Located in Chicago, the Driehaus Museum engages guests through architecture, art, and design within the 1883 Nickerson Mansion and the 1926 Murphy Auditorium. In this installment of “Field Notes,” Guest Services Coordinator Liz Ferry shares how the Museum’s rich interpretational scope, talented staff, and growing network of institutional connections help preserve these truly unique spaces and tailor the guest experience for maximum engagement. Driehaus Museum Executive Director Lisa Key will join other museum leaders on June 6 for the Closing Plenary of the SHGAPE Conference.
Robert W. McAfee: The Comstock of Chicago
By the end of the nineteenth century, nearly every state had enacted or revised some sort of anti-obscenity statute, and eight of the country’s ten largest cities had an anti-vice society. This blog post spotlights one understudied arm of the apparatus: Robert W. McAfee. Although McAfee never rivaled Comstock’s prominence in the press and in public imagination, he was instrumental to the expansion and daily operation of the Comstock regime across stretches of the Midwest, Upper South, and Great Plains.
The Ghosts of Great Lakes
In 1918 in the northern suburban fringe of Chicago, an insidious illness killed twice the number of naval personnel in two months than combat did during the entire First World War. The so-called Spanish influenza epidemic swept through Great Lakes Naval Training Station “like the Black Plague,” recalled Martin Birkham, a YMCA volunteer at the training station.[1] The hard choices made at Great Lakes should haunt us today.