As summer gears up, I look forward to attending concerts at the Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago’s Grant Park. These free concerts are generally packed—as many as 10,000 people in the seats and on the lawn to listen, not to some superstar act from out of town, but to our own homegrown Grant Park Orchestra.
Afterwards I, and thousands of others, walk around the marvelous open museum that is Millennium Park, again, free. As it should be. Free, publicly supported arts are a vital recreational option during an economic crisis, or any time. Viewing something unhampered by a commercial motive is critical to a thinking society.
Unfortunately, I will be unable go to the Art Institute, a formerly dirt cheap, publicly funded museum operating rent free on public land, because they had to raise their entry fee to punitive rates. Read the rest of this entry »