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Event: Alsdorf-Freehling Lecture: Architect Joel Sanders on COVID-19, Built Spaces, and Inclusive Design

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Addressing the spatial consequences of COVID-19 is a natural extension of the work architect Joel Sanders has been doing for years. His inclusive design think-tank and consultancy JSA/MIXdesign’s mission is to create safe and accessible designed environments that meet the needs of “non-compliant bodies”: people of different ages, races, genders, religions, and abilities that the discipline of architecture has traditionally overlooked. Principal of his New York studio as well as director of post-professional studies at Yale School of Architecture, Sanders’ career has explored the complex relationship between culture and social space. A scholar pioneering the exploration of LGBTQ space, a designer of residential, museum, and academic buildings, and an activist fighting to address issues of equity and inclusion through design, Sanders joins us for a virtual lecture to discuss the myriad ways good design can, in addressing the needs of our particular moment, promote and foster a more just culture.

Event: Jo Livingstone and Alex Shephard on Corporate Consolidation in the Arts

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Day by day, the book publishing industry contracts further into the “monopolistic singularity” of Penguin Random House. Hollywood is too pandemic-battered to resist the superhero franchises’ deathgrip on funding. And who even knows what’s going on with music any more: The “pop” commercial model has aerosolized into a million individual influencers, with managers and a handful of massive corporations just behind them catching money in  butterfly nets. Alex Shephard and Jo Livingstone have been colleagues as staff writers at The New Republic for a number of years, where their coverage of politics and the arts have frequently led them to the big business that funds entertainment in America, to report on its crisis moments. They’ll talk about the latest antitrust lawsuits brought against Amazon, the new wave of labor organizing in the entertainment industries, and trends in the literature, music, and film of consolidation.

Event: The Path Toward Racial Equity: A Conversation about Land Acknowledgments

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Arts Club Board President Laura Washington engages artist Andrea Carlson, writer John N. Low, and artist/programmer Debra Yepa-Pappan about the tradition of acknowledging the indigenous peoples who lived on the lands in which cultural events now take place. They will also share aspects of their own creative production and consider the state of indigenous arts in Chicago. As the city with the third highest population of urban Indians in the US, Chicago is home to more than 65,000 from 175 different tribes.

Hurvin Anderson in Conversation with Michael Prokopow

This event has passed. Watch the recorded interview here.

Internationally acclaimed painter Hurvin Anderson, whose exhibition of new work is on view at The Arts Club, discusses his process, themes, and concerns with cultural historian Michael Prokopow, who is preparing a monograph about the artist. The exhibition comprises work from two series—interior views of emigré barbershops in Britain and exterior landscapes in Jamaica. By bringing together these bodies of work, Anderson defines a conceptual and methodological throughline across his oeuvre in terms of structure, abstraction, and perception. Prokopow will draw on his deep knowledge of the artist to bring forth these and other threads in Anderson’s thinking and making. Tune in to learn more about Anderson’s exhibition at The Arts Club!

Photo Credit: Sebastian Nevols

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