“Uppers and Downers” by Chris Vorhees and Simparch
For the entire year of 2012 an indoor rainbow fountain dripped in the lobby of the Smart Museum. It was made of kitchen cabinets with doors flung open wide against gravity in an arcing rainbow of shelves, over a counter whose sink—the fountain—flooded a floor. What a clever dream.
Smart Museum of Art, 5550 South Greenwood, (773)702-0200, smartmuseum.uchicago.edu
Best of Chicago 2012
Feast at the Smart Museum
The exhibition opened with “The Futurist Cookbook,” made by Italian futurist F.T. Marinetti in 1932 and wound through contributions by Gordon Matta-Clark and Suzanne Lacy, among many others, which served as fascinating and powerful precedents for current trends in socially engaged art that involve food.
Best of Chicago 2012
William J. O’Brien at The Renaissance Society
The multi-level table-display created to showcase William J. O’Brien’s ceramic and assemblage heads looked, at turns, like an alien ethnographic museum and a buffet of nightmares. O’Brien is one of Chicago’s best emerging artists, and The Renaissance Society gave him the space to prove it.
5811 South Ellis
renaissancesociety.org
Audience choice:
Windows on the War: Soviet TASS Posters at Home and Abroad at the Art Institute
111 South Michigan
(312)443-3600
artic.edu
Best of Chicago 2011
The Snail Thai Cuisine
The beautiful thing about Thai cuisine is that, unlike other food from that region of the world, most chefs know it doesn’t have to be fancy or arranged in a superficial way for the experience to be amazing. The Snail does just that. Keeps it simple, but keeps it authentically and amazingly delicious.
The Snail Thai Cuisine
1649 East 55th
(773)667-5423
snailthai.com
Audience choice:
Opart Thai House
4658 North Western
(773)989-8517
opartthai.com
Best of Chicago 2011
Stax Café
We’ve probably had as many pancakes as Wilt Chamberlain had ladies and to pick amongst them is a disservice of sorts. For the Walker Bros. Pancake House in Wheeling’s Dutch Baby is just as solid as the Butterfinger-larded Bongo Room flapjack. It’s really just a matter of mood. No matter our temperament though, the light ricotta pancakes slathered with tart-sweet rhubarb strawberry compote at Stax Café always seem to fit the bill.
1401 West Taylor
(312)733-9871
Audience choice:
Bongo Room, Orange, Original Pancake House (TIE)
Bongo Room
1470 North Milwaukee
(773)489-0690
1152 South Wabash
(312)291-0100
thebongoroom.com
Orange
738 North Clark
(312)202-0600
730 West Grand
(312)942-0300
2011 West Roscoe
(773)248-0999
2413 North Clark
(773)549-7833
orangerestaurantchicago.com
Original Pancake House
2020 North Lincoln Park West
(773)929-8130
22 East Bellevue
(312)642-7917
1517 East Hyde Park
(773)288-2322
originalpancakehouse.com
Best of Chicago 2010
Powell’s Bookstore
If you’ve spent any time perusing the art sections of bookstores, chain or independent, you’ve noticed the explosive growth in recent years of books on street, graffiti and stencil art and artists from around the world. This includes new editions of classic 1980s stalwarts like “Subway Art.” Fans and practitioners having trouble keeping up with the dizzying whirlwind of full-color NYC graffiti books and their far-flung ilk—a post-Banksy publishing cottage industry, from reputable art houses to DIY vanity jobs—might want to visit Powell’s Bookstore Hyde Park, which always has more than a couple dozen new, used and remaindered titles in stock. While you can’t underestimate publishers’ preoccupation with outlaw mystique to help fuel profits—”exit through the gift shop” indeed—most books can be found here at discount prices. Along with recent standards like Nicholas Ganz’s huge, protean “Graffiti World“ series, they include “Concrete Messages: Street Art on the Israeli-Palestinian Separation Barrier,” “Icepick: Icelandic Street Art,” “Stay High 149: Voice of the Ghetto” and “Street Art and the War on Terror.” Excepting local Josh MacPhee’s pioneering “Stencil Pirates” (if you can find it), Chicago’s barely represented on the shelves. Get working, Elisa Harkins!
Hyde Park, 1501 East 57th
(773)955-7780
2850 North Lincoln
(773)248-1444
powellschicago.com
Best of Chicago 2010
The Smart Museum of the University of Chicago
One problem with world-class museums is that they are tourist destinations and crammed with people. The Smart Museum has an exquisite small contemporary collection including a Nancy Spero, a Sylvia Sleigh and H.C. Westermann’s illustrated letters. Asian and European objects, drawings, prints and paintings, modern American and European works and traveling exhibitions are their forte. There is usually almost no one around; you can hear yourself think as you contemplate the work. A tiny bookstore/coffee bar with a case full of jewelry (no pressure from museum merchandising) sits across the foyer from a huge abstracted black-and-white landscape.
5550 South Greenwood
(773)702-0200
smartmuseum.uchicago.edu
Best of Chicago 2010
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
