The seventh degree of Lois Weisberg
Longtime Chicago cultural commissioner resigns and criticizes city plans
BY ANDREW PATNER
Longtime Chicago Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Lois Weisberg has resigned effective at the end of this month.
In an exclusive story on the website of Crain's Chicago Business this morning, Greg Hinz reported that Weisberg, 85, and the last remaining member of Mayor Richard M. Daley's original cabinet, said she was leaving due to the Mayor's merger of her department with the politically-focused Mayor's Office of Special Events.
Weisberg has also opposed recent moves to privatize the city's summer and lakefront festivals and to start charging admission to the enormous Taste of Chicago event. She said that the Mayor never spoke with her nor sought her advice or input on any of these matters. Daley's office had said last year that Weisberg would head the newly-merged department.
"I am not on the same wavelength as these other people," Weisberg told Crain's.
"That's why I'm leaving. I felt bad that the Mayor never asked, never talked to me about how to fix Taste of Chicago. I don't believe in privatization."
Weisberg, a cultural leader in Chicago since the 1950s, directed the Mayor's Office of Special Events under the late Mayor Harold Washington starting in 1983 and joined the current administration when Daley was first elected 22 years ago. Weisberg gained additional national attention when she was the subject of a January 11, 1999 New Yorker magazine profile by Malcolm Gladwell, "Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg." The article appeared in a different form in Gladwell's best-selling 2000 book, The Tipping Point.
"The festivals have given the city an image of being a place where the people of Chicago can be together and be uplifted, all the different races and religions," Weisberg said. "You can't do that if it's not free."
In addition to directing the programs at its home base, the Chicago Cultural Center, which Weisberg founded in 1991, the Department of Cultural Affairs co-sponsors the weekly Dame Myra Hess Memorial Concerts, the summer-long Grant Park Music Festival, and many other fine arts programs throughout the city.
We'll have more on this story in the coming days and will also have a program on Critical Thinking on 98.7WFMT and wfmt.com to discuss these matters.
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