The Art Insitute Neighbor

One of the best things about going to Roosevelt is location (location, location!). Most of our classes overlook Michigan Avenue, the lake and recently renovated Buckingham Fountain. Down the block is the world renowned Art Institute of Chicago, a place ripe with inspiration for current MFA students. Student memberships are forty bucks for a year (seriously discounted, especially considering their recent hikes in admissions). And consider attending one of their upcoming literary reading events, generally presented with the Poetry Foundation:

Avant Garde and Modernism
Thursday, February 4
6-7pm, Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute of Chicago, free
From Guillaume Apolinaire and Gertrude Stein to Bertolt Brecht and Samuel Beckett, avant-garde writers, in sync with artists, including Picasso, charted the future of Modernism as it set off in myriad directions. Excerpts of prose, plays, and poetry presented by Goodman Theatre mainstage actors Barbara Robertson and Larry Yando.

Derek Walcott
Thursday, April 1
6-7pm, Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute of Chicago, free
Nobel prize winner Derek Walcott considers origins and inevitabilities in reading selections from landmark and recent works, most notably Omeros, his book-length epic about a modern-day Odysseus on St. Lucia, the island of his birth. A booksigning follows.

American Moderns Abroad and At Home
Thursday, May 13
6-7pm, Fullerton Hall at the Art Institute of Chicago, free
American artists, such as Marsden Hartley and Georgia O'Keeffe, echoed writers who were responding to European innovations by crafting their own landmark contributions to Modernism. This reading, presented by Goodman Theatre actors and dancers from HS2, features T. S. Eliot, Mina Loy, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, e.e.cummings, William Carlos Williams, and Langston Hughes.