CULTURAL FERMENT IN THE SECOND CITY

...Light and color filter through stained-glass designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, who was then an eighteen-year-old apprentice...

...However, not many society people were around to bask in the light of the new museum, sponsored by art lovers, and the product of their labors...

...The Auditorium has been reborn...

...The old theater had been dedicated December 9, 1889, by President Benjamin Harrison...

...Though the theme of the Museum's shows will vary, he says, the philosophy will reflect that of the first show in exploring the breakdown of boundaries among the arts and in inviting viewers' participation...

...Although Mrs...

...The Federal building now has been razed to make way for another sterile high-rise apartment building...

...Theodore Roosevelt was nominated for President at the Bull Moose convention held in the Auditorium, and President McKinley and Booker T. Washington made pleas from the stage for racial tolerance...

...Adelina Patti sang Home Sweet Home, a new song, that night...

...And the wealthy, or pretenders to wealth, had to pay at least part of their due for the occasion it provided them...

...In that avant garde, McLuhanesque milieu it is necessary to see, and the seers are not the seen...

...Thus the Chicago cultural establishment did not jostle for positions on the boards of the upstart museum and the faded Auditorium...

...Another environmental work was Allan Kaprow's Words, which consisted of two rooms...

...The first exhibit,, "Pictures to be Read/Poetry to be Seen," explores the breakdown between boundaries of the arts, presenting something of a total art experience, at least in some of the things on display...

...When she examined the decaying theater, the roof leaked, plaster was crumbling, paint was peeling, upholstery was rotting...

...The North Shore contingent—women in fancy gowns, jewels, and furs...

...More than 800 joined in two weeks after the drive opened in mid-August...

...Mayor Richard J. Daley, ever alert for opportunities to remove the taint of some of his city's past, was enthusiastic about the project and telephoned her periodically to ask how things were going, but there were no funds forthcoming from city coffers...

...It was Mrs...

...Among them were Galli-Curci, Paderewski, Chaliapin, Caruso, Prokofiev, and Ni-jinsky...

...The rattle grew louder in the late 1920s when Samuel Insull, the utilities baron, moved his opera company to his new Civic Opera Building...

...During World War II, the Auditorium was turned into a bowling alley for servicemen...

...Endless, tangled red tape caused museum founders to give up in February, 1966, and look for other quarters...

...Boxes sold for $2,100...

...They got encouragement, but no more...

...Among Chicago area society, there exists a continuum of fashionable "in" boards and committees—just as in other cities...

...Performances in the 1930s were sporadic appearances by touring opera and ballet companies and extravaganzas...

...There had been talk for years of restoring the Auditorium, but there was little action until she was named chairman of the Auditorium Theater Council in 1960...

...In the first and larger room words were stapled on walls and there were stacks of words lettered on sheets of paper which participants could staple onto the walls...

...On that glittering reopening night the Auditorium audience could see little evidence of the musty cavern that Mrs...

...Over four decades the most illustrious names among performing artists appeared in the Auditorium...

...After that, the Depression set in...

...The last performance was Hellzapoppin in 1941...

...Characteristic of the initial show was a work of Oyvind Fahlstrom's which consisted of ten large blocks, similar to children's building blocks, on which there were pop-art illustrations or simply blanks, so that the blocks could be rearranged to suit the viewer's fancy...

...The accomplishments achieved with little help from the establishment would indicate that the message is: Either move or move over...

...In the adjoining room, the walls were bare and chalk was provided so participants could make graffiti...

...Spachner who spearheaded the drive to raise the necessary funds...

...As an experiment, the Museum is open three nights a week until ten o'clock, and even then visitors have to be asked to leave...

...They were happy with the monstrous 5,000-seat theater in McCormick Place, despised by performers and audiences alike because of its vastness and inferior acoustics...

...There was talk and hope for years of establishing another major art museum in Chicago, though not among the cultural establishment, which was content with the comfortable, prestigious Art Institute, repository for one of the world's leading collections of French Impressionist work...

...Shortly, an ideal one-story building on East Ontario, two blocks off North Michigan Avenue in "Gallery Row," was found...

...At the top are the Symphony, the Art Institute, arid the Lyric Opera —not necessarily in that order...

...CHARLES-GENE McDANIEL is a Chicago writer and editor with special training in journalism and art...

...Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine that the entire cultural establishment will not be affected by the success of Chicago's recent cultural developments—the Auditorium, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Picasso sculpture at the Civic Center ¦—and the excitement they have generated...

...One architectural firm had estimated the cost of restoration at $4,000,000, which meant tearing out and replacing...

...The goal was 1,000 by opening time...

...By then there were more than 2,000...

...McCormick Place, designed primarily for expositions, burned last winter, and the impresarios have been lobbying for replacement of its vast auditorium when the whole complex is rebuilt...

...It is decorated with Louis Sullivan's golden, elegant traceries...

...Eight feet high, it represented a book fanned open so the viewer could stand between the pages to see what was written, painted, or attached to them —or crawl through holes in some of them...

...The stunning theater, with its sweeping arches dotted with thousands of jewel-like carbon filament lights, is huge, but at the same time warm and intimate...

...A dozen young international artists are represented by some seventy works in the show...

...The Chicago Opera Company made its first home there, and the Chicago Symphony was born there...

...Court of Appeals Building on Lake Shore Drive, supplanted by a new Federal building in the Loop, was sought...

...Mini-skirted women in psychedelic colors looked very much a part of the show at the preview opening for new members...

...The Museum of Contemporary Art also had an over-long gestation period, but it was short compared to that which brought about the rebirth of the Auditorium...

...By mid-November, more than $1,500,000 was in hand...

...Backers of the Museum say they have no intention of competing with the Art Institute, but it would be difficult to imagine that the new Museum will not have some effect on the Art Institute, which, while it undoubtedly houses some of the greatest art in the world, tends to be staid...

...This was followed by the ultimate indignity—a proposal to turn it into a parking ramp...

...In the second half of the Twentieth Century, $2,250,000 is not a staggering amount of money in terms of fund-raising and public projects...

...The effort which finally brought the idea of a new museum to fruition began in earnest with a meeting in January, 1964, in the home of Doris Lane Butler, a critic, and the Museum was incorporated in April of that year...

...One thing that saved it was the cost of tearing down such a solid, block-long structure...

...Re-opening night last autumn featured George Balanchine's New York City Ballet performing, appropriately, Jewels...

...The early hope of Museum incorporators to preserve an architectural gem while providing the Museum with a home met with insurmountable frustration...

...It will be at least two years before this $80,000,000 tax-subsidized facility is ready, and the Auditorium is the largest theater available in the meantime...

...Spachner, an accomplished violinist, recalled childhood memories of performances in the glittering theater and cherished a dream of seeing it restored...

...Alison Knowles' The Big Book was the most popular work in the show...

...Joseph Randall Shapiro, a noted collector who became the Museum's first president, led the fund-raising effort, which began only six months before the October opening, to collect $2,000,000 for the Museum's initial five-year budget...

...The restoration of the Auditorium, designed by Louis Sullivan and Dank-mar Adler, is a tribute to the intrepidity and vision of one woman, Mrs...

...The 4,000 seats are upholstered in champagne plush...

...John V. Spachner, the wife of an executive of the Container Corporation of America, who lives in Highland Park— which, among "in" society, is not the apex of "in-ness," but is not far down from Lake Forest...

...Originally a bakery, the building lately was used for Playboy magazine offices...

...Raising the necessary funds again was done largely without much help from the cultural establishment...

...But Harry Weese, another architect, concluded that the Auditorium was structurally sound and could be restored for much less...

...It has 18,000 square feet of floor space and provides 10,000 square feet of exhibit space on the first floor and in the basement...

...Between two pages was a "little apartment" with hot plate and teapot, milk, telephone, stool, toilet, book rack, and other accouternlents of living...

...Works selected will not necessarily be those considered to have permanent value, Van der Marck says, but will show what is happening in the art world and will give young artists an opportunity to display their work...

...Opening night tickets ranged from $10 in the top balcony to $1,500 for a box of six seats...

...men in look-alike penguin formal wear—made their way slowly across the red carpet from chauffeur-driven limousines to the door of Chicago's Auditorium Theater, their pace slowed by cameramen and female society "reporters" who took turns stopping couples bearing society names for just one more photograph, just a few words more of interview...

...And there was—everywhere—dirt...

...There was little encouragement from the city's impresarios...

...Spachner continues to seek money to complete the air conditioning system and to refurbish backstage areas, her dream has been realized...

...The Auditorium originally cost $3,500,000, but it is said that $20,000,000 would be required to duplicate it today...

...Singers throughout the years have been rapturous over the Auditorium's acoustics, so perfect that the unaided voice can be heard in the farthest gallery without strain...

...Strips of cloth hung from above and participants could write whatever they pleased on note paper and attach it to these strips...

...The October 31 event was the grand reopening of a renowned theater that had languished and decayed for more than two decades...

...But it took nearly seven years to round up enough checks to total that amount, and many checks were for $10 and $25 from people who recalled earlier days of sitting in the acoustically perfect Auditorium to hear the greatest performers of the time, and from others younger, of modest means, who knew the legend of the theater and shared the dream of seeing it restored...

...Fortunately for Chicago, and for the world, Mrs...

...Cultural Ferment in the Second City by CHARLES-GENE McDANIEL Chicago Society types were much in evidence when the press and television photographers were around to record their presence, but they were conspicuous by their absence when the grubby work of raising money was being done...

...The need for such a museum was apparent from the response to the membership drive...

...The new Museum, initially at least, will not build a permanent collection but will feature changing shows...

...She spoke tirelessly to clubs and organizations, asking their help, and called upon others who might give...

...The U.S...

...The walls are beige...

...It was not so much that they came to see but that, as usual, they came to be seen...

...The opening night program listed the names of 162 individuals, firms, and foundations that had contributed $2,000 or more each...

...The board of trustees of the Museum, unlike that of the Art Institute, represents artists, art dealers, architects, and collectors and includes so un-es-tablishment a person as Hugh Hefner of Playboy, who was generous in support of this new enterprise...

...It was with little thanks to Chicago society that the long-dreamed-of feat was accomplished finally, and with even less thanks to them that Chicago in the same month opened its new Museum of Contemporary Art, another feat long aborning...

...A delegation of the incorporators visited Daggett Harvey, chairman of the Mayor's Cultural Committee, to seek his support...

...Spachner found in 1960...

...Jan van der Marck, the dynamic young director, is a native of the Netherlands and was hired away from the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis...

...The death rattle began in the early 1920s when the Chicago Auditorium Association tried to get the Auditorium razed on the basis that it was architecturally obsolete...