Don’t think of Chicago’s Loop art scene as just the city’s pretty face.
Of course, Broadway/Times Square is hard to overlook. And those 28.4 million annual visitors? They include not just paying customers but also a guesstimate of how many folks are merely walking around, looking at public art.
The research consists of information gathered from nonprofit, for-profit, and government bodies in the Loop area (including 72 arts institutions, 120 public art pieces, and more than 50 architecturally significant buildings), and the results of an online survey conducted between October 15, 2017, and January 15, 2018, that was completed by 12,161 people.
The study includes a breezy history of arts in the Loop, from the rebuilding after the Great Fire of 1871 through some “tarnished” decades to the completion of Millennium Park. It demonstrates that Chicago had chops as a cultural city long before Richard Florida started prescribing these kinds of amenities to attract the creative class.
