CLL: Carousel of Curiosities

Carousel of Curiosities
Wednesdays (some Hybrid, some Zoom only)
1:30–2:30 p.m.

This is a series of classes that are free to CLL members and will take the place of “Art in the Modern World.”

There will be various topics and speakers including a five-week session by Hugh Leeman and a four-week session with Susan Quaintance. Susan Musich will also be with us to talk about the art scene in and around Chicago.

If you are a CLL member, please register for the whole series (Carousel of Curiosities) and you will receive a weekly email with the topic and presenter for each week.

Wednesday, September 11
1:30–2:30 p.m
“Chicago’s Lost Restaurants”
with Greg Borzo (Hybrid)
Free for CLL members
Members: register for the entire Carousel of Curiosities series

Many of Chicago’s greatest or most unusual restaurants are lost but not forgotten. Revisit these restaurants through vivid descriptions of their style and service; dishes and décor; history and hilarity; mojo and menus. Well-known author Greg Borzo dishes out course after course of memories about the Windy City’s most beloved bygone restaurants, from steakhouses to tiki bars and diners to delis; from Maxim’s to Charlie Trotter’s and Trader Vic’s to the Blackhawk.

Relive the experiences of hundreds of diners who ate out to celebrate an anniversary, impress a date, taste the latest food fad or just take the night off from cooking. Savor the stories of Chicago’s favorite eateries that over almost two centuries have been inspired by two world’s fairs, built by waves of immigrants, dreamt up by creative entrepreneurs, opened by world-class chefs, and enjoyed by locals and tourists alike.

Wednesday, September 18
1:30–2:30 p.m
“An Artist's 30-Year Journey in O'Keeffe's Southwest”
with Sandra Schroeder
Free for CLL members
Members: register for the entire Carousel of Curiosities series

Sandra Schroeder is a watercolor artist whose journey of 30+ years as an artist, and a teacher has taken her from Chicago to New Mexico and back again. In addition to sparking the creative spirit in others through her workshops and classes, Sandra’s work has been featured in galleries throughout New Mexico as well as our own Andersonville! Join Sandra as she describes her own process of painting in the style of Geogia O'Keeffe in the same places where O'Keeffe painted – Ghost Ranch, Taos, and Chaco Canyon.

Wednesday, September 25
1:30–2:30 p.m
TBD with Susan Musich (Zoom)
Free for CLL members
Members: register for the entire Carousel of Curiosities series

Wednesdays, October 2–October 30
1:30–2:30 p.m
“The Colonial Art of Latin America”
with Hugh Leeman (Zoom)
Free for CLL members
Members: register for the entire Carousel of Curiosities series

Journey through Latin America from the Caribbean and Mesoamerica to the west coast of South America. Together we will explore the artwork and worldview of pre-Columbian cultures before examining these cultures' profound transformation during colonization. Prepare to be awed by the beauty and complexity of artistic masterpieces and moved by the stories they tell us as we witness the power of art as an act of resistance, a colonial force, and cultural preservation at times within the same artwork. As Europe and America meet, a transatlantic visual culture emerges, and a global exchange begins. See these artworks and cultures like never before and examine how they continue influencing our world today.

Hugh Leeman is an artist and lecturer teaching art history in English and Spanish. He lectures regularly at Duke University, Johns Hopkins University, and in Spanish at Colorado State University. His lectures focus on the manifestation of social power structures and the spiritual realm in pre-modern art and the future of images' ability to re-engineer social constructs. Leeman's social practice has been exhibited at the Museum of Mexico City. His first social art project focused on a five-year collaborative project with the inner city's homeless, using technology to create micro self-empowerment business platforms for homeless individuals. More recently, Leeman cofounded aetatribes.org.

Wednesdays, November 6–November 27
“Chronicle of a Death Foretold: A Metaphysical Murder Mystery”
with Susan Quaintance, O.S.B.
1:30–2:30 (Hybrid)
Free for CLL members
Members: register for the entire Carousel of Curiosities series

The New York Review of Books had this to say about Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel, “The murder of Santiago Nasar will stand among the innumerable murders of modern literature as one of the best and most powerfully rendered, superior even to the great, slow murder of Quilty in ‘Lolita,’ or the sensational and bathetic murder of the German soldier in ‘Mr. Sammler’s Planet,’ or various murders in Camus, Sartre, Capote, Mailer and others. Flannery O'Connor’s deftly stunning murders in ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find’ compete well against Gabriel Garcia Marquez, but she too is a genius of the uncanny and the banal.”

This 1981 novella explores universal questions of personal and communal responsibility in a curious mash-up of journalism and magical realism. Serving as an excellent introduction to the work of one of the twentieth century’s most lauded authors, Chronicle is a book that can be much debated but definitely not forgotten.

Susan Quaintance, OSB, has cherished being a part of the Center for Life and Learning community — whether as Program Coordinator, Director, or friend — since 2014. Still keenly interested in issues affecting older adults, she is currently Director of Heart to Heart Ministry, a program designed to help seniors remain independent in their homes, at St. Gertrude Catholic Parish in Edgewater. She also serves as subprioress for her religious community, the Benedictine Sisters of Chicago. For twenty-three years she taught English and Theology at St. Scholastica Academy in Rogers Park, and she has facilitated retreats, days of reflection, and discernment processes for adults all over the country.

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