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Columbia College’s Museum of Contemporary Photography revels in the genre’s various roles: “as a medium of communication and artistic expression, as a documenter of life and the environment, as a powerful tool in service of science and technology, and as a commercial industry.” How that last item interacts with the first is the subject of a new show called Photography and Marketing that comprises two exhibits of advertising campaigns: “Liz Claiborne, Inc.: Women’s Work,” and “Gap: Individuals of Style.” The first combines pictures of the designer’s clothes with text on the subject of domestic violence; the latter is a more conventional series of celebrity shots done by notable shutterbugs including Annie Leibovitz and Albert Watson. The show runs today through June 4 at the museum, 600 S. Michigan. There’s a talk called “Strange Bedfellows: Big Business, Photography, and Social Responsibility” scheduled for this Tuesday at 2 PM (admission is $5); the opening reception is next Friday, April 15, from 5 to 7 (it’s free, like regular museum admission). The museum’s open 10 to 5 Monday through Friday (till 8 Thursday) and noon to 5 Saturday. Call 663-5554 for more.
The Dead Artists Society was founded by local dealer Thomas McCormick, who specializes in undocumented paintings by famous, lesser-known, and unknown artists from previous generations. His salon, as he calls it, meets today at 1 to hear McCormick and art historians Marianne Berardi and Henry Adams talk about neglected American artists from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The meeting’s at McCormick’s house in Bucktown–call 227-0440 for the address and reservations. It’s free.
The Istituto Italiano di Cultura’s ongoing Fellini retrospective takes on an added sadness this week with news of the death of Giulietta Masina, Fellini’s wife and longtime leading lady. See her in her most celebrated role, as a street urchin adopted by Anthony Quinn in the somber La strada, at 5:30 tonight in the video theater of the Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State. This Thursday and the next two Thursdays, same time and place, the institute shows I vitelloni, Nights of Cabiria, and Ginger & Fred. Admission is free; call 747-4740.
The latest offering from the American Blues Theatre is Monsters III: The El Ride, the third show in a series examining the various monsters in our lives. Ten playwrights and performers present their takes on the subject, many of them in CTA settings, in this show; it opens at 7 tonight and continues Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 7 and Fridays and Saturdays at 11 through May 15. American Blues Theatre is at 1909 W. Byron. Tickets are $10. Call 929-1031 for more.
