Heartland, Smart Museum of Art

If you think Midwestern art is all barn-scapes and hayfork-wielding farmer portraits, “Heartland” is happy to correct the misperception. The exhibition’s curators road-tripped across the flyover states to discover a contemporary Midwestern style, uncovering gender-bending, politics-spewing, concept-driven artists at every turn. “Heartland” was first presented at a Netherlands museum last year in the hopes of spreading the good word about the Midwest.

5550 South Greenwood
(773)702-0200
smartmuseum.uchicago.edu

Audience choice:
“Take Your Time”
Olafur Eliasson, MCA

Best of Chicago 2009

The Smart Home: Green + Wired

The Museum of Science and Industry’s futuristic utopian residence, the 2,500-square- foot Smart Home, is straight out of “2001: A Space Odyssey.” The house’s self-sustaining digital nerve center turns on lights, plays music, adjusts temperatures, powers the museum and calls you when your plants need watering. Museum staff assure us the Smart Home isn’t sentient, but Dave thought that about the HAL 9000. Luckily, this automation system foregoes homicidal tendencies. Instead it promotes a 100 percent environmentally green lifestyle; any pollution or wastefulness “can only be attributed to human error.” The Smart Home shuts down January 4, so you still have a couple months to plug in.

5700 S. Lake Shore
(773)684-1414
msichicago.org

Best of Chicago 2008

The Original Pancake House

On Sunday mornings, the line outside Hyde Park’s Original Pancake House spills into the parking lot. This breakfast staple has been slewin’ hash browns, eggs and bacon to neighborhood folk for years. The restaurant is so popular, they have to seat different parties together at the same table. So while you chow down on your crepes and pancakes, rub elbows (literally—space is tight!) with your friendly neighbors. Students, families and churchgoers in their Sunday best chat about the weather, the latest news and last night’s “SNL.”

1517 E. Hyde Park
(773)288-2322
originalpancakehouse.com

Best of Chicago 2008

Seminary Co-op

Dilettantes need not apply. With rows upon rows of books in its subterranean vault, including the largest selection of academic titles in the country, the Seminary Co-op is for serious readers only. Throw in the ten-percent discount given to shareholders, and you’ve got a bookworm’s paradise.

5757 South University
(773)752-4381

Audience Choice
Women and Children First
5233 North Clark
(773)769-9299

Best of Chicago 2007

Karl Wirsum, “Winsome Works(some),” Chicago Cultural Center

The seminal Chicago artist finally received his due with a lush full-scale retrospective. Wirsum’s bold, graphic paintings, quirky sculptures and puppets of robots, superheroes, villains, snakes and voluptuous women filled the galleries of the Cultural Center with a blaze of color, like a psychedelic freak-show dance party. Opportunities to experience the history of a Chicago art legend shouldn’t be this rare.

Audience Choice
“Speaker Project”
Hyde Park Art Center

Best of Chicago 2007

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation

How cool is the MacArthur Fellows Program, aka the “genius grant”? $500,000, no strings attached, awarded to twenty or thirty creators in the arts and sciences each and every year. This program alone makes the $6 billion foundation not only Chicago’s largest nonprofit, but also its most exciting. Of course, “Big Mac” does a lot more with its money: take note of its underwriting of public radio and television when you tune in, or catch its support of documentary filmmaking at the local art-house. Beyond the media and the arts, the MacArthur Foundation pours resources into support for human rights and international justice, global conservation and sustainable development, affordable housing in the U.S. and many, many other admirable areas.
140 South Dearborn
(312)726-8000

Audience Choice:
Hyde Park Art Center
5020 South Cornell
(773)324-5520

Best of Chicago 2007