Blaffer museum

1 Community Corner This year's awardees included a North Shore philanthropist, a Chicago-based bank and the archbishop of Chicago. Jonah Meadows , Patch Staff Posted | Updated Reply SKOKIE, IL — The Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center held its annual Humanitarian Awards dinner last week in Chicago, raising more than $2 million in support of the mission of the Skokie-based institution, museum officials announced. More than 1,500 business, civic and community leaders attended the March 7 event at the Hyatt Regency Chicago, which was hosted by CNN Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash. Michael Oren, the former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., was the keynote speaker. The museum's 2023 Humanitarian Awards were presented to the bank Northern Trust and Glencoe entrepreneur and philanthropist Pete Kadens . The awards recognize organizations and individuals who demonstrate a commitment to educate people … [Read more...] about Illinois Holocaust Museum Raises Millions At 2023 Humanitarian Awards

First Citizens Bank has agreed to purchase Silicon Valley Bank, which collapsed after a bank run, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. said. All of Silicon Valley Bank's 17 branches will open as First Citizens branches on Monday, the FDIC said in a news release dated Sunday. First Citizens said the branches will operate as "Silicon Valley Bank, a division of First Citizens Bank." The announcement that First Citizens, based in Raleigh, N.C., would buy the Northern California bank is a significant step in the efforts to quell the chaos that unfolded after Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed this month, setting off wider unease across the global financial sector. First Citizens agreed to buy all of SVB's deposits and loans, as well as a large portion of its assets, leaving about $90 billion in securities and other assets under the control of the FDIC, the regulator said. The FDIC said it estimated that SVB's failure cost the government's Deposit Insurance Fund about $20 billion. … [Read more...] about First Citizens Bank to buy Silicon Valley Bank after collapse, FDIC says

The concept of museum-worthy clothes is arguably as old as museums themselves. But only in modern history did blockbuster fashion exhibits really take off. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art , the 2018 exhibition “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination” drew some 1.6 million guests, according to the museum. “Romantic and Glamorous Hollywood Design,” an exhibition that opened in 1974, had about 780,000 visitors. Matthew Yokobosky , the senior curator of fashion and material culture at the Brooklyn Museum, which over the past two years has staged exhibits on the designers Christian Dior , Thierry Mugler and Virgil Abloh , said the interest in seeing clothes on display has risen as “the occasions for getting dressed up have diminished.” Preserving collections for posterity has not always been a priority in the fashion industry, which is focused heavily on the future (by the time that most brands’ spring clothes are released, they are already showing pieces … [Read more...] about Save the Gowns!

Once there was a man who wore the finest silks in Italy, but traded them all for sackcloth. His father was a wealthy cloth merchant, and in his youth he gamboled about Umbria in colorful, dandyish outfits. But when he had his calling he stripped off his fine clothes, pledged his body to God, and spent the rest of his life in a mendicant’s robe. He was Saint Francis of Assisi , and when the archbishop of Buenos Aires was proclaimed pope in 2013, he gave himself a new name, in honor of a man unembroidered. I wonder what both Francises, saint and pontiff, might make of “Heavenly Bodies,” the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s colossal, hotly debated and richly anointed exhibition on the interweaving of fashion and Roman Catholicism. Years in the making, it includes exceptional loans of vestments from the Vatican — some of which have never before left Rome — and more than 150 ensembles of secular clothing from the last century. Here is papal regalia of unsurpassed intricacy, but also … [Read more...] about ‘Heavenly Bodies’ Brings the Fabric of Faith to the Met

On Friday morning, a cloudless sky stretched above the Brooklyn Museum. As the sun marked the arrival of a sweltering July, clusters of people lined up an hour before opening to be the first ones inside. It was the first day that “Figures of Speech,” a multimedia retrospective of work by the designer Virgil Abloh, was open to the public. Fans were eager to get to the exhibition shop, hoping to take home a piece of fashion history. Some craved that history for themselves, while others chased the resale value. Mr. Abloh, who shattered barriers in the luxury fashion world and beyond, was the artistic director of Louis Vuitton’s men’s wear and the founder of his own brand, Off-White. He died last year at 41, after a private battle with a rare heart cancer. The Brooklyn Museum exhibition, curated by the writer and curator Antwaun Sargent , is the first posthumous showing of “Figures of Speech” — its first iteration was at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago — and it celebrates … [Read more...] about The Thirst for Merch

Antwaun Sargent sat nursing a Negroni at Frankies Spuntino, his haunt in Brooklyn, as he described the perks of his multilayered career. “I had dinner with Madonna,” he said on a recent Friday. “Coming of age as a gay man in Chicago in the ’90s, you can imagine, I was excited. I was obsessed with her.” But within moments of their encounter last year, Mr. Sargent hit earth. Pulling out her iPhone, his erstwhile idol proceeded to show him artworks by Rocco Ritchie, her 21-year-old son with the filmmaker Guy Ritchie, regaling him for nearly an hour about her hopes for the boy. “That made things real,” Mr. Sargent said. “Here was Madonna — a legend, an icon — asking for guidance, just being mom.” It seems the pop diva had known where to turn. Mr. Sargent, 33, a former kindergarten teacher turned artist and curator and vociferous champion of Black artists, had been appointed in January 2021 as a director at Gagosian, the blue-chip mega-gallery, with a mandate to make waves. … [Read more...] about Art, Darling