It’s been 17 years since Victoria Lautman first walked into the WBEZ studio to do a freelance art review and sent her distinctive voice out over the airwaves. You couldn’t hear it without paying attention. In those days, well before the adenoidal Ira Glass became an icon, most on-air personalities had conventional “radio voices”–resonant, buttery, modulated. Lautman, on the other hand, was pitched somewhere between a load of gravel and a snort of whiskey. She sounded like Janis Joplin on a good day, if Joplin had had a background in art history. Wrapped in that voice, even another gallery show of minimalist art sounded like a party.
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She got invited back, reviewing once a month on Mark Hyland’s Saturday show, then contributing regularly to Carolyn Grisko’s weekday morning program. She campaigned for the chance to do a show dedicated to arts and culture and in 1990 she got it–Artistic License, two hours on Saturdays, cohosted with Neil Tesser. Tesser quit after three years and she hosted alone for another five. The show was moved to Friday afternoon, then to Thursday night. In 1998, when a lot of WBEZ programming changed, it ended, and Lautman was folded into Eight Forty-Eight, the morning magazine now hosted by Steve Edwards. “I just kept my nose down and kept going,” she says, “and in a lot of ways it was really great for me.” She taped about eight pieces a month for Eight Forty-Eight, functioned as an arts reporter and substitute host, and was allowed to expand into subjects like medicine and education. Then, last winter, her airtime was cut in half.
With new grant money he anticipates getting this year, Malatia also wants to add a full-time arts director to his staff, someone to oversee beefed-up arts coverage at the station. And a year from now he’s planning to launch an hour-long, five-day-a-week show in Talk of the Nation’s midafternoon time slot–a mixture of news and culture that would include arts segments. “Our desire is to do more of this stuff, not less of it,” he says. “Since ‘MAQ’s demise and ‘NIB’s demise, a lot of this is falling on us. And we should take up the mantle. That’s what we’re here for.” He says Valva is reviewing tapes now, hunting for those five new voices that know what’s going on not only in Pilsen, but in Harvey or Kenosha.
