MAY
On March 26, just before midnight, a meteorite exploded over Chicago’s south suburbs. A piece of the friction-fried space rock goes on exhibit today at the Lizzadro Museum of Lapidary Art, where at 2 this afternoon geologist Paul Sipiera of the Algonquin-based Planetary Studies Foundation will give a lecture called The Stone From the Sky. Sipiera says every meteorite is a “surprise package,” offering a chance to study the oldest solid material in our solar system (dating from about 4.5 billion years ago). Meteorites are the building blocks of the planets, he says. “Our guess is this one came from about 300 million miles out, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.” Anyone who has picked up a stone recently and suspects it might be a meteorite can bring it in for identification. The exhibit continues through July 20; the museum is located at 220 Cottage Hill in Elmhurst. Admission is $4 for adults, $3 for seniors, $2 for students, $1 for kids aged 7 to 12, and free for children under 7. It’s free to all on Fridays. Call 630-833-1616 for lecture reservations.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Throughout its history the camera has been used as a stealth device, says Karen Irvine, curator of the new exhibit The Furtive Gaze. But, she says, the five participating artists “are entering the public space, and there’s an element of public performance in their methods of capturing pictures.” Chris Verene, for example, posed as a camera club photographer to snap covert shots of men who pose as professional photographers in order to get women to take off their clothes. For her “Dear Stranger” series, Shizuka Yokomizo sent anonymous letters asking people to stand in their front windows at a certain date and time; when they complied, she took their pictures. The exhibit also includes work by Sophie Calle and Merry Alpern as well as images from Walker Evans’s subway portrait series from the 1930s. It opened last week and runs through July 12 at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, 600 S. Michigan in Chicago (gallery hours today are from 10 to 5). The museum will screen Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window tonight at 6 in room 504 of Columbia College’s Ludington Building, 1104 S. Wabash, in conjunction with the exhibit; Karla Rae Fuller, from Columbia’s department of film and video, will introduce the film. Call 312-344-7104 for more.
The first wave of Korean immigration to the West began in 1903, but economist Shin Kim says early immigrants were treated so badly as farm labor in Mexico and Hawaii that the Korean monarch halted emigration in 1905. From then until 1945, with the exception of some “picture brides,” very few Koreans found their way to America. There was a brief surge of immigration connected with the Korean war–mostly women wed to American soldiers. But in 1965, American immigration law changed, and many more Koreans began to arrive. Political insecurity and military dictatorship drove them out of Korea, says Kim, but they remained psychologically connected. Tonight at 7, Kim and her husband, political scientist Kim Kwang Chung, will talk about Geopolitical Connections of Korean Immigrants in the United States at the Des Plaines Public Library, 1501 Ellinwood in Des Plaines. It’s free, but reservations are required. Call 847-376-2787.
