christiansen: chief critic, Chicago Tribune
    • Mel Gussow: cultural writer, The New York Times, author, Edward Albee: A Singular Journey—A Biography
    • Beaux Arts Trio (performance)
    • Eric Rosen and Kyle Hall: co-artistic directors, About Face Theatre InConversation with Andrew Patner: writer, art critic, WFMT host
    • Nigel Wade: editor-in-chief, Chicago Sun-Times (NoBS)
    • George Danforth: architect, professor emeritus, Illinois Institute of Technology, “Setting the Stage”
    • Charles D. Scheips, Jr.: director, Condé Nast Archive “From Morgue to Archive: An Archive for the 21st Century, Condé Nast Publications”
    • David W. Dunlap: reporter, The New York Times, “50-50 Hindsight: Preserving Post-War Modernism”
    • Ursula Oppens: pianist (performance)
    • Geoffrey Goldberg: architect, urban designer, “Architectural Innovation in Chicago Architecture: Tradition or Just Plain Luck”
    • Trio Accanto (performance)
    • Martin E. Marty: religious history educator, “Spooked by the Sacred in Contemporary Art”
    • Igor Begelman: clarinetist (performance)
    • Lee Bey: architecture critic, Chicago Sun-Times, “A Personal View of the City”
    • Boxing Joseph Cornell, Connor Kalista and Greg Allen: directors, The Neo-Futurists (performance)
    • Fred Koetter: architect, former dean, Yale School of Architecture, “Emergent Cities”
    • Sister Candida Lund: chancellor, Dominican University (NoBS)
    • Edward Windhorst: architect, “Architecture for Civic & Neighborhood Identity”
    • Edward K. Uhlir: assistant to the mayor, project director, Millennium Park Project, “Millennium Park”
    • Vincent Royer: violinist, Cologne Philharmonic InConversation with Gene Coleman: composer, bass clarinetist, founding artistic director, Ensemble Noamnesia
    • Katia Skanavi: pianist (performance)
    • Robert Vanderschaaf: pianist, discussing Chicago composers
    • Dr. William Jeffett: curator of exhibitions, Salvador Dali Museum, “Surrealism in America”, co-sponsored with the Smart Museum of Art
    • Nicholas Rudall: founding director, Court Theater, actor, reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

2000 – 2009

2000

  • Robert J. Loescher: Distinguished Chair of Art History, Art Institute of Chicago, The Overlooked Revealed: Early Modernist Art of Amadeo de Souza Cardoso
  • Helyn Goldenberg: chairman, fine art director, Sotheby’s Midwest (NoBS)
  • Ruth Horwich: collector and Don Baum: artist InConversation with Andrew Patner: writer, art critic, WFMT host, “Sixty Years of the Hyde Park Arts Center”
  • Ben Heppner: tenor InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Hamza Walker: director of education, The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago on Jackie Brown,Quentin Tarantino, director
  • Dr. Albano Coelho: Consul General of Portugal, Michael Anania: poet and Reginald Gibbons: poet, reading Fernando Pessoa’s poetry in English and Portuguese
  • Elizabeth A.T. Smith: James W. Alsdorf chief curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, At the End of the Century: One Hundred Years of Architecture
  • Helen Harvey Mills: photographer on Lulu on the Bridge, Paul Auster, director
  • Spider Saloff, Bradley Williams, and John Whitfield: musicians, “An Evening of Gershwin: Valentine’s Day Jazz”
  • Sue Taylor: art historian, curator, critic on The Birds, Alfred Hitchcock, director
  • Sue Taylor: art historian, curator, critic, “Hans Bellmer: In the Eye of the Censor”
  • Guy Cooper: horticulturalist, author, Gardens of Obsession, Eccentric and Extravagant Visions
  • Jonathan Miller: film critic, WBEZ-FM on Cranes are Flying, Mikhail Kalatozov, director
  • Jeffrey Renard Allen: poet, author
  • Robert Fitzpatrick: director and CEO, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (NoBS)
  • Donna Blue Lachman: actor, Frida: The Last Portrait (A Fantasia Based on the Life of Frida Kahlo)(performance)
  • Jon Nakamatsu: pianist (performance)
  • George Crumb: composer InConversation with Peter Taub: performance programs director, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
  • Susan Lipman: director, Performing Arts Chicago (NoBS)
  • Sophie Shao: cellist (performance)
  • Rebecca Gilman: playwright InConversation with Michael Maggio: dean, Theater School at DePaul, associate artistic director, Goodman Theatre
  • Daniel Schulman: associate curator of modern and contemporary art, Art Institute of Chicago (NoBS)
  • Flora Miller Biddle: former president, Whitney Museum of American Art, author, The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made: A Family Memoir
  • Fanny Howe: author, poet
  • Lily Tuck: author, Siam or The Woman Who Shot a Man
  • Anna Pavord: author, The Tulip: The Story of a Flower That Has Made Men Mad
  • James Rondeau: associate curator of modern and contemporary art, Art Institute of Chicago, “Art After Modernism”
  • Robert Lepage, actor, writer, filmmaker, director, theatrical innovator InConversation with Richard Christiansen: chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Kymberly Pinder: assistant professor of Modern Art History, Theory and Criticism, School of the Art Institute, “Olympia’s Maid, She Don’t Do Windows: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in 19th- and 20th-Century Art”
  • Charles Spencer: Russian art and theater specialist, Diaghilev and L’ecole de Paris
  • Francesco Bonami: Manilow senior curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, “The Lonely Planet”
  • Ann Beattie: author
  • Steven Watson: cultural historian, author, Prepare for Saints: Gertrude Stein, Virgil Thomson, and the Mainstreaming of American Modernism
  • Kathryn Hixson: editor, New Art Examiner, “The Crisis in Art Criticism”
  • Judith Russi Kirshner: dean, College of Architecture and the Arts, University of Illinois at Chicago, “The Artist as Critic”
  • Abby Mandel: director, Chicago Green City Market, cookbook author, columnist (NoBS)
  • The CUBE Ensemble, Kindred Spirits, I (performance)
  • Nicholas Fox Weber: director, Josef and Anni Albers Foundation, author, Balthus: A Biography
  • Richard Feigen: gallerist, author, Tales from the Art Crypt
  • William Fuller: poet
  • Ted Cohen: professor of Philosophy, University of Chicago, author, Jokes: Philosophical Thoughts on Joking Matters InConversation with Victoria Lautman: writer, critic, WBEZ arts and culture reporter
  • Maisie Houghton: philanthropist, discussing legendary actress and monologist Ruth Draper
  • Constance Rosenblum: author, Gold Digger: The Outrageous Life and Times of Peggy Hopkins Joyce
  • Patricia Scheidt: former director, The Arts Club of Chicago (NoBS)
  • Valerie Cassel: visiting artists program director, Art Institute of Chicago (NoBS)
  • Esther Sparks: curator, art historian, “Front Yard Folk Art”
  • Julie Sell: author, Whispers at the Pagoda: Portraits of Modern Burma
  • Dr. Richard Grinker: anthropologist, author, In the Arms of Africa: The Life of Colin M. TurnbullInConversation with Victoria Lautman: writer, critic, WBEZ arts and culture reporter
  • Roger Ebert: film critic, Chicago Sun-Times InConversation with Studs Terkel: author, raconteur
  • Martin J Koldyke: chairman, WTTW, founder and chairman, Golden Apple Foundation (NoBS)
  • Frances Kiernan: author, Seeing Mary Plain: A Life of Mary McCarthy
  • Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times, “Arnold Schoenberg: Pioneering Deconstructionist”
  • Dr. Frank Little: tenor, “Remember It’s All About Pretending: My Life as a Tenor”
  • Willhelm Bruck and Theo Ross: avant-garde guitar duo with Camilla Hoitenga: flutist InConversation withGene Coleman: composer, bass clarinetist, founding artistic director, Ensemble Noamnesia
  • Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times, “Picking Up the Pieces: Stravinsky and Beyond”
  • Philip Pearlstein: artist, “My Picabia Connection”
  • Glenn Watkins: Earl V. Moore Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan, “The Great War (1914–18) and the Retreat from Modernism”
  • Hedy Weiss: theatre/dance critic, Chicago Sun-Times with Jim Lasko, Alena Murguia, Shade Murray, Yasen Peyankov: young Chicago theatre directors
  • James Atlas: author, Bellow: A Biography
  • Kathryn Stern: author, Another Song About the King
  • Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times, “Grandsons of the Pioneers: The Road Back to C Major”
  • Nic Collins: composer, Sound Area, School of the Art Institute InConversation with Gene Coleman: composer, bass clarinetist, founding artistic director, Ensemble Noamnesia
  • Lynne Warren: curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (NoBS)
  • Georges Teyssot: professor of architecture, Princeton University, The American Lawn: Surface of Everyday Life
  • Ann Bogart: artistic director, Saratoga International Theatre Institute
  • Luis Alberto Urrea: author, poet
  • Nicholas Rudall: actor, founding director, Court Theater, reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
  • Anthony Jones: president, School of the Art Institute with Vincent L. Michael: chair, Historic Preservation Department, School of the Art Institute, “Live in the Loop”

2001

  • Brian Bedford: actor, director InConversation with Richard Christiansen: chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Ralph J. Mills, Jr.: poet, critic, professor emeritus of English, University of Illinois at Chicago InConversation with Michael Anania: poet, professor of creative writing, University of Illinois at Chicago
  • Anda Rottenberg: art historian, critic, gallery director, “Art in Poland in the Future”
  • Miles Harvey: author, The Island of Lost Maps InConversation with Victoria Lautman: writer, critic, WBEZ arts and culture reporter
  • Ed Paschke: painter, professor of painting and drawing, Northwestern University (NoBS)
  • Adrienne Drell: legal affairs reporter, Chicago Sun-Times, editor, 20th Century Chicago: 100 Years—100 Voices with contributing writers John Holabird: architect, Curtis Lawrence: writer, and Don Rose: political consultant
  • Emily Teeter: associate curator, Oriental Institute Museum at the University of Chicago, co-author, Egypt and the Egyptians
  • David Mosena: president, CEO, Museum of Science and Industry (NoBS)
  • Lars Bang Larsen: curator, critic, “Beyond the Scream: Becoming a Scandinavian at the Turn of the Millennium”
  • Freddy Cole Quartet (performance)
  • James Garrett Faulkner: artist, collector, educator, lecturer, curator, “50 Years of Looking at Art by a Self-Proclaimed Crank”
  • The Music Education Reaching Instrumental Talents Program (MERIT) (performance)
  • Sybil Shearer: dancer, choreographer InConversation with Andrew Patner: writer, art critic, WFMT host
  • Judy Ledgerwood: painter, assistant professor of painting, drawing and design, Northwestern University
  • Penelope Hobhouse: horticulturalist, author
  • Brian Dickie: general director, Chicago Opera Theater (NoBS)
  • Barbara and Arthur Gelb: authors, O’Neill: Life with Monte Cristo
  • Zuill Bailey: cellist (performance)
  • John Conklin: theater designer, Chicago Opera Theatre
  • David Garrard Lowe: president, The Beaux Arts Alliance, cultural historian, author, Lost Chicago
  • Christoph Eschenbach: conductor, pianist InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic,Chicago Sun-Times (conversation and performance)
  • Michael Halberstam: artistic director, Writers’ Theatre with William Brown, Marilyn Campbell, Susan Hart,and Scott Parkinson: actors
  • Barry Blinderman: director, chief curator, University Galleries, Illinois State University, “Inspiration: The Illuminating Gas”
  • Curtis White: editor InConversation with Martin Riker: assistant director, Center for Book Culture, discussing independent publishing
  • Rachel Barton: violinist (performance)
  • David Mickenberg: director, Mary and Leigh Block Museum, Northwestern University (NoBS)
  • Donald Lipski: artist
  • Terry Riley: avant-garde composer (performance)
  • Gail Anderson-Dargatz: author
  • Charles Spencer: Russian art and theater specialist, “Russian Constructivism in Art and Theatre”
  • August Kleinzahler: poet
  • Jerusalem String Quartet (performance)
  • Richard Solomon: director, Graham Foundation for the Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts (NoBS)
  • Don Michael Randel: president, University of Chicago, “Traveling through Music History with Gun and Camera”
  • Hubbard Street Dance Chicago (performance)
  • Austin Pendelton: actor, playwright
  • Will Bruder: sculptor, architect
  • Neil Printz: art historian, editor, “Noguchi in Chicago”
  • Gerald Nordland: art historian, independent curator, author, discussing Richard Diebenkorn
  • Lou Conte: choreographer, performer, founder, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago (NoBS)
  • Lloyd Sachs: jazz aficionado, entertainment critic, Chicago Sun-Times, “My Semi-Life in Jazz”
  • Richard Hull: painter with Ken Vandermark: avant-garde jazz musician (interdisciplinary performance)
  • Chandralekha: dancer, choreographer
  • Michael Rooks: assistant curator with Lynne Warren: curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, discussing artist H. C. Westermann (1922–1981)
  • Joseph Shacter: president and CEO, Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum (NoBS)
  • Mary Lackritz Gray: art historian, author
  • Dr. Kim H. Kowalke: Kurt Weill expert, professor of musicology, University of Rochester InConversation withWelz Kauffman: president and CEO, Ravinia Festival
  • Jo Ann Nathan: director, Jens Jensen Legacy Project
  • Luc Ferrari: composer, electronic music pioneer InConversation with Pater Taub: director of performance programs, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and Gene Coleman: composer, bass clarinetist, founding artistic director, Ensemble Noamnesia
  • Salvatore Sciarrino: composer InConversation with Gene Coleman: composer, bass clarinetist, founding artistic director, Ensemble Noamnesia
  • Anne Rorimer: independent curator, author, New Art in the 60s and 70s: Redefining Reality
  • Stephen Little: Pritzker curator of Asian art, Art Institute of Chicago, “Taishô Chic: Modernity and Identity in Early 20th-Century Japanese Art”
  • Steffen Schleiermacher: composer, pianist with Gene Coleman and members of Ensemble Noamnesia(performance)
  • Eugene R. Gaddis: author, Magician of the Modern: Chick Austin and the Transformation of the Arts in America
  • Gillion Skellenger Carrara: metal smith, educator, director, Fashion Resource Center (NoBS)
  • Bernard Sahlins: founder, The Second City, author, Days and Nights at The Second City InConversation withRichard Christiansen: chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Françoise Meltzer: chair of the Comparative Literature department, University of Chicago, author, For Fear of the Fire: Joan of Arc and the Limits of Subjectivity, “Joan of Arc in America”
  • Sylvia McNair: soprano (performance)
  • Elizabeth A. T. Smith: chief curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, discussing modernist architect R. M. Schindler
  • Barbara Scharres: director, Gene Siskel Film Center (NoBS)
  • Douglas Druick: Prince Trust Chair, department of prints and drawings, Searle Chair, department of medieval through modern and European painting and sculpture, Art Institute of Chicago, “Van Gogh and Gauguin: Studio of the South Cital”
  • Howard Pollack: pianist, music historian with Patryck Wroblewski: baritone, educator, discussing the music of John Alden Carpenter
  • Matthew S. Witkowsky: assistant curator, department of photographs, National Gallery of Art, discussing avant-garde Czech artist Karel Teige (1900–1951)
  • David Garrard Lowe: president, The Beaux Arts Alliance, cultural historian, author, “Stamford White: The Man who Gilded the Gilded Age”
  • Stephen M. Salny: historian, author, The Country Houses of David Adler
  • Jeanette Pasin Sloan: painter (NoBS)
  • Nicholas Rudall: founding director, Court Theater, actor, reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
  • Writers’ Theatre, reenactment in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Jean Dubuffet’s lecture at The Arts Club of Chicago “Anticultural Positions” (holiday performance)

2002

  • Amy L. Gold: vice president, Midwest director, Christie’s Chicago (NoBS)
  • Barbara Stafford: William B. Ogden distinguished service professor in art history, University of Chicago,“Devices of Wonder: From the World in a Box to Images on a Screen at the Getty”
  • Annemarie Sauzeau Boetti: lecture in conjunction with The Art Club of Chicago’s Alighiero e Boetti exhibition
  • Tom Bachtell: cartoonist, illustrator, The New Yorker
  • Diane Paulus: director, The Donkey Show InConversation with Brian Dickie: general director, Chicago Opera Theatre
  • Studs Terkel: oral historian, author InConversation with Rick Kogan: columnist, Chicago Tribune
  • Jennifer Tipton: theatre lighting designer
  • Lang Lang: pianist (performance)
  • Jane Glover: conductor InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Kevin Cole: pianist (performance)
  • Dirk Denison: architect, “Tourists of the Absolute: 5 Weeks, 9 Countries, 19 Museums”
  • Ana Castillo: poet, author
  • Leigh Buchanan Bienen: attorney, lecturer, School of Law, Northwestern University, author, The Left-Handed Marriage
  • James Lastra: associate professor of English, University of Chicago, author discussing “Luis Buñuel: Master of Surrealism”
  • Rick Darke: landscape consultant, author, photographer, “The Story of Found Art”
  • Michael C. Christ: vice president, Tiffany & Co. Group (NoBS)
  • Sarah Cahill: pianist (lecture and performance)
  • Kathryn Gustafson and Piet Oudolf: landscape designers, “Millennium Park”
  • Evan Ziporyn: avant-garde composer, clarinetist (performance)
  • Topher Delaney: landscape designer, “Healing Gardens”
  • Sir Andrew Davis: conductor, music director, Lyric Opera of Chicago InConversation with Wynne Delacoma:classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Martha Thorne: associate curator, department of architecture, Art Institute of Chicago, “Santiago Calatrava: Milwaukee and Beyond”
  • James A. van Sweden: landscape architect, “New American Garden”
  • Hamza Walker: director of education, The Renaissance Society (NoBS)
  • Ronne Hartfield: senior research fellow in religion and art, Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions, international museum consultant and Ann Feldman: founder/executive director, Artistic Circles
  • Susannah Hagan: architectural historian, author, Taking Shape: A New Contract between Architecture and Nature
  • Music Institute of Chicago: student performance
  • Victor Skrebneski: photographer
  • John Snijders: pianist (performance)
  • Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune InConversation with Michael Phillips: new theatre critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Alex Shakar: author
  • Harry Sparnaay: bass clarinet virtuoso InConversation with Gene Coleman: composer, bass clarinetist, founding artistic director, Ensemble Noamnesia
  • Gloria Groom: David and Mary Winton Green curator, medieval through modern European painting and modern European sculpture, Art Institute of Chicago, “Misia: Model and Muse”
  • Olga Kern: pianist (performance)
  • Dr. Pratapaditya Pal: curator, department of Indian, Himalayan, and Southeast Asian art, Art Institute of Chicago, “The Holy Cow and Other Animals in Indian Painting”
  • ShawChicago, Village Wooing (performance)
  • Gene Coleman: composer, bass clarinetist, founding artistic director, Ensemble Noamnesia, “Pachinko/Zen: A Non-Lecture on Contemporary Japan”
  • Charles Spencer: art and theatre historian, “The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood”
  • Richard Armstrong: director, Carnegie Museum of Art, “Richard Artschwager: Brother-in-Law to Art?”
  • Carol Becker: dean of faculty, vice president of academic administration, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (NoBS)
  • Dr. Neil Printz: editor, Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, “Case Studies from the Andy Warhol Catalogue Raisonné”
  • Victoria Kastner: author, Hearst Castle: The Biography of a Country House
  • Aleksandar Hemon: author
  • Bruce Guenther: curator of modern and contemporary art, Portland Art Museum, discussing modernist art critic Clement Greenberg
  • The New Budapest Orpheum Society (lecture and performance)
  • John Carswell: art historian, former director, Smart Museum of Art, “Hunting for Blue and White: Recent Researches for Chinese Porcelain in the Gobi Desert”
  • Dan Chaon: author
  • Richard Stern: professor of English, University of Chicago, author
  • Timothy J. Samuelson: cultural historian, “The Amazing TV Spiels of Ronco and Popeil”
  • Matthew Mirapaul: ‘artsonline’ columnist, The New York Times InConversation with Victoria Lautman: writer, critic, WBEZ arts and culture reporter
  • Shade Murray: associate producer, Writers’ Theatre InConversation with Naomi Iizuka: playwright, Carlos Morelles: playwright, and Lisa Portes: director
  • Glenda Daniel: Urban Greening Director of Openlands Project, “Urban Gardens: Growing Chicago Communities”
  • Betty Seid: researcher, exhibition coordinator, department of Asian art, Art Institute of Chicago, “India Reflected / India Refracted in the Works of Four Western Artists”
  • John David Mooney: sculptor, founder and artistic director, John David Mooney Foundation (NoBS)
  • Francesco Bonami: curator, Venice Biennale, Manilow senior curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
  • Douglas Garafalo: architect, and Brad Lynch: architect
  • Donald Powell and Robert Kleinschmidt: architects, co-authors, Powell/Kleinschmidt Interior Architecture(NoBS)
  • Daniel J. Nadenicek: chair, department of planning and landscape, Clemson University, Lance M. Neckar:professor of landscape architecture, University of Minnesota, and Christopher Vernon: professor of landscape architecture, University of Western Australia, “The Birth of an Organic Landscape Aesthetic: H. W. S. Cleveland and His Influence in the Midwest”
  • Dan Wheller: architect and Jeanne Gang: architect
  • Joe Valerio: architect, Michael Wilkinson: architect and Richard Blender: architect
  • Helmut Jacoby: architect, discussing the book Helmut Jacoby: Master of Architectural Drawing
  • Tango Danza Compania InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune(performance and conversation)
  • Hannah Bennet: librarian, Art Institute of Chicago, “Beautiful Sop: Lewis Carroll in the Ryerson and Burnham Libraries”
  • William Brown: actor and Larry Yando: actor InConversation with Michael Halberstam: artistic director, Writers’ Theatre
  • Esther Sparks: art historian, curator, educator, “Hands to Work, Hearts to God: Utopians Among Us”
  • Laurie Winters: curator of earlier European art, Milwaukee Art Museum, “Leonardo da Vinci and the Splendor of Poland: A History of Collecting and Patronage”
  • Gail Kalver: executive director, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago (NoBS)
  • David Petrarca: resident director, Goodman Theatre InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Ann Barzel: dance critic, dance historian InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic,Chicago Tribune
  • Randy Adamsick: executive director, Gene Siskel Film Center (NoBS)
  • Marilyn Nonken: pianist, “Signature Pieces: Works Written for Marilyn Nonken” (performance)
  • Brian Bouldrey: author
  • Max Raimi: violaist, composer (performance)
  • Ken Nordine: word jazz artist
  • Eleanor Wilner: poet
  • Jonathan Fineberg: art historian, “The Ineffable, the Unspeakable, and the Inspirational in Art”
  • Joseph Houseal: dancer, choreographer, critic, founder, Parnassus Production, “Endangered Dance in the Himalayas”
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “French Life after Amelie” (film series)
  • Ravinia’s Steans Institute, performance: “Richard Rodgers at 100: The Music of Rodgers and Hart”
  • Tom Payne: theater architect InConversation with Roche Schulfer: executive director, Goodman Theatre
  • Alexander Platt: resident conductor, music advisor, Chicago Opera Theater (NoBS)
  • Paul Gemignani: conductor InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Peter Reed: curator, department of architecture and design, Museum of Modern Art, “Becoming Modern”
  • Nicholas Rudall: founding director, Court Theater, actor, reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
  • Janet Carl Smith: deputy commissioner, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs (NoBS)
  • Ebenezer’s Scrooge, a collaboration with Writers’ Theatre and Lookingglass Theatre (holiday performance)

2003

  • Edward Lifson: editor for the arts, architecture, and culture, Chicago Public Radio (NoBS)
  • Jean Goldman: art historian, “Splendor, Magnificence, Power: Art and Style at the Medici Court”
  • Penelope Hobhouse: garden designer, horticulturalist, “Training the Eye: Learning to Garden”
  • Larry Fineberg: Patrick G. and Shirley W. Ryan Curator of European Painting, Art Institute of Chicago, co-curator, The Medici, Michelangelo, and the Art of Late Renaissance Florence
  • Jessica Thebus: director InConversation with Martha Lavey: artistic director, Steppenwolf Theatre
  • Peter Doig: artist InConversation with James Rondeau: acting department head, modern and contemporary Art, Art Institute of Chicago
  • Richard Babcock: editor-in-chief, Chicago Magazine, author
  • Pauline C. Metcalf: architectural historian, “The Interiors of Frances Elkins and Rue Carpenter: Where Art Deco Meets Tradition”
  • David Garrard Lowe: president, Beaux Arts Alliance, cultural historian, author, “Coco Chanel: Fashioning a Life”
  • Joseph Parisi: editor, Poetry magazine, co-editor, Dear Editor: A History of Poetry in Letters, the First Fifty Years, 1912–1962
  • Ruth Duckworth: sculptor (NoBS)
  • Willie Pickens Trio (Valentine’s Day Jazz performance)
  • Tony Kushner: playwright and Frank Galati: director, Steppenwolf Theatre InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief theater critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Gabriella de Ferrari: writer, art historian, “Cultural Identity and the New Immigrant”
  • James Redfield: professor, Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago, author, The Locrian Maidens: Love and Death in Greek Italy
  • Michael Houlahan: president and managing partner, Hedrich Blessing Photography, “Hedrich Blessing and Chicago Architectural Photography: Then and Now”
  • Michael Gennaro: executive director, Steppenwolf Theatre (NoBS)
  • Ingram Marshall: composer, electronic and mixed media performance
  • Terri Plewa: program manager, Ten Chimneys Foundation
  • Stephen Kinzer: national culture correspondent, The New York Times InConversation with Laura Washington:Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor, De Paul University, contributing columnist, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Patricia Brett Erens: professor of Film Studies, Northwestern University and School of the Art Institute of Chicago, “Amazing Asian Cinema”
  • Terry Kinney: actor, director, co-founder, Steppenwolf Theatre, InConversation with Richard Christiansen:former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Kathryn Hixson: writer, critic, “Issues in Contemporary Art: Mythology or Solipsism?”
  • Stephanie D’Alessandro: assistant curator of modern and contemporary art, Art Institute of Chicago InConversation with Stephen Burns: artistic director, Fulcrum Point New Music Project, “Resistance: Degenerate Art, Then and Now”
  • Elizabeth Crane: author InConversation with Victoria Lautman: writer, critic, WBEZ arts and culture reporter
  • Oscar Casares: author InConversation with Victoria Lautman: writer, critic, WBEZ arts and culture reporter
  • Elizabeth Glassman: director, Terra Museum of American Art, vice-president, Terra Foundation for the Arts (NoBS)
  • Samuel Magad: violinist, concertmaster, Chicago Symphony Orchestra InConversation with Wynne Delacoma:classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Prajwal Ratna Vajracharya: dancer, Newar Buddhist priest (performance and lecture)
  • Evelyn Stefansson Nef: author
  • Frank Chaves: artistic director, River North Dance Company and Lucia Mauro: dance writer, critic (lecture and performance)
  • Bernard Rands: composer, Pulitzer Prize winner InConversation with Andrew Patner: writer, art critic, WFMT host
  • Judith Paine McBrien: president, Perspectives Media, “Daniel Burnham: The Man and The Myth”
  • Lois Weisberg: commissioner, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs InConversation with Andrew Patner:writer, art critic, WFMT host
  • Wei Yang: pipa musician and Betty Xiang: ethu soloist InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Stephen P. Harvey: Egyptologist, assistant professor in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, “The Status of the Artist in Ancient Egypt”
  • Gioia Diliberto: author
  • Jon H. Teeuwissen: executive director, Joffrey Ballet of Chicago (NoBS)
  • Joy Gregory: founding ensemble member and Melissa Neel: project architect InConversation with Laura Eason:artistic director, Lookingglass Theatre Company
  • Erik Larson: author, Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic and Madness at the Fair That Changed AmericaInConversation with Victoria Lautman: writer, critic, WBEZ arts and culture reporter
  • Maurice Sendak: artist, production designer InConversation with Brian Dickie: general director, Chicago Opera Theater
  • Brigit Peegen Kelly: poet
  • Hubbard Street 2, with Alex Ketley: choreographer (performance)
  • Dona LaPietra: executive producer, Kurtis Productions Ltd., co-chair, Millenium Park, Inc. (NoBS)
  • Howard Reich and William Gaines: authors, Jelly’s Blues: The Life, Music, and Redemption of Jelly Roll Morton
  • Bruce Norris: actor, playwright, author and Amy Morton: actress, director InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Timothy Long: collection manager, Hope B. McCormick Costume Collection, Chicago Historical Society, “150 Years of Fashion Seen Through the Chicago Historical Society’s Costume Collection”
  • Charles Wylie: Lupe Murchison Curator of Contemporary Art, Dallas Museum of Art, discussing the exhibitionThomas Struth: Picturing the World
  • Dirk Lohan: architect, “Preservation and/or Innovation: The Story and Design of the New Soldier Field and Burnham Park”
  • Studs Terkel: oral historian, author InConversation with Rick Kogan: columnist, Chicago Tribune
  • Mary Sue Glosser: associate director, performance and literature programs, senior lecturer, Art Institute of Chicago, (NoBS)
  • Bob Bruegmann: architectural historian, professor and chairperson, art history department, University of Illinois at Chicago, “Chicago and Sprawl: Does the Growth of the Suburbs Hurt the Inner City?”
  • Thomas Beeby: architect, “The New Chicago Music and Dance Theater”
  • David Alan Roberston: director, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, professor, art history department, Northwestern University (NoBS)
  • Sir Peter Hall: stage director InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Bill Kurtis: television documentarian, “The Art of Documentary Making”
  • James McManus: author, writing faculty, School of the Art Institute of Chicago InConversation with Victoria Lautman: writer, critic, WBEZ arts and culture reporter
  • Antonia Logue: author, educator, professor of creative writing, Columbia College InConversation with Victoria Lautman: writer, critic, WBEZ arts and culture reporter
  • Yoko Nishi: koto player InConversation with Gene Coleman: composer, bass clarinetist, founding artistic director, Ensemble Noamnesia
  • Mwata Bowden Trio (performance)
  • Lynne Tillman: author
  • Dennis Začek: actor, producer, designer, educator, artistic director, Victory Gardens Theater (NoBS)
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “Why Film Is Still The Most Important Art” (film series)
  • Richard Moe: president, National Trust for Historic Preservation
  • Gloria Groom: David and Mary Winton Green curator, medieval through modern European painting and modern European sculpture, Art Institute of Chicago, “Splash! Painting the Sea”
  • Ko Ishikawa: sho player InConversation with Gene Coleman: composer, bass clarinetist, founding artistic director, Ensemble Noamnesia
  • Alexander Stille: author
  • Kim Coventry, Daniel Meyer, and Arthur Miller: authors, Classic Country Estates of Lake Forest: Architecture and Landscape Design 1856–1940
  • June Travis Friedlob: actress (NoBS)
  • Heather Becker: vice-president, The Chicago Conservation Center, author, Art for the People
  • W. S. Di Piero: author, poet, translator, columnist, “Love For Sale: Looking at Art?”
  • Steven Watson: cultural historian of the American avant-garde, “Factory-Made: Warhol and the Sixties”
  • Jane Eaglen: soprano InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Tracy Letts: playwright InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times (NoBS)
  • Elizabeth Jachimowicz: former curator of costumes, Chicago Historical Society, “The Wit and Fantasy of Bes-Ben Millinery”
  • David Hawkanson: executive director, Steppenwolf Theatre Company InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Nicholas Rudall: founding director, Court Theater, actor, reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
  • Wintery Vaudevilles: A Series of Chekhov Shorts, a collaboration with Writers’ Theatre and Steppenwolf Theatre Company, directed by Michael Halberstam: artistic director, Writers’ Theatre (holiday performance)

2004

  • Nighat Chaundry: Kathak dancer
  • Franz Schulze: Hollender Professor of Art, Emeritus, Lake Forest College, author, “Chicago Architecture at the Millennium”
  • Danielle Allen: professor, classics and political science departments, University of Chicago, author, “Greek to me: on translating ancient lyric”
  • Suzanne Folds McCullagh: Anne Vogt Fuller and Marion Titus Searle Curator of Earlier Prints and Drawings, Art Institute of Chicago, “Rembrandt’s Journey: Painter, Draftsman, Etcher”
  • Kate Buckley, Marilyn Campbell, Mary Beth Fisher: actresses with Kymberly Mellen: director, My Own Stranger, Writers’ Theatre
  • Bruce Boucher: Eloise W. Martin Curator of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture and Ancient Art, Art Institute of Chicago, “Another Country: The Changing Display of Decorative Arts at the Art Institute of Chicago, 1900–2000”
  • Stanley Abercrombie: former editor-in-chief, Interiors and Interior Design, “A Century of Interior Design 1900–2000: the Design, the Designers, the Products, and the Profession”
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “Darkness and Light: The Secret French Cinema” (film series)
  • Emily Rauh Pulitzer: founder and chairman, Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, “The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts”
  • Tony Tassett: artist
  • Michael Phillips: theatre critic, Chicago Tribune (NoBS)
  • Regina Taylor: actress, playwright, director InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic,Chicago Tribune
  • Dr. Paul Sereno and Gabrielle Lyon: Project Exploration co-founders, “Seeing Bones: The Art behind ‘GIANTS,’ African Dinosaurs at the Garfield Park Conservatory”
  • Sophia Siskel: vice president of exhibitions and education programs, The Field Museum, “Splendors of China’s Forbidden City: The Glorious Reign of Emperor Qianlong”
  • Amy X. Neuburg: vocalist, composer (performance)
  • John McNally: author InConversation with Victoria Lautman: writer, critic, WBEZ arts and culture reporter
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “Moments of Innocence: The Iranian New Wave,” film screened:The Circle by Jafar Panahi (film series)
  • John Culbert: dean, The Theatre School of DePaul University, “Why Red: Creating Regina’s World”
  • Elizabeth Smith: James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, discussing artist Lee Bontecou
  • Greg Cameron: associate director and chief development officer, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (NoBS)
  • Rick Kogan: columnist, Chicago Tribune, “Kogan on Columnists: Mike, Kup & Eppie”
  • Earl Wild: pianist, conductor, composer, “Earl Wild at 88!”
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “Indelible Images: Cinema Poets,” film screened: Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Sergei Paradjanov (film series)
  • Deborah Card: president, Chicago Symphony Orchestra InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • eighth blackbird (performance)
  • Eric Rosen: playwright, artistic director, About Face Theatre (NoBS)
  • Raymond Leppard: conductor InConversation with Brian Dickie: general director, Chicago Opera Theatre
  • Northlight Theatre, The Good War by Studs Terkel
  • Richard Schultz: furniture designer, “Form Follows Technique”
  • Elizabeth Jachimowicz: former curator of costumes, Chicago Historical Society, “The Age of Opulence”
  • Sarah Potter: architectural historian, discussing artist, designer, craftsman Edgar Miller
  • Gillion Carrara: director, Fashion Resource Center, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, “New Beauty and Functionality: the Americans: McCardell, Gernriech, Cashin”
  • Marilyn Horne: opera singer, co-author, and Jane Scovell: co-author, Marilyn Horne: The Song ContinuesInConversation with Victoria Lautman: writer, critic, WBEZ arts and culture reporter
  • Fujima Shunojo: Nihon Buyo sensei
  • Tina Landau: play director InConversation with Martha Lavey: artistic director, Steppenwolf Theatre Company
  • Francesco Bonami: Manilow Senior Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, “The Curator as Tourist”
  • Elizabeth Jachimowicz: former curator of costumes, Chicago Historical Society, “Art Nouveau and Fashion”
  • Michael Anderson: book editor, The New York Times InConversation with Laura Washington: Ida B. Wells-Barnett university professor, DePaul University, contributing columnist, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Anthony Moseley: artistic director, Collaboraction InConversation with Michael Phillips: theater critic,Chicago Tribune, previewing Sketchbook 2004
  • Mark Pascale: associate curator, department of prints and drawings, Art Institute of Chicago (NoBS)
  • Adam Schwerner: director, department of horticulture, Chicago Park District, “Art in the Parks”
  • Elva Rubio: design director of architecture, Gensler Chicago, assistant professor, School of Architecture, University of Illinois at Chicago
  • Martha Lavey: artistic director, Steppenwolf Theatre Company (NoBS)
  • Carol Ross Barney: architect, Ross Barney Architects
  • Audrey Niffenegger: author, professor, Columbia College Chicago Center for Book and Paper Arts, reading her short story, The Night Bookmobile
  • Gertrude Kerbis: architect, founder, Chicago Women in Architecture and the Chicago Network InConversation with Martha Thorne: associate curator, department of architecture, Art Institute of Chicago
  • Susanna Clark: author, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell InConversation with Victoria Lautman: writer, critic, WBEZ arts and culture contributor
  • Esther Sparks: art historian, curator, educator, “Folk Art in the South”
  • Joel Hall: choreographer, director, Joel Hall Dancers and Joel Hall Dance Center InConversation with Laura Washington: Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor, DePaul University, contributing columnist, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Mary Dempsey: commissioner, Chicago Public Library, “The Chicago Public Library and Creating a Culture of Reading for Chicago”
  • Chao-Ming Tung: composer, zheng player InConversation with Gene Coleman: composer, bass clarinetist, founding artistic director, Ensemble Noamnesia
  • Kit Armstrong: pianist, composer (performance)
  • Roche Schulfer: executive director, The Goodman Theatre (NoBS)
  • Susan Graham: mezzo-soprano InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Thomas J. Cottle: clinical psychologist, sociologist, author, When the Music Stopped: Discovering My Mother,Gitta Gradova (1904–1985)
  • Linda Lavin: actress InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Curt Columbus: associate artistic director, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, “The Chekhovian Century”
  • Martin E. Marty: emeritus professor, University of Chicago, “Toto, we’re not in Europe anymore, Biblical Images Re-Imagined”
  • John Mahoney and Tracy Letts: actors, ensemble members, Steppenwolf Theatre Company InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “Films that Shook the World,” film screened: Battle of Algiers by Gillo Pontecorvo (film series)
  • “A Glimpse into Igor Stravinsky’s Opera: The Rake’s Progress,“ Stephen Morscheck: bassist, Scott Ramsay: tenor, Stacey Tappan: piano, Michelle Wrighte: mezzo-soprano, Lyric Opera (performance)
  • Sunny Fischer: arts philanthropist, executive director, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation InConversation with Laura Washington: Ida B. Wells-Barnett university professor, DePaul University, contributing columnist,Chicago Sun-Times
  • Andrew Patner: writer, art critic, WFMT host InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic,Chicago Tribune, author, A Theater of Our Own, A History and a Memoir of 1,001 Nights in Chicago
  • Neil Harris: Preston and Sterling Morton Professor of History, University of Chicago, author, Chicago Apartments: A Century of Lakefront Luxury, “Chicago’s High Rise Luxury”
  • David Garrard Lowe: president, The Beaux Arts Alliance, cultural historian, author, “The Invention of the Riveria”
  • Ron Padgett: author, on artist and poet Joe Brainard (1942–1994)
  • Amy X. Neuburg: avant-cabaretist, composer, vocalist (performance)
  • Gloria Groom: David and Mary Winton Green curator, medieval through modern European painting and modern European sculpture, Art Institute of Chicago, author, “The Ambiguous Case of Edouard Vuillard”
  • Chris Jones: arts reporter, Chicago Tribune (NoBS)
  • Elizabeth Jachimowicz: former curator of costumes, Chicago Historical Society, “The Evolution of Modern Dress, 1908–1925”
  • Reginald Gibbons: poet, professor of English, Classics, and Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University, “A reading of Antigone for three voices” (performance)
  • William Bolcom: professor of composition, University of Michigan InConversation with Wynne Delacoma:classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “Films that Shook the World,” film screened: Persona by Ingmar Bergman (film series)
  • Matías Tarnopolsky: director of programming, Chicago Symphony Orchestra (NoBS)
  • Stuart Dybek: poet, author
  • Hershey Felder: pianist, actor, George Gershwin Alone
  • Elizabeth Jachimowicz: former curator of costumes, Chicago Historical Society, “All that Glitters, Shimmers, and Rustles: Women’s Evening Dress, 1860–1960”
  • Nicholas Rudall: founding director, Court Theater, actor, reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
  • Winter on the Rocks, a collaboration with Michael Halbertstam: artistic director, Shade Murray: artistic associate, Writers’ Theatre, and Curt Columbus: associate director, Steppenwolf Theatre Company (holiday performance)

2005

  • Mario Davidovsky: composer, educator InConversation with Gustavo Leone: composition studies director, Columbia College Chicago
  • Moisés Kaufman: artistic director and founder, Tectonic Theater Project InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Richard F. Townsend: curator in the department of African and Amerindian art, Art Institute of Chicago, curator of Hero, Hawk, and Open Hand: American Indian Art of the Ancient Midwest and South
  • Charles Newell: artistic director, Court Theatre and JoAnne Akalaitis: play director InConversation withRichard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Ann Rorimer: independent art historian, curator, author, discussing artist Robert Ryman
  • Susan Betz: associate director and editor-in-chief, Northwestern University Press (NoBS)
  • Linda Roethke: director, MFA design program, School of Communications, Northwestern University, costume designer InConversation with Jessica Thebus: associate artist, play director, Steppenwolf Theatre Company
  • Stanley Fish: Milton scholar, English professor, former dean, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Illinois at Chicago InConversation with Laura Washington: Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor, DePaul University, contributing columnist, Chicago Sun-Times
  • BJ Jones: artistic director, Northlight Theatre and Harry Lennix: actor InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Bruce Boucher: Eloise W. Martin Curator of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture and Ancient Art, Art Institute of Chicago, “Second Thoughts on The Da Vinci Code“
  • Edward Sobel: director of new play development, Steppenwolf Theatre Company (NoBS)
  • Maggie Brown: jazz vocalist (Valentine’s Day Jazz performance)
  • Guy Cooper and Gordon Taylor: garden and landscape designers, television presenters, “Gardens for the Future”
  • Reginald Gibbons: poet, professor of English, Classics, and Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University, discussing So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell (Arts Club Book Club series)
  • James Bohnen: artistic director, Remy Bumppo Theatre Company with Annabel Armour, David Darlow, andShawn Douglass: artistic associates
  • James R. Grossman: vice president for research and education, Newberry Library, educator, co-editor, The Encyclopedia of Chicago
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “Films that Shook the World,” film screened: Last Tango in Parisby Bernardo Bertolucci (Film Series)
  • Yasen Peyankov: ensemble member InConversation with Martha Lavey: artistic director, Steppenwolf Theatre Company
  • Muntu Dance Theatre of Chicago (performance)
  • Amy Dickinson: syndicated advice columnist, Chicago Tribune (NoBS)
  • Barbara Gaines: artistic director and founder, Chicago Shakespeare Theater and Mark Lamos: director InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Roxana Robinson: author, Streetwater, biographer, Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life
  • Stephen Jeffreys: playwright InConversation with Martha Lavey: artistic director, Steppenwolf Theatre Company
  • Elizabeth Glassman: president and chief executive officer, Terra Foundation for American Art, “Building a New Foundation for American Art: Creation, Evolution… Revolution?”
  • Reginald Gibbons: poet, professor of English, Classics, and Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University, discussing Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter (Arts Club Book Club series)
  • Celia Hilliard: Chicago cultural historian, “Room at the Top: Chicago’s Vintage Penthouses”
  • Yoko Noge: jazz and blues singer InConversation with Laura Washington: Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor, DePaul University, contributing columnist, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “Films that Shook the World,” film screened: The Leopard by Luchino Visconti (film series)
  • Eric Hochberg: bassist with Michael Kocour: pianist (performance)
  • River North Dance Company (performance)
  • Reginald Gibbons: poet, professor of English, Classics, and Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University, discussing Street of Crocodiles by Bruno Schulz (Arts Club Book Club series)
  • Suzanne McNear: author InConversation with Helen Harvey Mills: photographer
  • Steve Scott: associate producer, The Goodman Theatre (NoBS)
  • John Treleaven: heldentenor InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Steve Edwards: radio host InConversation with Laura Washington: Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor, De Paul University, contributing columnist, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Valerie Wilson Wesley: author (NoBS)
  • James Conlon: music director InConversation with Welz Kauffman: president and chief executive officer, Ravinia Festival
  • Andrei Serban: director InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Christopher Taylor: pianist (performance)
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “Films that Shook the World,” film screened: 8 ½ by Frederico Fellini (film series)
  • Jacqueline Russell: founder, artistic director, Chicago Children’s Theatre (NoBS)
  • Anne Winters: poet, associate professor, department of English, University of Illinois at Chicago, “Poetry and a Sacred Space: Crossing the East River”
  • Stuart Cohen: architect and Susan Benjamin: architectural historian, co-authors, North Shore Chicago: The Houses of the Lakefront Suburbs 1880–1940
  • Toni-Marie Montgomery: dean, Northwestern University School of Music InConversation with Laura Washington: Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor, De Paul University, contributing columnist, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Robert T. Buck: former director, Brooklyn Museum of Art, “About Keith Sonnier”
  • Mary Zimmerman: Manilow resident director, artistic associate, The Goodman Theatre InConversation withRichard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Michelle Habeck: set designer, “Carving Out the Shadows”
  • David Alan Robertson: director, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, “The Block Museum at 25”
  • Sam Weller: news correspondent, author, The Bradbury Chronicles: The Life of Ray Bradbury InConversation with Victoria Lautman: writer, critic, WBEZ arts and culture contributor
  • Dr. Lester Fisher: director emeritus, Lincoln Park Zoo, author, Dr. Fisher’s Life on the Ark (NoBS)
  • Linda Buchanan: set and costume designer, “Creating the On-Stage World of Little Women“
  • Kelly Brand: pianist, and Kelly Sill: bassist (performance)
  • Collaboraction: Chicago theatre-based artists’ collective, Sketchbook 2005 (lecture and performance)
  • Will Schmenner: motion picture curator and programmer, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art (NoBS)
  • Jonathan Fineberg: Gutgsell professor of art history, University of Illinois, Imagining America, Icons of 20th Century American Art
  • Maurice Blanks: designer, co-founder, Blu Dot Design, “Making Design Work”
  • Rebecca Gilman: playwright InConversation with Robert Falls: artistic director, The Goodman Theatre
  • Gloria Groom: David and Mary Winton Green curator, medieval through modern European painting and modern European sculpture, Art Institute of Chicago, “Lautrec’s Montmartre: What Lies Beneath”
  • Denyce Graves: mezzo-soprano InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • John McCord: executive director, Alliance Française (NoBS)
  • Stephen Lang: actor, playwright InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Michael Lewanski: conductor and Paul Koch: stage director, Il Ballo delle Ingrate (performance)
  • Dianne Harris: associate professor, department of landscape architecture, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, author, Maybeck’s Landscapes: Drawing in Nature
  • Rick Boynton: creative producer, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre InConversation with Richard Christiansen:former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “The Cutting Edge”, film screened: The Son by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne (film series)
  • Oliver Leigh-Wood: chairman, Council of the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust, London, “The Changing Fortunes of the Finest Architecture in London’s East End”
  • Ana Castillo: poet, author
  • Martha Tedeschi: curator, department of prints and drawings, Art Institute of Chicago (NoBS)
  • Reginald Gibbons: poet, professor of English, Classics, and Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University, discussing Go Tell It On the Mountain by James Baldwin (Arts Club Book Club)
  • Allan Hollinghurst: author InConversation with Michael Halberstam: artistic director, Writers’ Theatre
  • Criss Henderson: executive director, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre (NoBS)
  • James Warren: deputy managing editor, features, Chicago Tribune InConversation with Laura Washington: Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor, De Paul University, contributing columnist, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “The Cutting Edge,” film screened: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… Spring by Kim Ki-Duk (film series)
  • David Garrard Lowe: president, The Beaux Arts Alliance, cultural historian, author, “30th Anniversary of Lost Chicago“
  • Jay Rubin: Takashima Professor of Japanese Humanities, Harvard University, translator InConversation withCurt Columbus: associate artistic director, Steppenwolf Theatre Company
  • Reginald Gibbons: poet, professor of English, Classics, and Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University, discussing The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers (Arts Club Book Club)
  • Esther Sparks: art historian, curator, educator, “The Shakers: A Plain Talk”
  • Reginald Gibbons: poet, professor of English, Classics, and Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University, discussing Annotations by John Keene (Arts Club Book Club)
  • John W. Barr: president, The Poetry Foundation (NoBS)
  • Nicholas Rudall: founding director, Court Theater, actor, reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
  • Unexpected Revelry, Writers’ Theatre accompanied by John Fournier: musician (holiday performance)

2006

  • Susanne Mentzer: mezzo-soprano InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Orbert Davis Valentine’s Day Jazz performance
  • Gillion Carrara: director, Fashion Resource Center, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, “Shocking is Always in Style: Elsa Schaiparelli”
  • Anthony Hirschel: Dana Feitler director, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago (NoBS)
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “Belle de Jour, or Who Is Catherine Deneuve and Why Is She Looking at You That Way?” film screened: Belle du Jour by Luis Buñuel (film series)
  • Eric Rosen: artistic director, About Face Theatre with Peter Taub: director of performance programs, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Loving Repeating: A Musical of Gertrude Stein
  • David Daniels: countertenor InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • A. E. Stallings: poet
  • Avis Berman: writer, art historian, editor of My Love Affair with Modern Art: Behind the Scenes with a Legendary Curator by Katharine Kuh
  • Eleanor Dwight: author, editor, Letters of Pauline Palmer 1908–1926: A Great Lady of Chicago’s First Family
  • Gary Griffin: associate artistic director, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Jim Vincent: artistic director with Gail Kalver: executive director, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
  • Tricia Van Eck: curatorial coordinator and curator of artists’ books, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, “Andy Warhol/Supernova: Stars, Deaths, and Disasters, 1962–1964″
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “The Geisha and Her Double,” film screened: Sisters of Gion by Kenji Mizoguchi (film series)
  • Naomi Pollock: architect, freelance writer, Tokyo correspondent, Architectural Record, author, Modern Japanese House
  • Kevin Smart: director of visual arts, Cedarhurst Center for the Arts (NoBS)
  • Jane Glover: conductor, author, Mozart’s Women, music director, Music of the Baroque InConversation withWynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Mia McCullough: resident playwright, Chicago Dramatists, member, Stage Left Theatre and The Dramatists Guild InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune (young playwright series)
  • Franz Schulze and Edward Windhorst: co-authors, Mies van der Rohe, A Critical Biography and Critique
  • William H. Gass: author, essayist
  • Dean Corrin: associate dean, chair, Theatre Studies, head, Playwriting Program at The Theatre School, DePaul University InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune (Young Playwrights Series)
  • Jake Heggie: pianist, composer InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Joel Drake Johnson: playwright with Richard Christiansen: former chief theater critic, Chicago Tribune (Young Playwrights Series)
  • Daniel Buren: artist InConversation with James Rondeau: Frances and Thomas Dittmer Curator of Contemporary Art, Art Institute of Chicago
  • Susan Rossen: executive director of publications, Art Institute of Chicago (NoBS)
  • Lee Bey: director of government affairs, Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill LLP InConversation with Laura Washington: Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor, De Paul University, contributing columnist, Chicago Sun-Times
  • David Barr III: playwright with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune (Young Playwrights Series)
  • Chris Ware: cartoonist, exhibiting artist, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago with Ray Pride: film editor,NewCity Chicago
  • David New: associate artistic director, Steppenwolf Theatre Company InConversation with Martha Lavey,artistic director, actress, Steppenwolf Theatre Company
  • Douglas Post: resident playwright, Victory Gardens Theater with Richard Christiansen: former chief theater critic, Chicago Tribune (Young Playwrights Series)
  • Ruth Ann Koesun: former principal ballerina, American Ballet Theatre, author, Oysters for Orange Juice: Twenty-Three Years of Touring with the American Ballet Theatre
  • Kevin Harrington: professor of architectural history, Illinois Institute of Technology, “Crown Hall: the Universal Something of Almost Nothing”
  • Marilyn Halperin: director of education and communications, Chicago Shakespeare Theater (NoBS)
  • Writers’ Theatre, “From Page to Stage: The Duchess of Malfi“
  • Eric Rosen: artistic director, About Face Theatre, director, Monsieur Proust
  • Lisa Dillman: playwright with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune (Young Playwrights Series)
  • Christian Wiman: poet, critic, editor, Poetry magazine
  • Russ Tutterow: artistic director, Chicago Dramatists InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune (Young Playwrights Series)
  • Dennis Zacek: artistic director with Marcelle McVay: managing director, Victory Gardens Theater, co-authorsVictory Gardens Theater Presents Seven Plays from the Ensemble InConversation with Richard Christiansen:former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Austin Pendelton: ensemble member, The Sunset Limited, Steppenwolf Theatre Company InConversation withRichard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Brett Neveu: resident playwright, Chicago Dramatists InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune (Young Playwrights Series)
  • David Foster: senior project manager, The Field Museum, Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs
  • Donna V. Robertson: dean, College of Architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology (NoBS)
  • Regina Taylor: artistic associate, The Goodman Theatre InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Patricia Kane: artistic associate, About Face Theatre InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune (Young Playwrights Series)
  • Debora Wood: senior curator, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Process of Abstraction: Two- and Three- Dimensional Work by Modernist Sculptors
  • Edward Sobel: director of new play development, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, “The Second Annual First Look Repertory of New York”
  • Blair Kamin: architecture critic, Chicago Tribune (NoBS)
  • Ward Miller: executive director, The Richard Nickel Committee, “The Richard Nickel Committee Celebrates the 150th Anniversary of Louis Sullivan”
  • Robert Falls: artistic director, The Goodman Theatre with Stacy Keach: actor InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Joseph D. Ketner II: chief curator, Milwaukee Art Museum, “The Legacy of Modern Art in the Bradley Collection of the Milwaukee Art Museum”
  • Robert Carson: stage director, Lyric Opera of Chicago InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: adjunct faculty, Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism, former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Mike Leonard: feature correspondent, NBC’s Today Show, author, The Ride of Our Lives: Roadside Lessons of an American Family
  • Chris Jones: theater critic, Chicago Tribune InConversation with Martha Lavey: artistic director, Steppenwolf Theatre Company
  • Michael Anania: poet
  • Ken Nordine: word jazz artist, “The Wow of Now”
  • Reginald Gibbons: poet, professor of English, Classics, and Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University, discussing poetry by Thomas Hardy, Elizabeth Bishop, and Gwendolyn Brooks (Arts Club Book Club)
  • Fancesca Zambello: stage director, Lyric Opera of Chicago InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Timothy J. Gilfoyle: author, Millennium Park: Creating a Chicago Landmark
  • R. Russell Maylone: curator, Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections, Northwestern University Library (NoBS)
  • David Travis: curator of photography, Art Institute of Chicago “Beyond Virtuosity: Patterns of Creativity in Old Age”
  • Matt Sax: writer, performer InCoversation with Eric Rosen: artistic director, About Face Theatre, director, Clay
  • Jacqueline Jacqué: curator, Musée de l’Impression sur Etoffes, Mulhouse, France, “Musée de l’Impression sur Etoffes: The World’s Largest Collection of Printed Textiles”
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “The Devil Wears Dada,” a selection of short Dada films screened (film series)
  • Joseph Rosa: John H. Bryan Curator of Architecture and Design, Art Institute of Chicago, on architect Albert Frey
  • David Garrard Lowe: president, The Beaux Arts Alliance, cultural historian, author, “Gertrude Stein: From Allegheny, Pennsylvania, to Paris and Chicago”
  • Sir Andrew Davis: principal conductor, music director, Lyric Opera of Chicago with Gianna Rolandi Davis:soprano, director, Lyric Opera Center for American Artists InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Gillion Carrara: director, Fashion Resource Center, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, “Material Tracings: Charles James and Madeleine Vionnet”
  • Reginald Gibbons: poet, professor of English, Classics, and Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University, discussing The Duel by Anton Chekhov (Arts Club Book Club)
  • Conrad Paulson: engineering consultant InConversation with Laura Washington: Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor, De Paul University, contributing columnist, Chicago Sun-Times, discussing the rebuilding of Adler & Sullivan’s historic Pilgrim Baptist Church
  • Alexander Gelman: producing artistic director, The Organic Theater Company (NoBS)
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “World Cinema Now: The Season,” film screened: Hidden Agendaby Ken Loach (film series)
  • David New: associate artistic director, Steppenwolf Theatre Company (NoBS)
  • Lisa Dorin: assistant curator, contemporary art, Art Institute of Chicago, “Amazons to Peanut Butter: Upcoming Focus Exhibitions at the Art Institute”
  • Reginald Gibbons: poet, professor of English, Classics, and Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University, discussing poetry by D.H. Lawrence, Thomas McGrath, and Linda McCarriston (Arts Club Book Club series)
  • Michael Halberstam: artistic director, Writers’ Theatre, reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
  • Chords by Patricia Kane: playwright, artistic associate, About Face Theatre, directed by Michael Halberstam:artistic director, Writers’ Theatre (holiday performance)

2007

  • Tim Evans: producer, Public Square InConversation with Martha Lavey: artistic director, Steppenwolf Theatre Company discussing Traffic Jam, a three week festival of music and performance
  • Reginald Gibbons: poet, professor of English, Classics, and Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University, discussing a selection of poems by Emily Dickenson, Robert Hayden, and Carol Frost (Arts Club Book Club)
  • Lori Belilove: founder and artistic director, Isadora Duncan Dance Foundation (performance)
  • Jason Loewith: artistic director, Next Theatre Company (NoBS)
  • Reginald Gibbons: poet, professor of English, Classics, and Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University, discussing The Beautiful Mrs. Seidenman by Andrzej Szczypiorski (Arts Club Book Club)
  • Roger Duffy: architect, partner, Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, New York
  • Maggie Brown: vocalist (Valentine’s Day Jazz performance)
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “The Myth of Robert Altman,” film screened: The Player by Robert Altman (film series)
  • Isabel Bayrakdarian: opera singer InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic,Chicago Sun-Times
  • Ursula Oppens: pianist (program)
  • Heather McHugh: poet, essayist
  • Timothy Long: curator of costumes, Chicago History Museum, The Creation of Dior: The New Look
  • Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times, “Ninety Years of Music at The Arts Club: Concerts and Conversations, Nocturnes and Noise”
  • Josh Karp: author, A Futile and Stupid Gesture: How Doug Kennedy and National Lampoon Changed Comedy Forever InConversation with Bernard Sahlins: co-founder, former artistic director, The Second City
  • Joseph Parisi: former editor-in-chief, Poetry magazine, co-author, Between the Lines: An Intimate History of Poetry, 1962–2002
  • Stanley Paul: pianist and orchestra leader, “Songs and Stories of a Glamorous Era” (performance)
  • David Gordon: director and chief executive officer, Milwaukee Art Museum, “How Popular Should Art Museums Try to Be?”
  • Susan Herda: director, The Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts (NoBS)
  • Reginald Gibbons: poet, professor of English, Classics, and Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University, discussing a selection of poems by Walt Whitman, James Merrill, and Sylvia Plath
  • Helmut Jahn: architect, president, CEO Murphy/Jahn Architects
  • Guy Cooper and Gordon Taylor: garden and landscape designers, television presenters, The Curious Gardeners, BBC television, “Irish Gardens: Traditional to Contemporary”
  • Richard Cahan and Michael Williams: co-authors, Richard Nickel’s Chicago: Photographs of a Lost City
  • Tracy Letts, Amy Morton: ensemble members and Ian Barford: actor InConversation with Martha Lavey:artistic director, Steppenwolf Theatre Company
  • Edward Windhorst: architect, co-author, Mies van der Rohe, A Critical Biography and Critique, “Myron Goldsmith’s ‘The Basic Lecture'”
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “The Subversion Eye: Film Comedy as Social Critique,” film screened: Firemen’s Ball by Milos Forman (film series)
  • Alice Berry: textile and fashion designer InConversation with Laura Washington: Ida B. Wells-Barnett University Professor, De Paul University, contributing columnist, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Craig Hartman: architect, partner, Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, San Francisco
  • Gloria Groom: David and Mary Winton Green curator, medieval through modern European painting and modern European sculpture, Art Institute of Chicago, Cézanne to Picasso: Ambroise Vollard, Patron of the Avant-Garde
  • The Lilpop Sisters and Their Passions, by Bozena Garus-Hockuba, with an introduction by Magda Krance,manager of media relations, Lyric Opera of Chicago, daughter of Felicja Lilpop
  • Osvaldo Golijov: co-composer in residence, Chicago Symphony Orchestra InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Jay Clarke: associate curator, department of prints and drawings, Art Institute of Chicago (NoBS)
  • Jason Loewith: artistic director, Next Theatre Company InConversation with Steve Scott: associate producer, Goodman Theatre
  • Krisztina Szabó: mezzo-soprano InConversation with Brian Dickie: general director, Chicago Opera Theater
  • Remy Bumppo Theatre Company, “10 Years of Think Theatre: Art Trifecta”
  • Alan Shapiro: poet, essayist, author
  • Jim Lasko: artistic director, Redmoon Theater,
  • Lee Bey: writer, architecture critic, advisor, adjunct associate professor of architecture, University of Illinois at Chicago, “The South Side Revealed: The Architecture, Neighborhoods and Side Streets of Chicago’s South Side”
  • Robert D. Kleinschmidt: architect, collector, An Architect Collects: Robert D. Kleinschmidt and A Lifetime of Fine Art Acquisitions
  • Kate Limpuma: executive director, Writers’ Theatre (NoBS)
  • David Plowden: photographer, A Handful of Dust: Photographs of Disappearing America
  • Gerard McBurney: artistic programming advisor, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, creative director, Beyond the Score InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Elliott Golub: violinist, former concertmaster, Music of the Baroque InConversation with Wynne Delacoma:former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Welz Kauffman: president and chief executive officer, Ravinia Festival, “The Buzz on Ravinia 2007: From Cicadas to Symphonies”
  • Richard Milgrim: ceramicist, ” Japanese Tea Ceramics”
  • Michael Halberstam: artistic director, Writers’ Theatre, Othello
  • Betty Seid: curator, New Narratives: Contemporary Art from India, Chicago Cultural Center
  • Collaboraction: Chicago theatre-based artists’ collective, Sketchbook 2007 (lecture and performance)
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “A Round-Up of Cannes Film Festival 2007” (film series)
  • Chandra Goldsmith: landscape architect with Mark Sexton: architect, discussing S.R. Crown Hall restoration, Illinois Institute of Technology
  • Craig Bergmann: landscape architect, “Crafting the Garden”
  • Edward W. Kolb: professor, chair, department of astronomy and astrophysics, University of Chicago, “A New View of Space”
  • Bruce Boucher: curator, European decorative arts and sculpture, Art Institute of Chicago, “Art of the Highest Invention: Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise“
  • Edward Sobel: director of new play development, Steppenwolf Theatre Company, “First Look Repertory of New Work”
  • Renée Rosen: author
  • Sarah Ruhl: playwright, Goodman Theater InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic,Chicago Tribune
  • Lawrence Weschler: author, artistic director, Chicago Humanities Festival, Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences
  • Sylvia Ewing: producer, “Cultural Intersections,” Steppenwolf Theatre Company (NoBS)
  • Santiago Calatrava: architect, engineer, artist
  • David Garrard Lowe: president, The Beaux Arts Alliance, cultural historian, author, “Florence, Birthplace of the Renaissance”
  • Barbara Peters: curator, Some Enchanted Evening: 100 Years of Evening Gowns, 1900–1999
  • Sean Malone: director, Ten Chimneys Foundation, “A Design for Living: Nöel Coward, The Lunts, And Ten Chimneys”
  • Anna D. Shapiro: ensemble member, director, Steppenwolf Theatre Company InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Howard Reich: jazz critic, Chicago Tribune, producer, Prisoner of Her Past
  • Margaret Wertheim: co-director, The Institute for Figuring, co-designer/co-curator, The Crochet Coral Reef
  • Julie Kavanagh: former London editor, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, biographer, Nureyev: The Life
  • Willard Spiegelman: editor-in-chief, Southwest Review, editor, Love Amy; The Selected Letters of Amy Clampitt
  • Elizabeth Taylor: literary editor, Chicago Tribune, editor, Chicago Tribune Magazine (NoBS)
  • Del Hall: photographer, “A Life in Pictures: 1960 to the Present”
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “The Great Ecstasy of Werner Herzog,” film screened: The Mystery of Kasper Hauser (film series)
  • Will Schmenner: motion picture curator and programmer, Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Casting a Shadow: Creating the Alfred Hitchcock Film
  • Eric Rosen: artistic director, About Face Theatre InConversation with Martha Lavey: artistic director, Steppenwolf Theatre Company
  • Todd Tubutis: permanent exhibitions manager, The Field Museum, co-curator, Maps: Finding Our Place in the World
  • Karen Abbott: author, Sin in the Second City: Madams, Ministers, Playboys, and the Battle for America’s Soul
  • Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa: playwright InConversation with Martha Lavey: artistic director, Steppenwolf Theatre Company
  • William Drake: architect and JoAnna Carney: photographer, “An Introduction to the People, Villages & Temples of Central and Southern India”
  • Jason Palmquist: executive director, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago (NoBS)
  • Dr. Madhuvanti Ghose: Alsdorf Curator of Indian, Southeast Asian, Himalayan and Islamic art, Art Institute of Chicago, “The Fabulous World of the Mughals and the Rajputs”
  • Nicole Cabell: lyric soprano accompanied by Welz Kauffman: pianist (performance)
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “The Filmmaker & His Double,” film screened: L’Eclisse directed by Michelangelo Antonioni (film series)
  • Alan G. Thomas: editorial director, Humanities and Sciences, The University of Chicago Press (NoBS)
  • Michael Halberstam: artistic director, Writers’ Theatre, reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas
  • Douglas Druick: Prince Trust Chairman, department of prints and drawings and Mark Pascale: associate curator, department of prints and drawings, discussing Jasper Johns: Gray
  • X-mas Terror Ride ’79! by Brett Neveu: playwright, produced by Michael Halberstam: artistic director, directed by Jimmy McDermott: artistic associate, Writers’ Theatre (holiday performance)

2008

  • Olympia Dukakis: actress InConversation with Michael Halberstam: artistic director, Writers’ Theatre
  • Victor Skrebneski: photographer
  • PJ Powers: artistic director, TimeLine Theatre Company (NoBS)
  • Francesco Bonami: curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, “Mario Merz and Arte Povera”
  • Martha Tedeschi: curator, department of prints and drawings, Art Institute of Chicago, Watercolors by Winslow Homer: The Color of Light
  • Michael Phillips: film critic, Chicago Tribune, “2008 Academy Award Nominees”
  • Debora Wood: senior curator, Mary and Leigh Block Museum, Northwestern University, “Marion Mahony and the Prairie School”
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “The Passion of Pier Pasolini,” film screened: Mamma Roma (film series)
  • Lynne Warren: curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Gordon Matta-Clark: “You Are the Measure”
  • Mark-Anthony Turnage: Mead Composer-in-Residence, Chicago Symphony Orchestra InConversation withWynne Delacoma: former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Gioia Diliberto: author, The Collection, “Secrets of Chanel Style”
  • Horton Foote: playwright, Goodman Theatre InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic,Chicago Tribune
  • Mark Sexton: architect, “Designing for the Spertus Institute”
  • Alejandro Cerrudo: company member InConversation with Jim Vincent: artistic director, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
  • Donald Nally: chorus master, Lyric Opera of Chicago InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Sophia Siskel: President and CEO, Chicago Botanic Garden (NoBS)
  • Sheldon Harnick: lyricist, InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “The Unknown Roman Polanski,” film screened, Knife in the Water (film series)
  • Alan Cohen: photographer, photo historian, professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (NoBS)
  • Roger Pines: dramaturg, Lyric Opera of Chicago InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Bruce Boucher: curator of European decorative art and sculpture, Art Institute of Chicago, “Andrea Palladio; The Architect in his Time”
  • Laurie Anderson: visual artist, composer, filmmaker, electronics whiz InConversation with Ken Nordine: word jazz artist
  • Adam Brooks: artist, curator, professor, Columbia College, “Selective Disruptions: Public Works”
  • Hillary Jordan: author
  • Michael Halberstam: Writers’ Theatre artistic director, with Jan Tranen: lyricist and Josh Schmidt: composer, “The Making of a Musical: Part I”
  • Bruce Guenther: chief curator, curator of modern and contemporary art, Portland Art Museum, “Arte Povera and Contemporary American Voices”
  • Lawrence Weschler: author, artistic director, Chicago Humanities Festival, “True to Life: David Hockney’s Long Road Back to Painting”
  • Chicago Opera Theatre Don Giovanni artistic team InConversation with Brian Dickie: general director
  • Zoë Ryan: Neville Brown Curator of Design, Art Institute of Chicago, Graphic Thought Facility: Resourceful Design
  • June Blaker: fashion and design explorer, visionary (NoBS)
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, A Bigger Splash, a pseudo-documentary on artist David Hockney, directed by Jack Hazan (film series)
  • Julia Cho: playwright and Jamil Khoury: artistic director, Silk Road Theatre Project with Heather Raffo:playwright and Jason Loewith: artistic director, Next Theatre
  • Ashley Wheater: artistic director, The Joffrey Ballet InConversation with Lucia Mauro: performing arts writer, dance critic, Chicago Tribune
  • John Adams: composer InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Rosellen Brown: author and Reginald Gibbons: author, readings on “The Human Encounter”
  • Timothy Evans: executive director, Northlight Theatre and Judith Ivey: actor InConversation with Rick Kogan:senior writer and correspondent, Chicago Tribune Magazine
  • Michael Phillips: film critic, Chicago Tribune InConversation with Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media
  • Lucinda Franks: author
  • Joseph Parisi: former editor-in-chief, Poetry, editor, 100 Essential Modern Poems by Women
  • Julia Keller: cultural critic, Chicago Tribune, author, Mr. Gatling’s Terrible Marvel: The Gun That Changed Everything and the Misunderstood Genius Who Invented It InConversation with Elizabeth Taylor: literary editor, Chicago Tribune, editor, Chicago Tribune Magazine
  • Cornelia Maud Spelman: psychotherapist, author
  • Lynne Warren: curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, “Jeff Koons in Chicago”
  • Maud Lavin: professor, Visual and Critical Studies, Art History, Theory, and Criticism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, author
  • Lisa Dorin: assistant curator, department of contemporary art, Art Institute of Chicago, “Film, Video and New Media at The Art Institute of Chicago”
  • Miles Harvey: author InConversation with Victoria Lautman: writer, critic, WBEZ arts and culture reporter
  • Carlos Kalmar: conductor, Grant Park Music Festival, Chicago InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Lisa Thaler: author
  • Richard Brody: author InConversation with Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media on Jean-Luc Godard
  • Victor E. Ferrall: former president, Beloit College, author, craftsman (NoBS)
  • Tommy Tune: director, Goodman Theatre InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic,Chicago Tribune
  • Frank Galati: ensemble member, director InConversation with Martha Lavey: artistic director, Steppenwolf Theatre Company and Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Lindsay Pollock: author
  • Anne Rorimer: independent art historian, curator, “Marcel Broodthaers: An Introduction”
  • Lily Koppel: author
  • Andy Austin: courtroom artist, Channel 7, author
  • Jennifer Wild: assistant professor, committee on cinema and media studies, The University of Chicago, “The Cinema Model: A History of the Artist-Made Film”
  • Sean Keller: assistant professor, architectural history and theory, Illinois Institute of Technology, “Party Games: Beijing’s Olympic Architecture”
  • Gloria Groom: David and Mary Winton Green curator, medieval through modern European painting and modern European sculpture, Art Institute of Chicago, “Berthe Morisot and Eva Gonzalès: Manet’s Muses”
  • Wu Hung: Harrie A. Vanderstappen distinguished service professor of art history, director of the Center for the Art of East Asia, consulting curator, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Displacement: The Three Gorges Dam and Contemporary Chinese Art
  • Michael Phillips: film critic, Chicago Tribune, “Vincente Minnelli”
  • David Cromer: director, Picnic InConversation with Michael Halberstam: artistic director, Writers’ Theatre
  • Bruce Jenkins: dean of undergraduate studies, professor, film, video and new media, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, “Marcel Broodthaers: Cinephile/Cineaste”
  • James Palermo: artistic and general director, Grant Park Music Festival (NoBS)
  • Jean Goldman: art historian, “Why Do Paintings Look the Way They Do?”
  • Martin Marty: Fairfax M. Cone Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of the history of modern Christianity, divinity school, University of Chicago, “Religious Violence and Religious Peace: Around the World and Down the Block”
  • Elizabeth Smith: James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator, deputy director for programs, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, “PROTECT PROTECT: The Socially Useful Art of Jenny Holzer”
  • William Drake: architect, “Reflections on Image as Psyche in Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion”
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “Dangerous Cinema,” film screened: WR: Mysteries of the Organism by Dusan Makerejev (film series)
  • William Peterson: actor, producer InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • For My Brothers… Wherever I May Find Them by Nambi Kelley: playwright, directed by Michael Halberstam:artistic director, Writers’ Theatre (holiday performance)

2009

  • Brian Dennehy: actor, and Robert Falls: artistic director, Goodman Theatre InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Chrissie Iles: Anne & Joel Ehrenkranz Curator of Contemporary Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, “Sigmar Polke: Lens Paintings”
  • Michael Phillips: film critic, Chicago Tribune, “2008 Oscar Preview”
  • River North Dance Company: Every Dancer Has a Story, 20th Anniversary documentary film
  • David Travis: former chair, department of photography, Art Institute of Chicago, “Yousuf Karsh: Regarding Heroes”
  • Wellington “Duke” Reiter: architect, artist, president, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, “Observations on Art and Architecture: From the Desert to the City”
  • Ben Carlson: actor and Karen Aldridge: actress InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic,Chicago Tribune
  • Victor Skrebneski: photographer, “Love & Sex: A Valentine”
  • Mark Delavan: baritone InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Christine Mehring: author, associate professor of art history, The University of Chicago, “The Art of a Miracle: German Pop Art, 1955–1972”
  • Dr. Madhuvanti Ghose: Alsdorf Associate Curator of Indian, South Asian, Himalayan, and Islamic art, Art Institute of Chicago, “Introduction to the new Alsdorf Galleries at the Art Institute of Chicago”
  • Gillion Carrara: director, Fashion Resource Center, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, “Maximum Exposure: Man Ray in Fashion”
  • Stuart Flack: executive director, Chicago Humanities Festival (NoBS)
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “Beat Brother: The Films of Takeshi Kitano,” film screened: Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (film series)
  • Joseph Houseal: dancer, choreographer, critic, executive director, Core of Culture Dance Preservation, “The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan”
  • Jay Clarke: associate curator, department of prints and drawings, Art Institute of Chicago, “Becoming Edvard Munch: Influence, Anxiety, and Myth”
  • Allegra Fuller Snyder: professor emeritis of dance and dance ethnology, UCLA, daughter of Buckminster Fuller InConversation with Victoria Lautman: writer, critic WBEZ arts and culture reporter
  • Nicholas Adams: Mary Conover Mellon professor in the history of architecture, Vassar College, author,Skidmore, Owings & Merrill: SOM since 1936
  • Michael Tiknis: president and managing director, Harris Theater for Music and Dance InConversation withWynne Delacoma: former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Sean Keller: assistant professor, architectural history and theory, Illinois Institute of Technology, “Dymaxion Man: Buckminster Fuller in the Twenty-First Century”
  • Josie Tomes: fashion department 1951–1960, Marshall Field and Company, “The Golden Age of Couture”
  • Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd: landscape designers, co-authors, Our Life in Gardens
  • Lawrence Weschler: author, “Three Decades of Writing about Artists Robert Irwin and David Hockney”
  • Rachel Shteir: author
  • Christopher Alden: director, Chicago Opera Theater InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Jamil Khoury: playwright, producer, founding artistic director, Silk Road Theatre Project (NoBS)
  • Reginald Gibbons: poet, professor of English, Classics, and Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University, reading Oedipus Rex by Sophocles
  • Collaboraction: Chicago theatre-based artists’ collective, Sketchbook 9 (performance)
  • P.J. Powers: artistic director Nick Bowling: theater director and Don Brearley: actor, TimeLine Theatre Company InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Richard Deacon: artist
  • Helmut Jahn: architect InConversation with Franz Schulze: Hollender Professor of Art, Emeritus, Lake Forest College, author
  • Gail Kalver: interim director, River North Chicago Dance Company (NoBS)
  • Margaret McMullan: author
  • Hannah Higgins: associate professor in the department of art history, University of Illinois at Chicago, author
  • Charles Newell: director and Mary Beth Fisher: actress, Goodman Theatre InConversation with Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Nathan Allen: artistic director, The House Theatre of Chicago (NoBS)
  • Peter Osler: director, Program of Landscape Architecture, Illinois Institute of Chicago, “Time’s Way, Time’s Wear, and the Poetics of Shears; Landscape Maintenance as a Performative Act”
  • Nami Mun: author InConversation with Elizabeth Taylor: literary editor, Chicago Tribune, editor, Chicago Tribune Magazine
  • James Rondeau: Frances and Thomas Dittmer Chair and Curator in the Department of Contemporary Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Cy Twombly: The Natural World, Selected Works 2000–2007
  • Bruce Mau: designer, curator, inaugural 2010 Denver Biennial of the Americas, “In Good We Trust”
  • Martha Gilmer: planning and development vice president and Bill Jentes: life trustee, Chicago Symphony Orchestra InConversation with Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times
  • Kathleen Harleman: director, Krannert Art Museum and Kinkead Pavilion, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champagne, “Contemporary Art Museums Headlined: Scandals, Challenges, and Opportunities”
  • Writers’ Theatre, “Making of a Musical: Opening Night”
  • Kevin Coval: poet, author, founder, Louder Than A Bomb: The Chicago Teen Poetry Festival InConversation with Rick Kogan: senior writer, correspondent, Chicago Tribune Magazine
  • Greg Cameron: executive vice president, WTTW-WFMT (NoBS)
  • Henry Godinez: actor, producer, director, and Nancy Voigts: actress InConversation with Richard Christiansen:former chief critic, Chicago Tribune
  • Jean-Marc Giboux: documentary photographer, Sacred Waters: India’s Great Kumbha Mela Pilgrimage, The Field Museum InConversation with Victoria Lautman: writer, critic, WBEZ arts and culture reporter
  • Paul F. Gehl: custodian, John M. Wing Foundation on the history of printing, The Newberry Library, “The Calligraphic Tradition in Chicago Design, 1900–1950”
  • Christopher Monkhouse: Eloise W. Martin curator of European decorative arts, Art Institute of Chicago, “A Case for Wine”
  • Madeleine Grynsztejn: Pritzker Director, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, “Take your time: Olafur Eliasson”
  • Joseph Houseal: dancer, choreographer, critic, executive director, Core of Culture Dance Preservation, InConversation with Herbert Migdoll: photographer and graphic design director, Joffrey Ballet of Chicago
  • David Sokol: professor emeritus, University of Illinois at Chicago, author, The Noble Room: The Inspired Conception and Tumultuous Creation of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple 
  • Bob Holman: poet, husband of the late Elizabeth Murray, A Couple of Ways of Doing Something
  • Ken Nordine: word jazz artist, InConversation with Michael Kutza: founder, artistic director, The Chicago International Film Festival
  • Michael Phillips: film critic, Chicago Tribune, InConversation with Henry Wishcamper: director, and Joey Slotnick: lead actor playing Groucho Marx in the role of Captain Jeffrey T. Spaulding, Animal Crackers, Goodman Theatre
  • Dirk Denison: architect, associate professor, College of Architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology, “Home Green Home: Residential Architecture in a Sustainable Age”
  • John McKinnon: assistant curator of modern and contemporary art, Milwaukee Art Museum, Andy Warhol: The Last Decade 
  • Jump Rhythm Jazz Project, “The Jump Rhythm Technique: a rhythm-first approach to movement learning”
  • Peter Taub: director of performance programs, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago InConversation withSean Graney: artistic director, founder, The Hypocrites, Frankenstein at the MCA
  • Jane Fletcher Geniesse: author, American Priestess: The Extraordinary Story of Anna Spafford and the American Colony in Jerusalem
  • Dr. Mariantonia Reinhard-Felice: director, Collection Oskar Reinhart “Am Römerholz,” Winterthur, Switzerland
  • Lucia Mauro: dance critic, Chicago Public Radio, adjunct professor of dance history, Loyola University InConversation with Lar Lubovitch: choreographer, founder, Lar Lubovitch Dance Company
  • Ross Wimer: architect, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, “Intrepid Design”
  • John G. Shedd Aquarium, panel discussion on the new oceanarium and the aquatic show Fantasea
  • Richard Christiansen: former chief theatre critic, Chicago Tribune, InConversation with Mike Nussbaum: actor,Heroes, Remy Bumppo Theatre Company
  • Richard Christiansen: former chief theatre critic, Chicago Tribune, InConversation with Sean Fortunato andTimothy Kane: actors, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Writers’ Theatre
  • Karen Forbes: artist, designer, professor of art, Edinburgh College of Art, “Moscow City Palace: A Marriage of Art and Architecture”
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “Iranian Cinema: Cracking the Code,” film screened: Fireworks Wednesday by Asghar Farhadi
  • Stephen Burns: artistic director, InConversation with Randall Woolf: composer-in-residence, Fulcrum Point New Music Project
  • Esther Sparks: adjunct assistant professor of art, Valparaiso University, “Made By Hand: The Not-So-Minor American Folk Arts”
  • Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times, InConversation with Eugene Izotov:principal oboe, Chicago Symphony Orchestra
  • Francesco Bonami: curator, Italics: Italian Art between Tradition and Revolution, 1968–2008, MCA, 2010 Whitney Biennial curator
  • Peter Osler: director, Program of Landscape Architecture, Illinois Institute of Technology, discussing his restoration of Triton Pool Court, Cranbrook Academy of Art
  • Gil J. Stein: director, Oriental Institute, professor of Near Eastern Archaeology in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago, “Cities of the Plain: The Two Urbanizations of Ancient Mesopotamia”
  • Ralph Ubl: the Allan and Jean Frumkin professor of visual art, the John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought, University of Chicago, “Europe after the Rain: Max Ernst in 1933”
  • Richard Christiansen: former chief theatre critic, Chicago Tribune, InConversation with Amy Morton: director, actress, American Buffalo, Steppenwolf Theatre Company
  • Gillion Carrara: director, Fashion Resource Center, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, “Yves Saint Laurent and Glorious Excess”
  • Boris Giltburg: pianist (performance)
  • Victoria Lautman: host of Writers on the Record with Victoria Lautman, WFMT radio, contributing editor,Chicago magazine, InConversation with Jim McManus: author, Cowboys Full: The Story of Poker
  • Richard Christiansen: former chief theatre critic, Chicago Tribune, InConversation with Tracy Letts:playwright, Superior Donuts, ensemble member, Steppenwolf Theatre Company
  • Michael Halberstam: artistic director, Writers’ Theatre, reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

2010 – Present

2010

  • Lucia Mauro: dance critic, Chicago Public Radio, adjunct professor of dance history, Loyola University, InConversation with Homer Hans Bryant: former principal dancer, Dance Theatre of Harlem, founder, Chicago Multicultural Dance Center
  • Helen Harvey Mills: photographer, InConversation with Elise Paschen: poet, author, Bestiary, co-founder,Poetry in Motion
  • Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune, stringer, The Guardian, London, InConversation with Gary Griffin: associate artistic director, Chicago Shakespeare Theater
  • Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune, stringer, The Guardian, London, InConversation with actors Brian Dennehy and Joe Grifasi: Hughie, Goodman Theatre
  • Christian Bjone: architect, author, Art + Architecture: Strategies in Collaboration
  • Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune, stringer, The Guardian, London, InConversation with Mary Beth Fisher: actress and Charles Newell: director, The Year of Magical Thinking, artistic director, Court Theatre
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, discussing defining moments in romantic filmmaking, “It Was a Love Story…”
  • Richard Cahan and Michael Williams: co-authors, Edgar Miller and the Handmade Home: Chicago’s Forgotten Renaissance Man
  • Michael Phillips: film critic, Chicago Tribune, “2009 Oscars Preview”
  • Dirk Lohan: architect, Lohan Anderson: Mies van der Rohe’s grandson, “Edward Hopper’s View of Architecture”
  • Maya Lin:  A Strong Clear Vision (1995):  Academy Award-winning feature documentary film, directed by Freida Lee Mock (96 minutes)
  • Tim Samuelson: cultural historian, “Fragile Flower: The Art of Margaret Iannelli”
  • Katrin Schnabl: fashion designer, The One Hundreds (choreographed by Twyla Tharp)
  • Elizabeth Wilson: cellist, author, Mstislav Rostropovich: Cellist, Teacher, Legend
  • Katherine Bussard: associate curator, Art Institute of Chicago,  William Eggleston: Democratic Camera, Photographs and Video, 1961-2008
  • Lucia Mauro: dance critic, Chicago Public Radio, adjunct professor of dance history, Loyola University, Chicago InConversation with Glenn Edgerton: dancer, artistic director, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
  • Geoffrey Johnson: writer, senior editor, Chicago magazine, “Bobsy Redivivus: The Lost World of Elizabeth Fuller Goodspeed”
  • Wendy Greenhouse: art historian, “Lorado Taft and Chicago”
  • Lucia Mauro: dance critic, Chicago Public Radio, adjunct professor of dance history, Loyola University, Chicago InConversation with Renee Robinson: principal dancer, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
  • John Ronan: architect, founder, John Ronan Architects, associate professor, Illinois Institute of Technology College of Architecture,  “Darkness at Noon”
  • Elizabeth Taylor: literary editor, Chicago Tribune, editor, Chicago Tribune Magazine InConversation withElizabeth Berg: New York Times bestselling author, on her latest novel, The Last Time I Saw You
  • Stephanie D’Alessandro: Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of Modern Art, Art Institute of Chicago, exhibition organizer, Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913–1917
  • Lucia Mauro: dance critic, Chicago Public Radio, adjunct professor of dance history, Loyola University, Chicago InConversation with Kevin McKenzie: artistic director, American Ballet Theatre, on the Chicago premiere of Swan Lake, Civic Opera House
  • Anne Leonard: curator, Mellon Program Coordinator, Smart Museum of Art, lecturer, University of Chicago,The Darker Side of Light 
  • Paul F. Gehl: custodian, John M. Wing Foundation on the history of printing, The Newberry Library, “Artist’s Books in the Library: What to Look For”
  • Unzipped (Directed by Douglas Keeve, 1995): on designer Isaac Mizrahi, introduced by Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multimedia
  • David Chandler: Chief Conservator of Works of Art on Paper, Chicago Conservation Center, “Art on Paper—Conservation Challenges and Solutions”
  • William Ivey Long: costume designer, five-time Tony Award-winner, 2003 Legend of Fashion Award winner, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
  • Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times InConversation with Jake Heggie:composer, Three Decembers, Chicago Opera Theatre
  • Michael Halberstam: artistic director, Writers’ Theatre, InConversation with David Cromer: acclaimed director,Picnic, Our Town, on the production of Tennessee William’s A Streetcar Named Desire, Writers’ Theatre
  • Robert Storr: professor of painting/printmaking, dean, the School of Art at Yale University, “The Misfits: George Grosz, Ivan Albright, & Ed Paschke”
  • Reginald Gibbons: poet, author, Slow Trains Overhead: Chicago Poems and Stories, professor, departments on English, Classics, and Spanish and Portuguese, Northwestern University
  • Ghenete Zelleke: Samuel and M. Patricia Grober Curator of European Decorative Arts, Art Institute of Chicago, Fired by Passion: Vienna Baroque Porcelain of Claudius Innocentius du Paquier, 1718–1744
  • Gloria Groom: Mary and Winton Green Curator of Medieval through Modern European Painting and Sculpture, Art Institute of Chicago, “Earthly Paradise: A Recent Discovery”
  • Valentino: The Last Emperor (Directed by Matt Tyrnaur, 2008): introduced by Victoria Lautman: executive producer and host of Writers on the Record with Victoria Lautman, WFMT radio, contributing editor, Chicagomagazine
  • Yves Saint Laurent: His Life and Times and 5 Avenue Marceau (directed by David Teboul, 2004): introduced by Gloria Groom: the Mary and Winton Green Curator of Medieval through Modern European Painting and Sculpture, Art Institute of Chicago
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multimedia, “Cannes & The Season”
  • Signé Chanel (Directed by Loic Prigent, 2004): introduced by Gioia Diliberto: author, I Am Madame X, The Collection: A Novel
  • Elizabeth Taylor: literary editor, Chicago Tribune, editor, Chicago Tribune Magazine InConversation withScott Turow: attorney, journalist, author of seven best-selling novels including Presumed Innocent (1987) and several non-fiction works including One L (1977), on his latest novel Innocent (2010)
  • John Zukowsky: Interim Director, Pritzker Military Library, Chicago, former Chief Curator, The Intrepid Sea, Air & Space Museum, NY, “An Intrepid Reconstruction”
  • The September Issue (Directed by R. J. Cutler, 2009): on Vogue editor Anna Wintour, introduced by Bill Zwecker: columnist, Chicago Sun-Times, entertainment reporter/film critic, Fox Chicago News
  • Aaron Curry: artist in the exhibition Alexander Calder and Contemporary Art: Form, Balance, Joy, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
  • Notebook on Cities and Clothes (Directed by Wim Wenders, 1989): on designer Yohji Yamamoto, introduced by June Blaker: fashion and design visionary
  • Alan G. Artner: former art and classical music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, “Gustav Mahler: The Time Has Come”
  • Marc Jacobs & Louis Vuitton (Directed by Loïc Prigent, 2007): introduced by James Rondeau: Curator and the Frances and Thomas Dittmer Chairman of the Department of Contemporary Art, Art Institute of Chicago
  • Richard Born: senior curator at the Smart Museum of Art, Mid Century: Good Design in Europe and America 1850–1950
  • Lagerfeld Confidential (Directed by Rodolphe Marconi, 2007): on designer Karl Lagerfeld, introduced byVictor Skrebneski: world-renowned photographer
  • Rick, Michelle and Scarlett: world premiere, on designer Rick Owen, PECKING ORDER, Peter Beard shoots the 2009 Pirelli Calendar: on photographer Peter Beard, and InConversation with Jan Sharp: filmmaker andMilos Stehlik: director, Facets Multimedia
  • Laurie A. Stein: 20th century German art specialist, founder, L. Stein Art Research LLC, “Ripple Effects: The Interrelationships of George Grosz, His Dealers, and Issues of Ownership”
  • Lucia Mauro: dance critic, Chicago Public Radio, adjunct professor of dance history, Loyola University Chicago, InConversation with Nacho Duato: guest choreographer, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago
  • John Vinci: architect, “Aaron Siskind & Richard Nickel: Documenting Louis Sullivan”
  • Eric Fischl: artist, America: Now + Here
  • Richard Christiansen: former critic, Chicago Tribune, InConversation with Mary Zimmerman: director, andDoug Peck: musical director, Candide, Goodman Theatre
  • Exhibition Opening Tea: Chris Ofili: Afrotranslinear
  • Alan Artner: former critic, Chicago Tribune, Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 1 in D Major, 1884–88 (lecture, performance screening)
  • New Orleans-style brunch featuring Libby York: jazz singer
  • Tim Samuelson: Cultural Historian, Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, “Rose and Morton Neumann: A Love Story”
  • Anthony Hirschel: Dana Feitler Director, Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago, Echoes of the Past: Buddhist Cave Temples of Xiangtangshan
  • Lucia Mauro: dance critic, Chicago Public Radio, adjunct professor of dance history, Loyola University Chicago, InConversation with Gustavo Ramirez Sansano: new artistic director, Luna Negra Dance Theater, andFernando Melo: Brazilian dancer, choreographer
  • Deanna Petherbridge: artist, author, The Primacy of Drawing
  • Julie Rodrigues Windholm: Pamela Alper Associate Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, “Luc Tuymans”
  • Geoff Emberling: chief curator, Oriental Institute Museum, “Antique Cultures Today: Curatorial Practice at the New Oriental Institute”
  • Maud Lavin: Professor of Visual and Critical Studies and Art History, Theory and Criticism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, author, Push Comes to Shove: New Images of Aggressive Women
  • Alan Artner: former critic, Chicago Tribune, Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 2 in C minor, 1887–94 (lecture, performance screening)
  • Zoë Ryan: Neville Bryan Curator of Design, Art Institute of Chicago, co-author, Building with Water
  • Betty Seid: independent curator, writer, “The Texture of Text: Words from South Asia”
  • Annabelle Selldorf, FAIA: Selldorf Architects
  • Lucia Mauro: dance critic, Chicago Public Radio, adjunct professor of dance history, Loyola University Chicago, InConversation with Eduardo Vilaro: artistic director, Ballet Hispanico, New York
  • Ann Sumner: director, Barber Institute of Fine Art, University of Birmingham, England, “Director’s Choice: Masterpieces by Bellini, Murillo, Gainsborough, Manet, and Monet from the Barber Institute of Fine Art”
  • New Orleans-style brunch featuring the Bill Peterson quartet
  • Jonathan Fineberg: Gutsgell Professor of Art History, University of Illinois, Arneson’s Irritable Subject
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multimedia, “The Ruling Class,” film screening: The Damned, directed by Luchino Visconti
  • Lucia Mauro: screenwriter of the forthcoming film, Mother of War, dance critic, Chicago Public Radio, and adjunct professor of dance history, Loyola University Chicago, InConversation with Carol Lawrence: screen star, West Side Story‘s original “Maria,” and star of Mother of War, discussing her life and latest stage and film work
  • Alan Artner: former critic, Chicago Tribune, Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 3 in D minor. 1893–96 (lecture, performance screening)
  • Lucia Mauro: dance critic, Chicago Public Radio, adjunct professor of dance history, Loyola University Chicago, InConversation with Alejandro Cerrudo: dancer-choreographer, Hubbard Street Dance Chicago (23)
  • Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times, freelance writer, “The Soviet Experience: Shostakovich & Prokofiev”
  • Philip Enquist: architect, partner, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, LLP
  • Lisa Dorin: associate curator, Contemporary Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Richard Hawkins—Third Mind
  • Michael Halberstam: co-founder, artistic director, Writers’ Theatre, reading “A Christmas Memory” by Truman Capote
  • Holiday Performance & Dinner Holiday Program presented by Michael Halberstam: co-founder, artistic director, Writers’ Theatre
  • Alan Artner: former critic, Chicago Tribune, Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 4 in G major, 1899–1900 (lecture, performance screening)
  • New Orleans-style brunch featuring the Chris Greene Quartet

2011

  • Alan Artner: former critic, Chicago Tribune, Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor, 1901–1902 (lecture, performance screening)
  • Anthony Jones CBE: Chancellor of the School of the Art Institute, writer, “The Glasgow Boys—and Girl”
  • Michael Halberstam: co-founder, artistic director Writers’ Theatre, InConversation with Chris Jones: chief theatre critic, Chicago Tribune on criticism
  • Robert Bruegman: University Distinguished Professor of Art History, Architecture, and Urban Planning, University of Illinois Chicago, author, The Architecture of Harry Weese
  • Lucia Mauro: dance critic, Chicago Public Radio, adjunct professor of dance history, Loyola University Chicago, InConversation with Ronald Hynd and Annette Page: choreographers, The Merry Widow, Joffrey Ballet
  • Michael Phillips: film critic, Chicago Tribune, co-host, At the Movies, “2011 Oscar Preview”
  • New Orleans-Style jazz brunch featuring the world-renowned Orbert Davis Quartet
  • Alan Artner: former critic, Chicago Tribune, Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 6 in A minor, 1903-1904 (lecture, performance screening)
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multimedia, “GOD(ARD): ACT ONE” film screening: Vivre Sa Vie (“My Life to Live”), directed by Jean-Luc Godard
  • Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times, freelance writer, “The Soviet Experience, Continued”
  • Leigh Bienen: freelance writer, senior lecturer, Northwestern Law School, InConversation with Laura Eason:playwright, Sex with Strangers, at Steppenwolf Theatre, and adaptation of Ethan Frome, at Lookingglass Theatre
  • Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune, and stringer, The Gaurdian, London, InConversation with God of Carnage (Goodman Theatre) director Rick Snyder and cast members David Pasquesi and Mary Beth Fisher
  • Alan Artner: former critic, Chicago Tribune, Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 7 in E minor, 1904–1905 (lecture, performance screening)
  • Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times, freelance writer, InConversation withMason Bates: Mead Composer-in-Residence, Chicago Symphony Orchestra
  • Tim Samuelson: Cultural Historian for the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, “Palace of the Fallen Emperor: The Strange But True Story of Chicago’s Kiosk Sphinx”
  • Bruce Jenkins: Professor of Film, Video, and New Media, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, author,Gordon Matta-Clark: Conical Intersect
  • Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic, Chicago Sun-Times, adjunct faculty, Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University, InConversation with Anna Clyne: Mead Composer-in-Residence, Chicago Symphony Orchestra
  • Anne Leonard: curator, Smart Museum of Art, The Tragic Muse: Art and Emotion, 1700–1900
  • Alan Artner: former critic, Chicago Tribune, Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 8 in E flat major, 1906 (lecture, performance screening)
  • Exhibition Opening Tea: Andy Warhol: Shadows
  • Robert Storr: writer, curator, professor and dean, School of Art at Yale University, “Pop Baroque: Light and Dark, Shallowness and Depth in Andy Warhol’s Work”
  • David Garrard Lowe: cultural historian, author, “Venice in the 19th Century”
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “Andy Warhol, Filmmaker”
  • Jonathan Fineberg: Gutsgell Professor of Art History, University of Illinois, “Icons and Iconography: How Andy Warhol Changed the Game”
  • William Ivey Long: Tony Award-winning costume designer
  • Pierre Assouline: literary critic, author, Le dernier des Camondo (“The Last of the Camondos”)
  • Richard Christiansen: former chief critic, Chicago Tribune, and stringer, The Guardian, London, InConversation with Sarah Ruhl: playwright, Stage Kiss (Goodman Theatre) and Jessica Thebus: director
  • Maggie Brown: jazz singer
  • Manuel Muñoz: author, What You See in the Dark
  • Martha Wolff: Eleanor Wood Prince Curator of European Painting Before 1750, Art Institute of Chicago,Kings, Queens, and Courtiers: Art in Early Renaissance France
  • Maisie Houghton: author, Pitch Uncertain: A Mid-Century Middle Daughter Finds Her Voice
  • Zoë Ryan: Neville Bryan Curator of Design, Art Institute of Chicago, Hyperlinks: Architecture and Design
  • Fifth House Ensemble: Chicago-based chamber music group, Putting it Together: Music and Collage Art
  • Martha Lavey: actor, artistic director of Steppenwolf Theatre, InConversation with Will Eno: playwright,Middletown
  • Alan Artner: former critic, Chicago Tribune, Gustav Mahler: “Das Lied von der Erde” (“The Song of the Earth”), 1907–1908 (lecture, performance screening)
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “CANNES & THE SEASON” (film screening: a work by the winner of the Cannes Film Festival)
  • Geoffrey Johnson: senior editor, Chicago Magazine, “Camera Obscura: Beatrice Tonneson, Chicago’s Forgotten Photographer”
  • Steppenwolf’s Martha Lavey: actor, artistic director, Polly Carl: director of artistic development, and Anna Shapiro: Tony Award-winning director, discussing “Next Up,” Steppenwolf’s new partnership with Northwestern University
  • David Travis: professor, Columbia College Chicago, “Music to My Eyes”
  • Christine Sneed: author, Portraits of a Few People I’ve Made Cry, Grace Paley Prize in Short Fiction winner
  • Collaboraction: theater-based artist’s collective, Sketchbook 11: Evolution
  • Lisa Wainwright: Dean of Faculty, Professor of Art History, Theory, and Criticism, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, “Andy Warhol’s Decadence and Contemporary Art”
  • Lucia Mauro: dance critic, Chicago Public Radio, adjunct Professor of Dance History, Loyola University Chicago, InConversation with Tommye Giacchino and Gregory Day: international championship-winning ballroom dance couple
  • Screening of Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol (1990), directed by Chuck Workman, English, 87 minutes
  • Jaimy Gordon: author, Lord of Misrule, National Book Award winner
  • Alan Artner: former critic, Chicago Tribune, Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 9 in D major. 1908–1911 (lecture, performance screening)
  • James W. Finegan: “Where Golf is Great”
  • J.C. Gabel and Neil Harris: The Chicagoan
  • Christopher Monkhouse: “From Virgin Queen to Queen Victoria: English Masterpieces with Noble Associations, 1590–1851”
  • Marianne Malone: The Sixty-Eight Rooms
  • Victor E. Ferrall, Jr.: Liberal Arts at the Brink
  • Denis Domer: Alfred Caldwell: The Life and Work of a Prairie School Landscape Architect
  • Screening of I Shot Andy Warhol (1996), directed by Mary Harron
  • Alan G. Artner: Gustav Mahler: The Unfinished Tenth Symphony
  • Wynne Delacoma: “Andy Warhol & Velvet Underground”
  • Kerry James Marshall on Andy Warhol
  • Opening Reception Bertrand Goldberg: Reflections
  • Laura Washington: columnist, Chicago Sun-Times, InConversation with Michelle T. Boone: Commissioner of the City of Chicago’s Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events
  • Ghenete Zelleke: Samuel and M. Patricia Grober Curator of European Decorative Arts, Art Institute of Chicago, From Burges to Baillie Scott: Thirty Years of Building a Collection of Progressive British Decorative Arts from the Gothic Revival to Arts and Crafts
  • PJ Powers: artistic director, TimeLine Theatre, InConversation with BJ Jones: director, The Pitmen Painters,Andrew Carter: actor, The Pitmen Painters, and Maren Robinson: dramaturg, TimeLine Theatre
  • Screening of Bauhaus in America, Directed by Judith Pearlman, English, 85 minutes
  • Annette Blaugrund: author, Dispensing Beauty in New York and Beyond: The Triumphs and Tragedies of Harriet Hubbard Ayer
  • Chris Jones: chief theatre critic at the Chicago Tribune, InConversation with David Henry Hwang: Tony Award winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist for M. Butterfly. Hwang’s new play, Chinglish, had its world-premiere at the Goodman Theatre 18 June–24 July 2011.
  • Yvonne Domenge: artist, Interconnected
  • Elizabeth Smith: executive director for curatorial affairs at the Art Gallery of Ontario, “Bertrand Goldberg: Space, Structure, Society”
  • Jonathan Fineberg: Gutgsell Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois, Imagining America: Icons of 20th Century American Art
  • Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic at the Chicago Sun-Times and adjunct faculty at the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University, InConversation with Adam Marks:pianist and director of artistic programming, Fifth House Ensemble
  • Peter Wirtz: principal of Wirtz International, “Space Building and Stylistic Freedom in Contemporary Landscape Architecture”
  • Gioia Diliberto: author, Paris Without End: The True Story of Hemingway’s First Wife
  • Lincoln Trio: piano trios by Tchaikovsky, Beethoven, and Higdon
  • Ann Sumner: director of the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Court on Canvas: Tennis in Art
  • Hannah Pittard: author, The Fates Will Find Their Way
  • Fifth House Ensemble: performing Wind Quintet by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Reed Trio by Hectore Villa Lobos, Living Room Music by John Cage, Junk Shot by John Elmquist
  • Alison Fisher: Harold and Margot Schiff Assistant Curator of Architecture at the Art Institute of Chicago, “The Road to Community: The Houses and Housing of Bertrand Goldberg”
  • Blair Kamin: Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic at the Chicago Tribune, InConversation with John Barr:president of the Poetry Foundation, and John Ronan: architect of the Poetry Foundation’s new building, “The Poetry Foundation: 61 West Superior Street, Chicago”
  • Gillion Carrara: adjunct professor in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and director of the Fashion Resource Center, “Rare Birds: Paul Poiret + Serge Diaghilev”
  • Laura Washington: columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times InConversation with Torey Malatia: President and CEO of Chicago Public Media and co-founder of This American Life
  • Core of Culture Dance Preservation’s Joseph Houseal: Director, and Gerard Houghton: Technology Director, “Core of Culture’s Bhutan Dance Database”
  • Dr. Katherine Raff: Research Associate in the Department of Ancient and Byzantine Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, “Painted Decorations in the Garden Houses Complex at Ancient Ostia: Standardization, Social Status, and Urban Tenancy”
  • Joseph Houseal: director, Core of Culture, InConversation with Fabrice Calmels: dancer, Joffrey Ballet
  • Geoffrey Goldberg InConversation with Judith Pearlman: director
  • Michael Halberstam reading “A Christmas Memory” by Truman Capote
  • Fifth House Ensemble presents a series of piano trios, Piano Trio in D minor by Felix Mendelssohn, Nivea Hair Care Styling Mousse by Jacob Ter Veldhuis, Piano Trio by David T. Little
  • Ian Schneller: sculptor, engineer, luthier, Sonic Arboretum at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago
  • Bertrand Goldberg: Reflections Open House
  • Holiday Jazz Brunch featuring Libby York: jazz singer

2012

  • Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic at the Chicago Sun-Times and adjunct faculty at the Medill School of Journalism, InConversation with Mei-Ann Chen: Music Director of the Chicago Sinfonietta
  • Sarah Whiting: Dean of Rice University School of Architecture, “Speculating Beyond Iconicity: Bertrand Goldberg’s Urban Project”
  • Lucia Mauro: dance critic with Chicago Public Radio and adjunct professor of dance history at Loyola University Chicago, Concert Dance by Design: “Baroque Dance & King Louis XIV’s Palace of Versailles”
  • Iveta Cerná: Director of Villa Tugendhat, and Ivo Hammer: conservator, “Mies Van Der Rohe’s Villa Tugendhat”
  • Hillary Chute: Professor of English at the University of Chicago, associate editor, MetaMaus
  • Robert Somol: Director of the University of Illinois at Chicago’s School of Architecture, with John Vinci:FAIA, and Geoffrey Goldberg: AIA, on Bertrand Goldberg: Reflections
  • Michael Phillips: film critic with the Chicago Tribune, 2012 Oscar Preview
  • Alexander Eisenschmidt: assistant professor at University of Illinois Chicago, “Chicagoism: A City’s Visionary Architectural Dreams and Nightmares”
  • Milos Stehlik: Director at Facets Multi-Media, “Visions in Cinema: Werner Herzog’s Dreams”
  • New Orleans-style brunch featuring live jazz music
  • Lucia Mauro: dance critic with Chicago Public Radio and adjunct professor of dance history at Loyola University Chicago, Concert Dance by Design: “How Stagecraft & Lighting Inspired the Romantic Ballet”
  • Laura Washington: columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, InConversation with John W. McCarter, Jr.: President and Chief Executive Officer of The Field Museum of Natural History
  • Denis Herlin: Directeur de recherche at the IRPMF (Institut de recherche sur le patrimoine musical français), “Debussy and the Independent Art Circle”
  • Special Meeting of the Membership of The Arts Club of Chicago
  • Fifth House Ensemble presents a Concertino by Erwin Schulhoff, American Rounds by Martin Butler, Knockedby Ellis Ludwig-Leone, and Vox Balaenae by George Crumb (piano, flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon, horn, cello)
  • Stephanie Smith: Deputy Director and Chief Curator of the Smart Museum, Feast: Radical Hospitality in Contemporary Art
  • Steve Scott: Associate Producer of the Goodman Theatre, InConversation with Calixto Bieito: Co-adaptor and Director of the Goodman’s upcoming production of Camino Real, and Marc Rosich: Co-adaptor of Camino Real
  • Lucia Mauro: dance critic with Chicago Public Radio and Adjunct Professor of Dance History at Loyola University Chicago, Concert Dance by Design: “Baroque Dance & King Louis XIV’s Palace of Versailles”
  • Mary Jane Jacob: Executive Director of Exhibitions and Exhibition Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and Tiffany Holmes: Dean of Undergraduate Studies, showcase a selection of the work displayed in the SAIC’s Spring Undergraduate Exhibition
  • Jack Zimmerman: author, “Night Watch”
  • John Russick: Director of Curatorial Affairs of the Chicago History Museum, Charles James: Genius Deconstructed
  • Hands-on art project and storytelling by Linda Bubon of Women & Children First Bookstore
  • Martha Lavey: Artistic Director of Steppenwolf Theatre Company, InConversation with Frank Galati: Adapter and Director of Steppenwolf ‘s upcoming production of The March
  • Anne Rorimer: curator of Figures and Grounds: Approaches to Abstraction, with artists Stephanie Bernheim,Lawrence Kenny, Renée Petropoulos, and Linda Stillman
  • Amy Herman: founder of Art of Perception, “The Art of Perception: Rethinking How We See”
  • Barbara Gaines: founder and Artistic Director of Chicago Shakespeare Theatre and Director of Timon of Athens(Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, 24 April–10 June), InConversation with Ian McDiarmid: who will perform the role of Timon in the production
  • Lucia Mauro: dance critic with Chicago Public Radio and Adjunct Professor of Dance History at Loyola University Chicago, Concert Dance by Design: “How Stagecraft and Lighting Design Inspired the Romantic Ballet”
  • Philip Gossett: Robert W. Render Distinguished Service Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Chicago, “Verdi and Salvadore Cammarano”
  • Daniel Quiles: Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History, Theory, and Criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, “Abstraction and Conceptualism in the Americas”
  • David Garrard Low: President of the Beaux Arts Alliance, “Paris’s Left Bank: Center of the Civilized World”
  • Michael Darling: James W. Alsdorf Chief Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Painting with a Phantom Limb
  • Lucia Mauro: dance critic with Chicago Public Radio and Adjunct Professor of Dance History at Loyola University Chicago, Concert Dance by Design: “Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes: Multimedia Art in Motion”
  • Helen Harvey Mills: artist, with Ward Just: author of Rodin’s Debutante
  • Mother’s Day New Orleans-style brunch featuring live music by The Greene/Young Quintet
  • Fifth House Ensemble: music by Sergei Rachmaninoff, Robert Schumann, Claude Debussy, Ellen Taafe Zwilich, and David Ludwig
  • Matthew S. Witkovsky: Richard and Ellen Sandor Chair and Curator of the Department of Photography at the Art Institute of Chicago, Jindřich Heisler: Surrealism under Pressure
  • Michael Halberstam: Artistic Director of Writers’ Theatre, InConversation with Peter Sagal: host of National Public Radio’s Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!
  • Laurie Webster: archaeologist, “Prehistoric Textiles, Baskets & other Rare Artifacts from the American Southwest at the Field Museum of Natural History”
  • Opening Reception: 85th Exhibition of Professional Members of The Arts Club of Chicago
  • Lucia Mauro: dance critic with Chicago Public Radio and Adjunct Professor of Dance History at Loyola University Chicago, Concert Dance by Design: “Martha Graham & Isamu Noguchi: Evocative Minimalism”
  • Milos Stehlik: director of Facets Multi-Media and film commentator for Chicago Public Radio’s Worldview, Cannes & the Season
  • Garden Opening Reception: A champagne toast and site-specific dance performance by Adriana Durant in celebration of the opening of the Club’s newly-renovated garden
  • Young Musicians’ Evening: Performances by award-winning students from the Academy of the Music Institute of Chicago, the Midwest’s premiere pre-collegiate conservatory program.
  • Anne Searle Bent and Suzanne Folds McCullagh: Reflections on Capturing the Sublime: Italian Drawings of the Renaissance and Baroque
  • Michael Halberstam: Artistic Director of Writer’s Theatre, Valerie Maze: Music Director/Pianist/Conductor, with actors Jonathan Weir, Shannon Cochran, and Deanna Dunagan in A Little Night Music
  • Zoë Ryan: Neville Bryan Curator of Design at the Art Institute of Chicago, Fashioning the Object: Bless, Boudicca, Sandra Backlund
  • James Rondeau: Curator and the Frances and Thomas Dittmar Chair of the Department of Contemporary Art at the Art Institute of Chicago, with Julia Fish, artist and Professor of Studio Arts at the University of Illinois at Chicago, “A Conversation about Roy Lichtenstein: A Retrospective”
  • Screening of Van Gogh (1991) directed by Maurice Pialat
  • Joseph Houseal: Director of Core of Culture Dance Preservation, “Dance in Buddhist Cave Art: Dambulla, Ajanta, Dunhuang”
  • Jessica Stockholder: visual artist, Professor and chair of the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago, on her installation Color Jam in the Loop
  • Mikyoung Kim: award-winning landscape architect, principal at Mikyoung Kim Design, “Site Scores: Discussion on the Role of Sound and Light in Recent Work, Including the Crown Sky Garden in Chicago”
  • Andrew White: Artistic Director of Lookingglass Theatre and playwright, Eastland (Lookingglass Theatre, through 29 July) InConversation with Ben Sussman: composer, Eastland
  • Sean Keller: architect critic and historian, Assistant Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology, “Allover All Over Again: Contemporary Architecture and Postwar Painting”
  • Marshall Brown: principal of Marshall Brown Projects, Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology, “Center of the World”
  • The Arts Club’s Director Janine Mileaf hosts the first in a series of roundtable discussions on art and culture in Chicago and worldwide
  • Screening of Fur (2006), directed by Steven Shainberg. Nicole Kidman and Robert Downey Jr. star in a “love story” which imagines the circumstances of photographer Diane Arbus’ artistic awakening
  • Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and adjunct faculty at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, “Yes, But What Does a Music Director Actually Do?”
  • Dawoud Bey with Kelli Connell and Anne Harris, Artist to Artist series
  • Opening Reception: Janice Kerbel Exhibition
  • Dinner in Honor of Janice Kerbel
  • Janice Kerbel: artist, on The Arts Club’s exhibition of her work
  • Janice Kerbel Open House and gallery talk with The Arts Club’s Director Janine Mileaf
  • Fifth House Ensemble: Chicago-based chamber music group
  • Andrew Patnew: classical music and opera critic for the Chicago Sun-Times, with Jimmy López: award-winning composer, comissioned by the Lyric Opera to compose a full-length opera based on the bestselling novel Bel Canto
  • Tristan Hummel: curator, “What is a Curator? Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the art”
  • D.J. Hoek: head of the Northwestern University Music Library, “A Rather Great Change in Habits”: The Sights and Sounds of John Cage’s Music Notation
  • Michael Halberstam: Artistic Director of Writers’ Theatre and director of the theater’s current revival ofHamlet, Scott Parkinson: actor in the title role, and Barbara Gaines, Artistic Director of Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, discuss the enduring popularity of what is described by many as the world’s greatest play, “To be or not to be…” Hamlet is alive and well!
  • Lizabeth Eva Rossof: conceptual artist, on the replica painting industry in China, MASTER COPY
  • Tanya Palmer: Director of New Play Development at Goodman Theatre, with Dael Orlandersmith, playwright and actress, and Chay Yew, director of Black n Blue Boys and Artistic Director of Victory Gardens Theater on the play Black n Blue Boys/Broken Men at the Goodman Theatre.
  • Katherine Bussard: curator of the Art Institute’s exhibition Film and Photo in New York, on street photography and America’s first avant-garde cinema
  • Lucia Mauro: dance critic with Chicago Public Radio and Adjunct Professor of Dance History at Loyola University Chicago, Concert Dance by Design: “Martha Graham & Isamu Noguchi: Evocative Minimalism”
  • Huey Copeland: art historian, on artist Renée Green’s 1991 work Mise-en-Scène,”Bound to Appear”
  • Lane Relyea: art critic, historian, and editor of Art Journal, “Chicago’s New Alternatives to Alternative Spaces”
  • Abina Manning, Director of the Video Data Bank at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, “History of the Video Data Bank”
  • Laura Letinsky with Shane Huffman, monthly Artist to Artist series
  • Naomi Beckwith: curator, Museum of Contemporary Art, Jimmy Robert Vis-à-vis
  • Marcia Lausen: Director of the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois at Chicago, “Design for Democracy”
  • Mary Jane Jacob: Executive Director of Exhibitions, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), Amy Beste: Conversations at the Edge, SAIC, Helen-Marie Nugent: designer and faculty, and Jan Tichy: artist and faculty, SAIC, “Learning Modern”
  • Andreas Mitisek: General Director of Chicago Opera Theater, lunchtime lecture and performance
  • Nena Ivon: Columbia College Fashion Studies faculty member and former Director of Fashion, Special Events, and Publicity for Saks Fifth Avenue, Chicago, Ikram Goldman: owner of Ikram, and Shane Gabier and Chris Peters of Creatures of the Wind, the Arts Club introduces a series of Fashion Forum programs
  • Duncan Robinson: Master of Magdalene College, Cambridge, and a Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambridge, “Whistler, James, and Sargent”
  • Naomi Pollock: Japan-based architect and author of Made in Japan: 100 New Products, “Made in Japan”
  • Tony Tasset: known for his large-scale public sculptures including Eye and Cardinal, and Paul Cowan: featured in the MCA’s Chicago Works (6 November 2012 – 5 March 2013), Artist to Artist series
  • Marcus Doshi: lighting and set designer, “The Art of Lighting”
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multimedia, “The 12 Lives of Chris Marker”
  • John Sharp: chamber musician, the Arts Club introduces the CSO First Chairs series
  • Sarah Herda: Director of the Graham Foundation, moderates Alexander Eisenschmidt: professor at IIT, in discussion with architects David Brown, Sarah Dunn, Martin Felsen and Stanley Tigerman, The 13th International Architecture Exhibition: Team Chicago: City Works
  • Robert Koppel: Chicago-based author, The Next Step
  • Michael Halberstam: Artistic Director of Writers’ Theatre, Oscar Wilde’s “The Happy Prince”
  • Janine Mileaf: The Arts Club’s Director, discusses art and culture in Chicago and worldwide, Director’s Table
  • Martha Lavey: Steppenwolf Theatre Artistic Director, and Anna D. Shapiro: director of the acclaimed Broadway premiere and of the upcoming Steppenwolf production, The Motherfucker with the Hat
  • Original Winter Songs commissioned by The Arts Club, curated by Michael Halberstam: Artistic Director of Writers’ Theatre
  • Michelle Grabner: Professor and Department Chair of the SAIC’s Department of Painting and Drawing and founder of The Suburban, and Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, Artist to Artist series

2013

  • Lincoln Schatz: multimedia artist, and Anne Collins Goodyear: Associate Curator of Prints and Drawings at the National Portrait Gallery, The Network: Portrait Conversations
  • Avalon String Quartet featuring two works by Czech composers: Leoš Janáček’s String Quartet No. 1, “Kreutzer Sonata,”and Bedřich Smetana’s Quartet No. 1, “From My Life”
  • Exhibition Opening Tea: Meredyth Sparks
  • Architects Zoë Ryan, Karen Kice & Jeanne Gang, Building: Inside Studio Gang Architects
  • Ben Helphand: President of the Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail Board of Directors, and Beth White: the Chicago Area Office Director for The Trust for Public Land, “The Bloomingdale Trail”
  • Janet Hong: Project Manager for Exhibitions at the Field Museum, and Maria Pinto: Chicago fashion designer,Fashion and the Field Museum Collection: Maria Pinto
  • Susan Manning: Professor of English, Theatre and Performance Studies at Northwestern University, in discussion with John Neumeier: Artistic Director of The Hamburg Ballet
  • Weil Arets: architect, industrial designer, theorist, urbanist, and Dean of the IIT College of Architecture
  • Musicians Julian Harvey, David Pituch, Ross Beacraft, and Yoko Yamada Selvaggio present saxophone in solo and chamber music setting, “Concert Saxophone”
  • ShawChicago Theater Company performs excerpts from works such as Androcles and the Lion, Man and Superman, John Bull’s Other Island, Village Wooing, and You Never Can Tell, “Love Scenes”
  • Alicia Berneche: Soprano, and Philip Morehead: conductor, pianist and harpsichordist, perform and
    discuss two contemporary compositions: “Miss Manners on Music” by Dominick Argento, and “Sempre un gioro nuovo” by Patricia Morehead
  • Zoë Keating: Avant-cellist performs using a cello and a foot-controlled laptop
  • Hannah Higgins: Professor of Art History at the University of Illinois at Chicago and author, Mainframe Experimentalism
  • Melanie Holcomb: Curator in the Department of Medieval Art and Th e Cloisters at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, “Byzantine and Medieval Treasures”
  • Susan Jaques: author, “By Design: Architecture and the American Art Museum”
  • Andrew Patner: journalist, and Glenn Edgerton: Artistic Director, Hubbard Street Dance Company, discuss Mr. Edgerton’s international career as a dancer, company director, and educator
  • Dieter Roelstraete: Manilow Senior Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Goshka Macuga: Exhibit, A
  • Wynne Delacoma: former classical music critic for the Chicago Sun-Times and adjunct faculty member at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, discusses with Anthony Freud: general director of the Lyric Opera
  • Meredyth Sparks: artist, discusses her exhibited work in Windows and Screens
  • Meredyth Sparks Open House and Catalogue Signing, Windows and Screens
  • Pamela Bannos: artist and senior lecturer in Northwestern University’s Department of Art Theory and Practice, “Vivian Maier’s Fractured Archive”
  • Gillion Carrara: Director, SAIC’s Fashion Resource Center, and Caroline Bellios, Assistant Director, Material Translations: Japanese Fashion from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
  • Sally Pemberton: author and granddaughter of Murdock Pemberton, Portrait of Murdock Pemberton: The New Yorker’s First Art Critic
  • Authors Marianne Malone and Blue Balliett discuss narratives surrounding fine art and artists for books accessible to younger audiences
  • Anne Rorimer, scholar, curator, and author of Michael Asher: Kunsthalle Bern 1992, “Michael Asher”
  • Mark George: President and Chief Executive Officer of the Music Institute of Chicago, discusses and plays portions of Bach’s Goldberg Variations
  • Civitas Ensemble: Ensemble-in-Residence at Valparaiso University School of Music, presents a program of works spanning nearly two centuries
  • Stephanie D’Alessandro: Gary C. and Frances Comer Curator of Modern Art, Art Institute of Chicago, Picasso and Chicago
  • Adrian Parr: associate professor in the School of Architecture and Interior Design and at the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Cincinnati, presents a lecture in honor of Earth Day.
  • Michael Halberstam: Artistic Director of Writers’ Theatre, and David Ives: playwright, discuss Mr. Ives’ work, career, and upcoming projects
  • Chris Jones: Chicago Tribune theatre critic, “Playing with Your Food: How Restaurants Have Become Theaters”
  • Joe Reinstein: former White House Deputy Secretary, “Artists for Obama”
  • Laura Washington: columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and political analyst for ABC 7-Chicago, and Elizabeth Fenner: editor-in-chief of Chicago magazine, discuss the ways in which Chicago magazine has grown and changed, and the role of magazines in the digital age
  • Elva Rubio: Principal and Regional Design Director at Gensler and part of the advisory team to Navy Pier Inc.’s Board, “Navy Pier: The Centennial Vision” Part I
  • Exhibition Opening Tea: David Salle: Ghost Paintings
  • David Salle: artist, discusses his exhibited work in David Salle: Ghost Paintings
  • Janine Mileaf: The Arts Club’s Director, and Gaylen Gerber: Chicago-based artist, discusss David Salle: Ghost Paintings in relation to the rapidly-changing world of painting and photography in the 1980s and today
  • David Garrard Lowe: author, reads accompanied by Bobby Nesbitt: pianist, “Cole Porter: From Peru (Indiana) to Paris (France)”
  • Pope.L: artist and Associate Professor at the University of Chicago, discusses with Duncan MacKenzie: artist, educator, and Founding Member/Producer of the arts podcast Bad at Sports
  • Jessica Thebus: Steppenwolf Associate Artist and NEXT UP directing mentor, and Erin Murray: NEXT UP director, NEXT UP: The Internationalist
  • Robert Chen: Chicago Symphony Orchestra Concertmaster,  presents a program of masterpieces including Giuseppe Tartini’s “Devil’s Trill Sonata,” Johann Sebastian Bach’s “Chaconne,” Eugène Ysaÿe’s Sonata No. 6 in E major, and Maurice Ravel’s Tzigane, CSO First Chairs series
  • Elizabeth Taylor: author, and Suzanne McNear: Chicago Tribune literary editor, discuss Ms. McNear’s careeras an essayist, editor, and fiction writer.
  • Michael Phillips: film critic for the Chicago Tribune, leads discussion followed by screening, I Know Where I’m Going!
  • Milos Stehlik: director, Facets Multi-Media, “Cannes and the Season”
  • Gloria Groom, Art Institute curator, discusses her exhibition Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity
  • Janine Mileaf, Director: Report from the 55th Venice Biennale
  • Chay Yew, Victory Gardens Artistic Director, and Luis Alfaro, playwright discuss Alfaro’s new play Mojada
  • Aleksandar Hemon, author, discusses his memoir The Book of My Lives
  • Wynne Delacoma, former Sun-Times classical music critic, surveys 21st century composers and music
  • Joy Bivins and Virginia Heaven, Exhibition Curator and Costume Curator at the Chicago History Museum, present their exhibit 50 Years of Ebony Fashion Fair
  • Matthew Urbanski, architect: “New Parks for Chicago”
  • Robert Bucholz, Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago, discusses London’s role in inventing modernity from the 16th to 18th centuries
  • Exhibition Opening: Josiah McElheny, Two Clubs at The Arts Club of Chicago
  • Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune theatre critic, discusses the influence of legacy of former Chicago theatre critic Claudia “Acidy” Cassidy
  • Victoria Lautman & Eric Fischl discuss Fischl’s memoir Bad Boy: My Life On and Off the Canvas
  • The Rue Shaw Memorial Lecture: Billie Tsien, architect, “Gravity and Grace”
  • Carole A. Travis: “Ten ‘Whys’ To Relish Your Neighbor”
  • Martin Gayford, author and critic, discusses sitting for a portrait by Lucian Freud
  • Concert: iAN&ANi, Tango Plus
  • Cultural Positions: Lincoln Schatz and Lucian Perkins, Washington Post photographer
  • Elizabeth Hutton Turner lectures on Alexander Calder
  • Charles Newell & David Wray discuss Court Theatre’s An Iliad
  • Jay Pridmore, architectural historian: “Architectural Guide to the University of Chicago”
  • Victoria Lautman: Beyond the Taj Mahal
  • Alison Knowles, artist: Fluxus at 50
  • Tessa Lark, violinist, with Wynne Delacoma, former Sun-Times music critic
  • Phyllis Lambert, founder of the Canadian Center for Architecture: How Seagram Got Built
  • Memorial Tribute to Roger Ebert: Lunchtime Round Table with Chaz Ebert, Michael Phillips, Barbara Scharres, and Milos Stehlik
  • Alex Aubry: “Reconsidering the Fashion of American Modernism”
  • Susan O’Connor Davis & John Vinci: “Chicago’s Historic Hyde Park”
  • Henry Kupjack & Andrew Patner: “Thorne Miniature Rooms”
  • Michael Halberstam, Writers’ Theatre Artistic Director, reads Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince
  • Darrell Jones, choreographer: “Strike a Pose”
  • Holiday Program: Dennis Watkins of The House Theatre presents “The Magic Parlor”
  • Sylvain Bellenger, Art Institute curator, discusses the Art Institute’s acquisition of a Neopolitan creche

2014

January
  • Exhibition Opening: 86th Exhibition of Professional Members
  • Michelle Boone, DCASE Commissioner, Bechara Choucair, Commissioner of Public Health, and Gabe Klein, Commissioner of the Department of Public Transportation present and discuss the Chicago Cultural Plan, moderated by ABC-7’s Laura Washington
  • Jessie Mott & JC Steinbrunner: “The Artful Diners”
  • Forrest Nash, founder of Contemporary Art Daily
  • Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune film critic: “The Arts Club Picks the Oscars”
  • A Red Orchid Theatre presents and discusses their new play Solstice
February
  • Celia Hilliard, collector, and Suzanne Folds McCullagh, Art Institute Curator, discuss the exhibition Dreams and Echoes: Drawings and Sculpture in the David and Celia Hilliard Collection
  • Mikael Eliasen, Artistic Director of Curtis Opera Theatre, in conversation with Craig Terry, Music Director of the Ryan Opera Center
  • Curtis Opera Tour concert
  • Anahita Ghazvini Zadeh, Iranian filmmaker, screens her short films When the Kid Was a Kid (2011) and Needle(2013)
  • Bonnie Brooks, dance professor, discusses the Merce Cunningham Legacy Tour
  • Exhibition Opening: Emilie Charmy
  • Matthew Affron, curator at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, lectures on the career of Emilie Charmy
March
  • The Lincoln Trio shares highlights from their new album Spanish Sojourns
  • SAIC Fashion Professor Anke Loh showcases her LED jewelry
  • Carol Ross Barney, architect, discusses the Chicago Riverwalk
  • Nicholas Phan and Shannon McGinnis perform and discuss the songs of Franz Schubert
  • Jeanne Pinsof Nolan, Director of The Edible Garden, discusses her book, From the Ground Up
April
  • Theaster Gates and Lisa Lee in conversation: “Social Transformation as an Art Practice”
  • Concert: Pianist Jorge Federico Osorio
  • Sarah and Joseph Belknap open The Arts Club’s first garden installation, Afterglow
  • Graham Beal, Director of the Detroit Institute of Arts: “Transforming the Detroit Institute of Arts”
  • Roche Schulfer, CEO of Goodman Theatre, interviewed by Chris Jones on the occasion of Schulfer’s 40th year at Goodman Theatre
  • Cultural Positions: Lincoln Schatz interviews Michael Kaiser, President of the John F. Kennedy Center
  • Habib Azar, director: “Soaps, Sitcoms & Symphonies: Style in multi-camera directing”
  • Sebastian Schmaling, founding principal at Johnsen Schmaling Architects
  • Martha Ward, University of Chicago professor, investigates the 19th-century French collector Etienne Moreau-Nelaton
  • Timothy Corrigan, interior designer, discusses his restoration of a French chateau
May
  • Michelle Grabner, artist and curator of the 2014 Whitney Biennial, in conversation with Janine Mileaf
  • David Garrard Lowe: “The Armory Show at 100”
  • Charles Waldheim, Chair of Landscape Architecture at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design, discusses the innovations and origins of Chicago O’Hare International Airport
  • CSO First Chairs concert: John Yeh, Assistant Principal Clarinetist of the CSO
  • Redmoon Theatre presents The Great Chicago Fire Festival
  • Leslie Buchbinder and John Corbett present their film, Hairy Who & The Chicago Imagists
  • CASES Public Talk Series: “A Case for New Music with composer Marcos Balter”
  • Arts Club et. al
  • Dick Button: “On and Off the Ice”
June
  • Simon Starling, artist’s talk
  • Exhibition Opening: Simon Starling, Pictures for an Exhibition
  • Matt Roben, Director of the Chicago Contemporary Circus Festival, “The Ever-Evolving Circus”
  • The Marilynn Alsdorf and Stanley Freehling Memorial Lecture: Robert Storr, Dean of the Yale School of Art, “Conceptualism vs. Misconceptualism”
  • Nena Ivon interviews Lisa Pansa and Liz Patelski, creators of the fashion line Remi Canarie
  • Concert: A Musical Evening with the Ryan Opera Center
  • CASES Public Talk series: A Case for Performance Art with Joseph Ravens
  • Francesca Cigola, architect, “Inside the Outdoor: Landscapes and Art in America”
​July
  • Milos Stehlik, “Cannes and the Season”
  • Martha Lavey in conversation with playwright Bruce Norris
  • Gillion Carrara, “When a Woman Smiles, Her Dress Must Also Smile”
  • Stephanie D’Alessandro, Art Institute curator, “Magritte: The Mystery of the Ordinary”
  • Matthew Witkovsky, Art Institute curator, “Josef Koudelka: Nationality Doubtful”
  • Dance for Life presents the history of its organization
  • Alan Pierson & Gavin Chuck, Artistic and Managing Directors at Alarm Will Sound
  • Chef Jacquy Pfeiffer, “The Art of French Pastry”
​August
  • Playwright Nambi E. Kelly and Professor Ken Warren on Court Theatre’s adaptation of Native Son
  • Chicago’s New Cultural Leaders: Richard Lariviere, Field Museum; Michelle Larson, Adler Planetarium; Kwang-Wu Kim, Columbia College Chicago
  • Blair Thomas, “An Introduction to Contemporary Puppetry”
  • A Case for Difficult Art with Monika Szewczyk, Visual Arts Curator at the Logan Center for the Arts
  • Cultural Positions: Lincoln Schatz & Mera Rubell
  • Simon Starling, public gallery talk
  • Betty Halbreich, “I’ll Drink to That”
  • Third Coast Percussion, “Restage: 1942 John Cage Concert”
  • Elena Boeck, “Byzantium: The Remarkable Afterlife of a Great Empire”