Corn Kings and One-Horse Thieves
Odds & ends
Illinois past and present, as seen by James Krohe Jr.
The Corn Latitudes
Arts and culture
Here are reviews and feature articles (and even a bit of backstage reporting) about music, sculpture (including architectural decoration), the performing arts, painting and photography, the popular arts, and government arts policy.
I was never the first writer an editor thought of when assigning pieces on the arts. My interest in the fine arts in particular is that of the dilettante. I wrote little about the state's painters, some about public sculpture, and virtually nothing about music.
For much more about the literary arts in Illinois, see Illinois books & writers.
Note: I here treat Frank Lloyd Wright's house fittings as art objects; as many of his clients would attest, they weren't really furniture.
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A pizza king gets Wright’s art-furniture to go
Chicago Times March/April 1990
No Room for Writers
The writers' memorial in Chicago's newest library
Reader September 25, 1992
Chicago Sinfonietta at Rosary College
Art fights audience and manages a draw
Wednesday Journal April 17, 1991
Hostile to the Arts, Just Indifferent
The state of state-funded arts in Illinois
Illinois Issues December 1998
Museums
Has the governor taken the wrong guy hostage?
“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times October 15, 2015
Public science in an age of privatized government
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times February 11, 2016
Springfield’s Kidzeum promotes “health and wellness”
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times November 7, 2013
Merchandising Modern Art
Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art
Reader April 10, 1992
George Lucas wants to improve young Chicagoans
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times May 1, 2014
Contemplating antique glass paperweights
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times April 2, 2015
Flat Land into Landscapes
Scenic paintings of the central Illinois landscape. Really. "Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times November 29, 2012
Libraries
Public libraries in all their forms are essential cultural institutions, not that you'd know that from the way they are funded in Illinois. Here is a sampling of pieces that address these and related issues.
Libraries for people who don’t use libraries
"Prejudices" Illinois Times March 13, 1981
A more modern library, not a better one
"Prejudices" Illinois Times March 4, 1977
What Good Are Public Libraries?
A commercial ethos creeps into the stacks
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times October 14, 2010
An Overdue Policy on the Library
Ought the state’s historical library to be independent?
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times February 26, 2015
The Sangamon Valley Collection
History finds a home at Springfield’s public library
Illinois Times February 11, 1977
Saving History from the Wrecking Ball
Richard Nickel and Sullivan's legacy
Illinois Issues April 1995
Books Matter. People Care. Change Is Possible.
Richard Bray and “Chicago's most committed bookstore”
Reader April 14, 1989
The Elizabeth Birds of the Illinois Woodland peoples
Nature of Illinois Spring/Summer 1989
Vachel Lindsay pays the price of not selling out
“Prejudices” Illinois Times November 5, 1987
Bringing the Dana-Thomas House furnishings back home
Illinois Times December 10, 1987
Springfield’s city band marches into Salzburg
"Prejudices" Illinois Times August 23, 1990
The Band in the Park on a Summer Night
Springfield’s Municipal Band plays on
Illinois Times August 11, 1978
Illinois once was French—not that you’d notice
“Prejudices” Illinois Times May 21, 1992
Public art
Our new sculptors don’t do justice to our history
“Prejudices” Illinois Times October 12, 1979
Exterior Decoration
Books about public sculpture in Chicago
Reader August 12, 1988
Public statuary on the Illinois statehouse grounds
"Prejudices" Illinois Times undated
I Think Icon, I Think Icon, I Think Icon
Building iconography explained, sort of
Crain's Chicago Business April 5, 1993
How Lorado Taft carved out a future for himself
Illinois Issues January 1989
Today's heroic public memorials trivialize heroism
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times April 5, 2012
Restoration makes the statehouse too grand for politics
“Dyspepsiana” Illinois Times September 12, 2013
Fallen Heroes
Don't remove offending Statehouse statues, move them
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times August 20, 2020
See also "The people's art museum" in The Tourist’s State Capital and "Outside the museum walls" in “More of Beauty and Less of Ugliness”
The Encouragement of Competent Teachers
Would Elizabeth Graham be allowed to teach today?
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times April 30, 2015
A loss to the arts—but oh, the banking convenience!
“Prejudices” Illinois Times December 16, 1977
Local arts critics show courage under fire
“Prejudices” Illinois Times April 10, 1981
Lyric Flights
Does John Prine belong on as well as in the state library?
Illinois Times July 30, 2020
Town Character
The hometown as hero in mid-Illinois books
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times July 16, 2015
No Business Like Show Business
Springfield arts critics get panned—again
“Prejudices” Illinois Times July 28, 1978
Stirring Up the Arts at the PAC
Looking for an arts audience in Springfield
Illinois Times February 2, 1984
The U of I’s new world-class concert hall
Illinois Times December 23, 1977
Modern Minstrels
The heirs to Vachel Lindsay's performance poetry
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times August 18, 2011
Chicagolandia’s contributions to the popular arts
See Illinois (unpublished) 2002
Unseen nature in books by Kanfer, Irving, and Clay
Nature of Illinois Winter 1989
Springfield Visited
Novelist Evelyn Waugh lectures the capital in 1949
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times April 26, 2012
Furnishing Springfield's Dana-Thomas House
Chicago Times March/April 1990
Independent publishing, and thinking, lose a champion
“Prejudices” Illinois Times February 23, 1989
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New York, New York
Gotham has always drawn Springfieldians to the bright lights
"Dyspepsiana" Illinois Times September 18, 2014
SITES
OF
INTEREST
Essential for anyone interested in Illinois history and literature. Hallwas deservedly won the 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Illinois State Historical Society.
One of Illinois’s best, and least-known, writers of his generation. Take note in particular of The Distancers and Road to Nowhere.
See Home Page/Learn/
Resources for a marvelous building database, architecture dictionary, even a city planning graphic novel. Handsome, useful—every Illinois culture website should be so good.
The online version of The Encyclopedia of Chicago. Crammed with thousands of topic entries, biographical sketches, maps and images, it is a reference work unmatched in Illinois.
The Illinois chapter of the American Institute of Architects in 2018 selected 200 Great Places in Illinois that illustrate our shared architectural culture across the entire period of human settlement in Illinois.
A nationally accredited, award-winning project of the McLean County Historical Society whose holdings include more than 20,000 objects, more than 15,000 books on local history and genealogy, and boxes and boxes of historical papers and images.
Mr. Lincoln, Route 66, and Other Highlights of Lincoln, Illinois
Every Illinois town ought to have a chronicler like D. Leigh Henson, Ph.D. Not only Lincoln and the Mother road—the author’s curiosity ranges from cattle baron John Dean Gillett to novelist William Maxwell. An Illinois State Historical Society "Best Web Site of the Year."
Created in 2000, the IDA is a repository for the digital collections of the Illinois State Library and other Illinois libraries and cultural institutions. The holdings include photographs, slides, and glass negatives, oral histories, newspapers, maps, and documents from manuscripts and letters to postcards, posters, and videos.
The people's museum is a treasure house of science and the arts. A research institution of national reputation, the museum maintains four facilities across the state. Their collections in anthropology, fine and decorative arts, botany, zoology, geology, and history are described here. A few museum publications can be obtained here.
“Chronicling Illinois” showcases some of the collections—mostly some 6,000 photographs—from the Illinois history holdings of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library.
I will leave it to the authors of this interesting site to describe it. "Chicagology is a study of Chicago history with a focus on the period prior to the Second World War. The purpose of the site is to document common and not so common stories about the City of Chicago as they are discovered."
Illinois Labor History Society
The Illinois Labor History Society seeks to encourage the preservation and study of labor history materials of the Illinois region, and to arouse public interest in the profound significance of the past to the present. Offers books reviews, podcasts, research guides, and the like.
Illinois Migration History 1850-2017
The University of Washington’s America’s Great Migrations Project has compiled migration histories (mostly from the published and unpublished work by UW Professor of History James Gregory) for several states, including Illinois. The site also includes maps and charts and essays about the Great Migration of African Americans to the north, in which Illinois figured importantly.
An interesting resource about the history of one of Illinois’s more interesting places, the Fox Valley of Kendall County. History on the Fox is the work of Roger Matile, an amateur historian of the best sort. Matile’s site is a couple of cuts above the typical buff’s blog. (An entry on the French attempt to cash in on the trade in bison pelts runs more than
2,000 words.)
BOOKS
OF INTEREST
Southern Illinois University Press 2017
A work of solid history, entertainingly told.
Michael Burlingame,
author of Abraham
Lincoln: A Life
One of the ten best books on Illinois history I have read in a decade.
Superior Achievement Award citation, ISHS Awards, 2018
A lively and engaging study . . . an enthralling narrative.
James Edstrom
The Annals of Iowa
A book that merits the attention of all Illinois historians
as well as local historians generally.
John Hoffman
Journal of Illinois HIstory
A model for the kind of detailed and honest history other states and regions could use.
Harold Henderson
Midwestern Microhistory
A fine example of a resurgence of Midwest historical scholarship.
Greg Hall
Journal of the Illinois
State Historical Society
Click here
to buy the book
Southern Illinois University Press
SIU Press is one of the four major university publishing houses in Illinois. Its catalog offers much of local interest, including biographies of Illinois political figures, the history (human and natural) and folklore of southern Illinois, the Civil War and Lincoln, and quality reprints in the Shawnee Classics series.
The U of I Press was founded in 1918. A search of the online catalog (Books/Browse by subject/Illinois) will reveal more than 150 Illinois titles, books on history mostly but also butteflies, nature , painting, poetry and fiction, and more. Of particular note are its Prairie State Books, quality new paperback editions of worthy titles about all parts of Illinois, augmented with scholarly introductions.
The U of C publishing operation is the oldest (1891) and largest university press in Illinois. Its reach is international, but it has not neglected its own neighborhood. Any good Illinois library will include dozens of titles about Chicago and Illinois from Fort Dearborn to
Vivian Maier.
Northern Illinois University Press
The newest (1965) and the smallest of the university presses with an interest in Illinois, Northern Illinois University Press gave us important titles such as the standard one-volume history of the state (Biles' Illinois:
A History of the Land and Its People) and contributions to the history of Chicago, Illinois transportation, and the Civil War. Now an imprint of Cornell University Press.
Reviews and significant mentions by James Krohe Jr. of more than 50 Illinois books, arranged in alphabetical order
by book title.
Run by the Illinois State Library, The Center promotes reading, writing and author programs meant to honor the state's rich literary heritage. An affiliate of the Library of Congress’s Center for the Book, the site offers award competitions, a directory of Illinois authors, literary landmarks, and reading programs.
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