(Photo: A dangerous drug is GarageBand…)

Given me and my big mouth, it had to happen sometime. Today debuts “Downtown Local“, my (most likely allegedly) weekly podcast look at life, love, and folly from the heart of downtown Chicago. I’ll use “Downtown Local” to expand on issues I cover in my regular blogposts, as well as to share new stories–and, of course, rants.

For anyone who’s been wondering what I sound like (and except primarily for those of you who recognize me on the elevator at Marina City from time to time, that’s just about everyone) here’s your chance to find out. Take a listen to the podcast, I’d love to get your feedback.

This week’s “Downtown Local” topics: Blair Kamin and the Chicago Children’s Museum; the “Stranded in the Loop, Please Help” brigade; and how to have an oversexed summer in one easy lesson.

And if that last one’s not reason enough to listen in, I don’t know what is.

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“Downtown Local” for October 9, 2007:

(Photo: Nary a beast in Lakeshore East?)

The title a beautifully incisive quote from New East Side resident Eric Frost, poobah of the nascent downtown discussion board WindyChat, when asked why his kids prefer to romp in the playground of Daley Bicentennial Plaza instead of in Lakeshore East Park. I asked him over coffee at the Randolph Street Intelligentsia (my beloved local haunt), in an effort to delve deeper into the residential opposition to the Chicago Children’s Museum’s planned move from Navy Pier to Grant Park.

I totally got his answer. Blogging as much as I have over the controversy in recent weeks, I’ve taken more than my fair share of walks through both parks. And while I love the landscape design and occasional rabbit of the Lakeshore East greenspace, I’ve found my soul unexpectedly salved by Daley Bi on more than one occasion. Compared to the rest of Grant Park (and especially its Millennium Park neighbor), it is, indeed, a quieter, almost bucolic environment of leafy trees, orderly promenades, and, as Eric noted, a wildlife-infused playground aimed at a wider range of kids than the toddler park in Lakeshore East.

I can attest that at certain magical times of day, Daley Bicentennial Plaza can be a place of palpable refuge and renewal. It is this unflappable essence that New East Side residents seek to preserve in the face of the museum’s proposed move (not to mention the upcoming renovation of the waterproof membrane separating the park from the parking structure, below).

That’s a wise imperative, and one I believe can be met by the wise design of the proposed new museum structure. Although last week I and others took 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly to task for agreeing with the idea of a Sun-Times reporter that maybe the new museum should be built “in a cave”, that doesn’t mean that a substantially below-grade building is a bad idea. I heartily disagree with Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin’s recent negative assessment of the museum’s plan for just such a subterranean home. On Friday (September 28), Kamin called the plan a “venture into the architecture of the absurd” and accused museum architecture consultant Krueck & Sexton of designing a museum “bereft of natural light”.

That’s quite an assertion. Although Kamin notes that the design includes four skylights and a light well, he paints a picture of a museum drenched in the florid glow of fluorescent bulbs. Kamin, of all Chicagoans, is well aware of the capacity for wise building design and technology to naturally brighten even the darkest of depths (two words: fiber optics), so his accusation here is patently unfair.

It also confuses the issue. Although, as I learned from my interviews with the museum’s admirable administrative staff last month, the museum exists to promote the innate link between play and learning, that does not mean that the museum should be built in the middle of a playing field. Playgrounds are playgrounds, ballfields are ballfields, and museums are museums. After all, every year tens of thousands of Illinois parents happily shuttle their children on visits to the Field Museum and the Museum of Science and Industry, and I’ve never heard anyone assert that these vaunted cultural institutions are unworthy places of childhood learning because they are bereft of panoramic glass walls looking out onto Museum Campus or Jackson Park.

Have you?

It seems to me that by simple dint of the Chicago Children’s Museum having to do with, well, children, many people feel free to underestimate its existence as an educational institution–or to simply conflate it with an activity center. Our local newspapers have done it, my local Alderman has done it, and now the city’s top architecture critic has done it. I, however, demur. Kids may need open spaces for kite-flying, but not necessarily in the middle of a museum.

I think it’s wonderful that this controversy has, at the very least, generated many thoughtful suggestions from all corners about potential other (less politically perilous) places for the museum to consider building its new building. But I’m surprised to see how all-encompassing the knee-jerk reactions to the museum’s proposed Grant Park location have become. Given Blair Kamin’s open-minded original response to the very same subterranean museum plan in his review of September 12, I especially question why he’s chosen to bandwagon and attack the museum now. Frankly, I expect more from Blair Kamin than pith.

That’s my line, Blair, thanks.

(Photo: Alderman Brendan Reilly, a man willing to get to the bottom of the Second City.)

Of all things I thought downtown’s 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly would offer as a compromise in the ongoing controversy over the Chicago Children’s Museum’s proposed move from Navy Pier to Grant Park–especially after publicly calling out Mayor Daley on the issue–the last thing I expected was for him to agree with a reporter’s suggestion to stick the museum in a cave. Underground completely. Nothing sticking up in Daley Bicentennial Plaza except, perhaps, for a periscope and an enigmatic staircase leading down to the nether reaches of the Second City.

At first, I agreed with Chicagoist’s take on the idea: ridiculous. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more sense I can see in Reilly’s spelunking strategy. Who knows, the Chicago Children’s Museum might just set a precedent. Out of sight is, after all, out of mind. So in that mindset, I offer ten more things Alderman Reilly might want to consider sticking in a cave:

10. The CPS: Might as well put the Chicago Public School district down there. Saves the little kiddies from having to rappel down to get to the museum, don’t ya know?

9. The 42nd Ward Website: Seriously, the campaign’s long over. So why is there more useful content on Burt Natarus’ old website than on Reilly’s?

8. His Decision to Call Out Mayor Daley: Let’s do the math. Mayor Daley, 18 years in office. Brendan Reilly, 18 weeks in office. Whom do you think has the upper hand there?

7. Navy Pier: Just because I’m tired of giving clueless suburbanites directions.

6. Lois Wille: Author of the civic bible of lakefront preservation, Forever Open, Clear, and Free, and a museum supporter, to stop her pesky nagging when her words are used against her.

5. Burt Natarus: Because these days he’s batty enough to be in a cave, anyway.

4. Bob Fioretti’s Hairpiece: Still fluttering in downtown’s neighboring 2nd Ward since the day the man-who-would-be-Alderman begged for a piece of my birthday cake.

3. Macy’s: For obvious reasons.

2. The Second City Greens: Who, for the first time ever, will have a 42nd Ward committeeperson on the ballot in the primary.

And the number one thing Alderman Reilly might want to stick in a cave…

1. Mayor Daley: If only he could. Because after publicly challenging Chicago’s benevolent ruler, that’s about the only way the freshman Alderman will have any peace for the rest of his term.

No word yet on the exact location of the cave Reilly had in mind, but you can bet they already have an opposition petition going on the New Eastside….

(Photo: Opening imaginations opens minds at the Chicago Children’s Museum. Credit: David London.)

On Friday, I requested and was given unfettered access to interview the administrative staff of the Chicago Children’s Museum (and why a local blogger and not a Tribune or Sun-Times reporter was the first person to do that is beyond me). I wanted to learn the point of the museum–its civic importance, its programs, its reputation. More than that, I wanted to figure out why instead of reporting on those things, in the midst of the ongoing controversy over the museum’s proposed move from Navy Pier to Grant Park, Chicago’s local dailies have instead dismissed the museum in language such as “a glorified activity center for kids” (Sun-Times).

I already knew the gist of their mission: “To create a community where play and learning connect.” I also knew their history: founded in 1982 by a coalition of groups led by the Junior League of Chicago in response to cuts in arts funding by the Chicago Public Schools district. Not the first Children’s Museum by any means (that was in Brooklyn), but likely the first to manage to create traveling exhibits while housed in a hallway at the old Chicago Public Library.

According to Elaine Bentley, longtime Director of Family Programs, from the beginning the museum sought to be a place where children could discover their creativity. “There are an awful lot of children who don’t get that opportunity,” she told me. “For financial reasons, for emotional reasons, because their parents ’super-book’ them with activities. We don’t see the value in simply telling a child ‘good job’. We prefer language like, ‘You put a lot of work into that drawing, tell me why you choose those two colors?’”

Natalie Bortoli, the Director of Student and Educator Programs, zeroed in on why. We talked about the direct correlation between play and learning, especially among early learners, the museum’s main audience. According to Bortoli, when children are given a guided environment in which to express their creativity, hidden talents often emerge that help them be better thinkers, or problem solvers, or almost anything else you could imagine. “It’s the theory of multiple intelligences, and it’s what we base all of our exhibits and programs around.”

As Bortoli continued, I was impressed to learn that all programs at the museum are designed to meet Illinois educational goals in a variety of areas–goals that are reinforced in the guided pre- and post-visit activities suggested to teachers in the museum’s student-visit materials. But I was more surprised to discover that the Art Institute of Chicago and the Shedd Aquarium look to the Children’s Museum for guidance on how to reach an early-learning audience. I asked why that’s never appeared in a news story.

According to Natalie, for museum staff it’s hard to know where to begin to tell their story. “When we get a new employee, it takes an entire day just to tell them about all the departments and programs.”

“Don’t you have an elevator pitch?”

“An elevator pitch?” asked Public Relations director Natalie Krieger.

“You know, a focused, 30-second speech that you can use to pitch the story of the museum to people who don’t know what you do. Don’t you have one?”

“With all of our diverse programming, I don’t know where we’d start. We usually use our mission statement.”

That’s the same resistance anyone unfamiliar with these common, 30-second marketing pitches usually gives. Last year, when I learned to write them in a (helluva useful) spring spent studying at Chicago’s venerable Community Media Workshop, almost none of my mid-level nonprofit-manager classmates thought they could come up with one for their organizations. An afternoon of brainstorming happily proved, however, that each and every one of them could. Which is a good thing, since a mission statement so rarely–if ever–is written with the media in mind.

I pondered that and pressed on to learn more about the museum’s message. I asked Creative Director Joan Bernstein whether she thought that after 25 years there was still a need that the Children’s Museum was fulfilling. Her answer was emphatic. “Schools are even more standardized today, trying to fit kids into these expected, limited roles. There’s a need for unstructured play opportunities where kids can lead the way. To chalk up play as being frivolous is to deny the impact play has on early childhood learning.”

I told Bernstein it seemed to me that Chicago media were looking for a tangible product of the museum to report about, a sort of masterwork. The Field Museum has Sue. The Art Institute has the Impressionists. Finding nothing so obvious at the Children’s Museum, could it be that the media were missing the whole point?

“We’re like a launching pad for other museums. Kids learn how to be involved in a museum here and go on to those more adult museums as they grow.”

“So maybe the product is the process?”

“Yes!”

Later in the day, I recounted to suburban hip-chick Val the “A-Ha!” moment I shared with Bernstein. Val countered with a question I hadn’t anticipated. “Well, isn’t it the media’s job to figure out who the Chicago Children’s Museum is, anyway?”

Well, no. Maybe in a perfect world. But in the real world of short attention spans, tight deadlines, and myriad competing agendas, I think it’s reasonable for a reporter to assume that a citywide cultural institution will be able to clarify who and what they are over a quick fact-checking call. I suspect it’s the lack of being able to do just that that has earned the Children’s Museum so much negative column space: it’s criticism borne, simply, out of confusion.

It’s not as if the Children’s Museum isn’t already proactive. Director of Cultural Programs Keith McCormick calls his title a misnomer. “I don’t create programs. I spend my day brokering relationships between the museum and Chicago’s cultural communities. Our cultural programs build themselves out of those relationships. I spend a lot of time out in the community, sometimes it’s like I’m never in the office.”

For McCormick, cultural programs at the museum are a way for children both to explore a window into other cultures and to experience the delight of having elements of their own cultures mirrored back to them in someone else’s. “Kids have a natural curiosity, and we’re a safe environment where they can ask questions.”

And a fun environment, as well?

“The misconception is that play is play and learning is learning and that they don’t meet. But they do. They absolutely do.”

Leaving the museum, I was of two minds. I was astonished at the depth of the educational theory and the fervor of the public outreach that goes on there on the western end of Navy Pier. Yet I also had a funny urge to head back inside and shake someone (definitely not one of the brilliant, hard-working people I’d just met, but who is a good question).

While I don’t have an opinion on whether the Chicago Children’s Museum should move to Grant Park, I certainly am rooting for the museum to find its voice in the debate. Composing one well-focused elevator pitch could do wonders towards getting the museum and its mission understood by Chicago media–not to mention understood by rank-and-file Chicagoans.

Given the museum’s all-encompassing mission and diverse programming, I can understand the overwhelm of museum staff in the face of such an endeavor. So while I was in the shower a few minutes ago, I decided to try my hand at the impossible, myself (after all, you have to start somewhere)…

“You know the delight you feel when you figure out a problem? Well the Chicago Children’s Museum aims to give kids a fun environment to figure out the world around them. We do that because when young children discover learning can be fun, it frees their imaginations and unlocks hidden talents they can explore for a lifetime. We’re kind of like a soccer coach for young minds. But instead of learning to play better, our little visitors are playing to learn better.”

Then again, as Nelson Mandela said, it always seems impossible until it’s done. And if I can do this with waterlogged ears (and did), think of the pitch your paid staff can come up with on dry land, dear CCM. It’s time to focus and speak with one institutional voice. Your mission, your expansion, and your ability to continue to serve your little visitors deserve no less. I’m rooting for you. The batter’s up. Time to focus.

Start pitching.

(Photo: A case of mistaken identity in downtown Chicago’s New Eastside.)

Although I, too, have highlighted the racism that some members of the New Eastside Association of Residents (NEAR) have used to fuel their opposition to the Chicago Children’s Museum’s proposed move from Navy Pier to new digs at Daley Bicentennial Plaza in the northeast corner of Grant Park, that’s not really the crux of NEAR’s opposition. Nor do I believe that NEAR members pass fitful, sleepless nights, tortured by the fear that a 110-year-old Illinois Supreme Court decree barring permanent structures from Grant Park will be flouted by the Daley administration.

As surprising as it may sound, I think both arguments are red herrings for what’s really at the heart of New Eastside residential opposition to the museum’s plans: plain-old economic elitism.

It’s a time-honored Chicago tradition: developers produce condos in a heretofore sleepy corner of downtown and market those condos to suburban Cook County residents who would love to live in the city, if only the city weren’t so, well, city. Prospective urbanites buy into plans and prospectuses highlighting panoramic views, leafy streets, and a level of exclusivity–read: safety–to calm minds enough to loosen wallets.

Of course, development begets development, especially in the soaring Second City. Eventually the city swarms in. Views are lost, congestion is gained, and the newcomers find themselves smack in the middle of the city they originally had experienced from the sidelines. It happened in Dearborn Park. I blogged at length about it last year at Folio Square (see here, here, and here). And if the Chicago Children’s Museum gets its way, it will happen to the wags at NEAR.

Now, the way my mother taught me about life, the simplest, most obvious answer is usually the best one. I can easily understand high-rise residents not wanting to lose the cachet of their isolation from the world around them. I can’t, however, understand them all, en masse, suddenly getting civic religion, pulling out their Plans of Chicago and Forever Open Clear and Frees, and channeling Montgomery Ward.

Can you?

That angle is a convenient one, but if half of the folks at NEAR who have wrapped themselves in the Chicago flag of late can actually name the authors of either one of the above-mentioned tomes, I’ll start taking driving lessons tomorrow. While I never cease to be amused by the capacity of urban newcomers to be surprised when they wake up to the fact that they’re actually residing in a big city (and–surprise–a living, breathing city that never ceases to change), I don’t exactly feel sympathy for fellow Chicagoans who believe that they’re somehow better than…well, other Chicagoans (the non-Bucksbaum, non-Pritzker, nouveaux riche elements of Burling Street, anyone?).

All of which brings me to what I found during my afternoon walk on the New Eastside today: curiously erroneous signage prominently posted in the tony neighborhood’s centerpiece Lakeshore East Park. Those in the know will recall said park was designed by acclaimed landscape architect James Burnett and funded by the neighborhood’s developers, to be given over to the Chicago Park District upon completion. That transfer happened on July 16, 2005. Trouble is, the park still doesn’t show up in the CPD’s online database of facilities (not even under the numeric name by which it appears on the Chicago Interactive Zoning Map, Park #546). The above link is to Lakeshore East developer Magellan’s marketing page.

What I find curiouser, if not outright ominous, is the prominent placement of signage labeling the park as “Private Property” smack in the middle of all three public access routes into the New Eastside from the north, south, and east. Fresh, new, unweathered signage.

(“Private-property” sign at south roadway entrance to New Eastside.)

(“Private-property” sign at north roadway entrance to New Eastside.)

(“Private-property” sign at east pedestrian stair/elevator entrance to New Eastside.)

Such signage is obviously out of place in a public park. That was also the very surprised opinion of “Rachel”, the worker who answered the phone at the 42nd Ward office of Alderman Brendan Reilly when I called to complain about the signage this afternoon (she said the office would look into it).

Knowing full well the greenspace was in the inventory of the Chicago Park District, I went looking for the CPD’s own signs. There were two of them, and I had to hunt to find them. They were nowhere near the “Private Property” signs posted at the park’s public entrances. Instead, they were planted in two corners of the park facing directly into blind corners.

Exactly where no members of the public will ever easily see them.

(Location of “private property” and park district signage in Lakeshore East Park, looking west.)

(Park district identification sign in southwest corner of Lakeshore East Park.)

(Blind corner facing park district sign on the southwest.)

(Park district identification sign in northeast corner of Lakeshore East Park.)

(Blind corner facing park district sign on the northeast.)

Now I can accept accidents and flukes as much as the next person. But I’ve lived in Chicago for long enough to know that nothing happens in this town without a reason. If you can think of a better reason why a public park in the middle of a controversial, exclusive neighborhood fails to appear in the local park authority’s inventory after two years and is festooned with “Private Property” signs at its public entrances–an explanation that doesn’t have to do with somebody trying to keep someone out–I’d love to hear it. The “Private Property” signage should be removed and replaced with Park District identification signage immediately.

I believe when a person says “Put the museum on the South Side” it’s a racist comment just as strongly as I believe that the placement of this signage in Lakeshore East Park is a deliberate attempt to keep non-resident Chicagoans out of the New Eastside. As a resident of the 42nd Ward, I think that stinks.

And that’s about as simply as I can put it.

(Photo: 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly.)

Today, was a litmus test for 42nd Ward Alderman Brendan Reilly. He failed.

Today, Alderman Reilly announced his opposition to the proposed relocation of the Chicago Children’s Museum from Navy Pier to a site on East Randolph Street in Grant Park.

Over the weekend on Carless, I expressed my dismay at the elitist, almost racist overtones of a September 2 Chicago Tribune editorial opposing the museum’s move (in a post that generated a surprising amount of confidential interest). Yesterday, Mayor Daley went a step further and publicly questioned whether the New Eastside Association of Residents (NEAR) simply doesn’t want black children at play on substantially lily-white East Randolph Street. A quote from Daley in yesterday’s Tribune:

“You mean you don’t want children from the city in Grant Park? Why? Are they black? Are they white? Are they Hispanic? Are they poor? You don’t want children? We have children in Grant Park all the time. This is a park for the entire city.”

And further placing a fine point on the issue, Daley plopped the equally obvious elephant down on the table when asked whether the 110-year-old civic decree barring new buildings in Grant Park should be considered iron-clad:

“We would never build Millennium Park then.”

Exactly. Grant Park is the city’s front yard, not just my Ward’s front yard (I live in the 42nd Ward and staunchly supported Reilly over the failed juggernaut that was Burt Natarus). It’s the city’s front yard. It’s open to everyone. And if NEAR really wants to take that decree seriously, why don’t I see them picketing Millennium Park?

I am deeply disappointed that Alderman Reilly, elected on a populist plank of open doors and open ears for all 42nd Ward residents, has overreacted to the, ahem, minority opinion of the NEAR NIMBYs. Certainly, anyone living adjacent to a major park, museum, or in my case (as I blogged about for more than a year, including

(Photo: Innocent place of learning for kids…or the crux of all evil? Credit: Chicago Children’s Museum.)

I don’t have an answer to the question of whether the Chicago Children’s Museum should be allowed to build a new home for itself in Daley Bicentennial Plaza, a.k.a. the woefully underused northeast corner of Grant Park. But I do think the possibility deserves to be debated, and not cut off at the knees as the editorial board of the Chicago Tribune would have it.

Last year, the 25-year old museum announced plans (PDF link) to relocate from it’s longtime Navy Pier home to bigger digs in Daley Bicentennial Plaza, replacing an aging field house in the process. However, in a controversial September 2 editorial, the Chicago Tribune railed against the plan, instead holding fast to the 110-year-old Illinois Supreme Court ruling, based on an 1836 civic decree, that buildings are forever banned in Grant Park.

I don’t know, forever sounds like a long time to me. It’s not an opinion shared by Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin, either, who on Tuesday called for a wider debate, on the merits of the museum’s still-developing design plans–and the current worth of the underused corner of Grant Park where the new museum building would sit. Kamin notes that even starchitect Renzo Piano (designer of the Art Institute’s vaunted new modern wing), thinks of Daley Bicentennial Plaza as “nowhere”. Since, according to the Chicago Park District, the park area will have to be replaced in the next few years to fix water leaks in the Monroe Street garage below, Kamin opines that everyone should keep an open mind when deciding what to put there next.

I tend to agree. In its opposition editorial, the Trib certainly made some spurious claims. For one thing, Grant Park is simply not an “unobstructed space”. No matter how curvy the top of Frank Gehry’s Pritzker Pavilion bandshell is, it’s not a sculpture. It’s a roof. Yet, how many loving paeans to the place have been printed in the pages of the Tribune since Millennium Park’s (tardy) dedication?

For another, it is ludicrous to call downtown Chicago an unwise place to seek to attract more visitors. If downtown Chicago, with its comprehensive transit facilities, wide sidewalks, bevy of crosswalk timers, and massive underground parking lots aimed at getting people out of their cars isn’t the one part of town we want to attract visitors to (two words, dear Trib: economic vitality), I’d like to know where they’d like us to send them.

But what really made me pause was this sentence:

“Rather than piggybacking on Millennium Park, the Children’s Museum can be the prime draw in its own community elsewhere.”

Last time I checked, downtown Chicago was the one neighborhood all Chicagoans can, and do–and should–call claim to. We are not an elitist city. We do not need an elitist downtown. Telling a cultural institution aimed at all Chicagoans to (in this case literally) pack up its toys and stay on its own side of town, in its own community elsewhere, harkens back to our city’s days of municipally sanctioned racism, when people of color were relocated to public housing on the west and south sides specifically to try and keep them out of the Loop. That our city’s main daily can say in all seriousness that downtown Chicago is too good for a children’s museum suggests a downtown Chicago that I’m certainly not living in–nor would I want to. The next time anyone is searching for evidence of the Tribune’s alleged fascist editorial leanings, look no further than this one sentence. It speaks volumes.

In fact, the Trib’s editorial was also challenged on these grounds, by prominent South Side pastor Rev. Michael L. Pflegler. In a September 9 letter to the editor, Pflegler called the newapaper’s stance an “elitist and narrow-minded view” that “is morally indefensible and should not be allowed to prevail.” Pflegler underscored the fact that there are no “outsiders” when it comes to Grant Park–no matter how socioeconomically privileged park neighbors may be (and no matter how much they may think Grant Park is “their” park by dint of sheer proximity), it is the right of all Chicagoans to use the park, no matter where they come from.

In a for more politic way, the Chicago Children’s Museum said essentially the same thing in its own published rebuttal. Essentially, a museum aimed at all Chicagoans has a place in downtown Chicago–especially one that is being designed to sit substantially below street level (as were the Harris Theater and Pritzker Pavilion in adjacent Millennium Park).

Hmm. I certainly never thought I’d see the Trib go toe-to-toe with Gigi Pritzker (you know she’s the museum’s chair, right?), especially with a Pritzker so firmly on the populist side. Now who do you think is going to win that battle?

In fact, who should win the battle is far from clear. Invoking a century-old law that has just been flouted in a such a major municipally and, er, millennially way is hypocritical. And assuming any group of Chicagoans has any stronger or weaker right to be in downtown Chicago is absurd. But the decree and court findings do exist for a reason: we Chicagoans (and how I love, finally, grouping myself into that term now) take our lakefront access very seriously.

And we’ve come a long way. We no longer have a downtown lakefront half-given over to surface train tracks and parking lots. We’ve wisely covered that all over with even more parkland, and with carefully designed, cherished public buildings. So it seems to me the record shows we are of two minds about the downtown lakefront. And that’s OK.

I think with a full and fair debate, vetting of plans, and some honest soul searching, we Chicagoans–park neighbor and Pritzker, museum goer and managing editor–will figure this one out. We’ve done it before; we’ll do it again. We’re wise enough to know the difference between art and overkill when it comes to Grant Park. As long as we’re unfettered in our debate, I’m sure an appropriate choice will prevail.

And then watch how fast the Tribune publishes an opening-day, commemorative insert.