Chicago's March Cultural Calendar

The Art Institute's "Matisse's Jazz: Rhythms in Color" marks the first time the museum has displayed the artist's 20-plate unbound book *Jazz* in its entirety since acquiring it in 1948. Created while Matisse was bedridden after surgery in the early 1940s, the works were made from gouache-painted paper, with the artist calling the technique "drawing with scissors." The exhibition places these influential cut-outs alongside over 50 other Matisse pieces from the museum's collection. The "Paris in Black" exhibition at the DuSable Black History Museum and Education Center explores the migration of Black American artists to Paris, beginning in the late 1800s, in search of creative and personal freedom. Drawn almost entirely from the museum's permanent collection, the exhibit features over 100 objects, including pieces by luminaries like Josephine Baker, James Baldwin, and Archibald Motley. It highlights a transatlantic exchange that helped lay the foundation for cultural movements like Chicago's own Black Renaissance. "Paris in Black" chronicles a significant expatriate movement, where figures like painter Loïs Mailou Jones and writer Langston Hughes found a refuge from racial oppression in the United States. This exodus to the "City of Lights" saw artists and intellectuals create communities and influence cultural movements, such as the Harlem Renaissance and the Négritude movement, from across the Atlantic. The Goodman Theatre's revival of "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom" reunites Chicago theater legends director Chuck Smith and associate director/music director Harry J. Lennix. Smith previously directed a record-breaking production of the play at the Goodman in 1997, which featured Lennix in the role of Levee and was a production where Smith worked directly with playwright August Wilson. Set in a Chicago recording studio in 1927, the play is the only one in August Wilson's acclaimed 10-play "American Century Cycle" not set in Pittsburgh. The cycle chronicles the African-American experience through each decade of the 20th century. "Ma Rainey" delves into the exploitation of Black artists by white producers and the tensions between tradition and innovation in blues music. The all-Chicago cast features E. Faye Butler as Ma Rainey and Al'Jaleel McGhee as the ambitious trumpeter Levee. The production explores themes of race, power, and artistic integrity during the Great Migration era, a period of profound cultural change. The actors in the band are learning to play their instruments for their roles, a practice established in the celebrated 1997 production.