Exiting Rahm Emanuel talks arts triumphs, regrets
Some three weeks before leaving office, Rahm Emanuel, the 55th Mayor of Chicago, sat for an interview in his office at City Hall about the arts in Chicago. This is an edited transcript of our conversation.
Q: Why have you staked so much on the arts and culture in Chicago? Some say too much.
A: It was always more than programming for me. It was about policy. The arts and culture imbued everything we did. They influenced our educational policy. They changed the CTA — there is not a new transit station now that does not have art. The arts have been an outlook, a philosophy and an approach. That is what our cultural plan was about — seeping the arts into everything the city did. Culture is the soul of this city. You know that.
Q: You’re almost done. What are you most proud of, in terms of arts and culture?
A: You want me to pick among my children? The arts-education piece. I’m most proud of how much we increased the arts in our schools. Seventy-five percent of our kids now get a minimum of an hour and a half (per week) of arts education and their arts education is rated either as good or excellent. When we evaluate schools, arts education is part of the evaluation. Those are the things that are always first on the chopping block. We philosophically said that these are things that we will protect and invest in.
Q: What about your disappointments?
A: Take the Uptown Theatre. I announced before I was even mayor that we were going to make that part of Uptown a fullfledged entertainment district. It took us much longer than we expected to cobble together the funding. I didn’t get to see that to fruition. I also had a vision of an arts renaissance in Bronzeville, especially around 34th Street. We have a gallery and other things got done, but we never got it to the place I wanted it to be. We tried moving the Gospel Festival there in the summer, but that renaissance has not yet clicked.
Q: You were a big supporter of the George Lucas museum. How do you feel about that now?
A: I’ll put a bet out. Five years from now, 10 years from now, that’s still going to be a parking lot. At least I had a plan to make it greener, to add green acreage. You
tell me. Is that parking lot serving us as much as the cultural attraction that will now be in Los Angeles?
Q: Could you have handled it better?
A: Being lectured about open space by a paper, your paper, that created McCormick Place and changed the laws. That was more than just ironic. It bordered on hypocritical. That Berlin Wall, created by the Chicago Tribune publishing company, that then told everybody, “we’re for free and open space.” There were definitely things that could have been done differently. It became a jihad. And it’s going to stay a parking lot. And the museum is being built in Los Angeles. You had the power of Lucas Films and someone willing to give $150 million or $175 million to the city in philanthropy to create 4 to 10 acres of open park. A park that doesn’t exist today. You don’t get frivolous about a billion dollars of investment and philanthropy. Whatever. It is a parking lot. But I don’t see that as my biggest regret in the arts.
Q: Oh?
A: That would be deciding to sell the Kerry James Marshall painting. He painted a big mural at the Cultural Center and that was great. And I think you will agree, as does he, that we’ve made a major commitment to public art — our CTA stations, our lakefront, our neighborhoods. But after McCormick Place did what they did, I thought, here’s this iconic Kerry James Marshall painting. By selling it, we can finally help the West Side libraries. But I should have been more sensitive to how that would touch him.
Q: He was upset. You’re saying that was on you?
A: Well … I’m the mayor. As I said to Kerry, what was in my heart was to give the kids on the West Side something that the kids on the North and South Sides already had. In the end he understood. But it’s a regret.
Q: One of your last acts was dealing with the strike at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Why choose that?
A: You have all of these waiters and stagehands who are not performing but whose livelihood is dependent on the performances. They had to have a voice at the table and a sense of urgency to their situation. And the Chicago Symphony is one of the great symphonies of the world. We are a world-class city with a global presence: the symphony, the Joffrey, Steppenwolf. That’s what the architectural biennial is about. That is one of things we’ve tried to do differently these years. Besides all the investments in the neighborhood, we’ve pressed Chicago up as a global presence on the international scale. If you have one of your main cultural pillars lose a season that begins to have a cascading effect.
Q: What was the nittygritty?
A: You have to go back five weeks. Marilyn Katz (a consultant for the musician’s union) asked me to go on the picket lines. I said no. I said you’re going to need a third party. Then two weeks ago, I emailed (Symphony board chair) Helen Zell and told her I was thinking about intervening. She said they didn’t need it. But the press release from the musicians saying (Riccardo) Muti was coming soon told me that they were ready to make a deal.
So I told both sides, I’m issuing a press release inviting you to negotiate in my office. Then I told each side the other side had said it was going to say yes. That’s part of the art of negotiation. Both sides came and then I asked each side for their latest offer, but also where they had started eight weeks ago. Then I asked each side to describe their proposal in front of each other. And then I sent them to separate rooms.
Before they went, I said, give me your dietary restrictions and you’ll get all the food you want, but nobody goes home before this is settled. But because this is Friday and the Sabbath, I am going home at 4:30, and I will either tell everybody you’re a bunch of schmucks or I will praise you all. It got settled at 4:22 p.m. Literally.
My biggest contribution probably was that old Bill Clinton lesson — whoever controls the document controls the negotiations. I listened in each room and then I came back and then my team produced a document. That was so each side could say they never gave up anything but that they were reacting to our proposal. They would have deniability. Finally, I said to both sides that they had each told me was most important was that this continue to be a destination symphony. To the musicians, I said you will get a five-year contract that gives you stability and a pay raise that goes further than any other symphony has gone, if you average over five years. To management, I said you’ve been waiting for 20 years to cap the defined benefit and get a defined contribution plan. To the musicians I said, you get the retirement certainty you were looking for. To the management, I said you get the income guarantee that you were looking for. I told the union guys how good they were — for 11 years they had never had a change in their healthcare costs. And now they got another five years. I told them, I give you a win. The only time I got a little pissy at the end was when labor said they had one new condition: payment for while they were on strike. I banged my fist down and said this is bull----. You asked for something, I helped you get it and now the goalposts have moved. You can’t do that. Then I walked out. Half an hour later we all came to an agreement.
I had no business getting that done. What swat do I have left? But the time was right.
Q: Let’s talk about the Riverwalk. Is that done from your point of view?
A: You’re never done. It’s going to be part of my book. There’s a whole section on the Riverwalk. In 2011, I decided we’re going to make the Chicago River the next recreational park and become a two-waterfront city. What we have accomplished is that the river now is in the mind’s eye of the city. The Riverwalk is the material presentation of that. And thus we have gotten closer to fulfilling Daniel Burnham’s dream about the river as a park than at any time in the last hundred years. I may get clobbered for saying that, but I think it’s true. Look at Lincoln Yards. The 78. Wolf Point. The Apple Store on the river. They were only doing 10 of those in the world. We are closer than ever before to the river being integrated into the economic and cultural enrichment of the city.
Q: What do you expect to happen to your cultural plan now?
A: That’s for Lori (Lightfoot, Mayor-elect) and her team to decide. If you look back at all the town halls and charettes, the basic message was, we, the people, want arts and culture in our neighborhoods. That was the driving force behind the schools, the Night Out in the Park initiative, the CTA stations. I remember once riding my bike on the lakefront down to the cultural center where Amy and I got married and I called Mike Kelly from the Park District. I told him I’d seen all the sculpture in the lakefront parks but that it ended at McCormick Place. “Mike,” I said, “people on the South Side like culture too.” We got that changed.
Rich (Daley) had a riverwalk. He did as well as he could do with the financing at the time. Our contribution was to build on what was done before, like a layer cake, just like Maggie Daley Park built on what Rich had done in Millennium Park.
Q: What about film and TV?
A: Cinespace (Studios) was a single stage when I took office. Now there are 31. And they want to buy another steel plant to make more stages. In North Lawndale, Cinespace employs 8,500 people. Somebody was in here the other day saying he wanted to build another studio on the South Side. Cinespace is one of the biggest job pieces I have done, along with tourism and tech. If you look at our history, we’ve constantly been losing great talent to New York and LA. If you have a vibrant film and television industry right here, there’s no reason for that talent to leave. They can make their living here. The largest film-and-television studio outside LA is right here in Chicago. I told everyone on the staff, that, tax breaks aside, we can win this business on what we do best: Service. New York, it takes two weeks to get a permit. Chicago, we get it in a day.
Q: A lot of young artists are not fond of you. They have responded to divisive issues in the city — the police shootings, for example. How do you feel about that failure to reach the younger, more progressive community? Does that bring you sadness or regret?
A: That’s fair. The short answer is yes and no. If you are the mayor, you are the establishment. It’s easy to rally by being against. At that level, I accept that. That is going to be part of the tension, regardless of who is in this office. I know you will not find this shocking but sometimes I think my intentions, my heart have been misconstrued or mischaracterized. I get accused of being Mayor of the One Percent.
Q: Yes. You do.
A: Today we will do our Chicago Star scholarship, our free community college program; 81 percent of the kids that take it are the first in their family to go to college. I don’t know of any members of the one percent who are using it. The kids that get free full-day kindergarten are not part of the one percent. I do think that many of that younger group don’t know my heart or my intention, but then I also have done things that exacerbated how they feel.
Q: As an ordinary Chicagoan ...
A: So harsh.
Q: What do you want the city to keep doing?
A: I want the artists to feel valued. I do think if you talk to the artists who paint and sculpt, they’ve never had a greater renaissance. I want our city to keep getting the arts away from just being a downtown or a Lincoln Park phenomenon.
Public buildings today no longer have to be McDonald’s. Look at Nick Cave’s work at Garfield Park Station. Theaster Gates on 95th Street. Independence Park. The Chinatown Library. We’ve done three public housing projects with neighborhood libraries. We have asked the world-famous architectural community to come in and work on public buildings. We tell them you’re not going to make a lot of money but you will be contributing to civic pride. Look at what Carol Ross Barney did with the Belmont Blue. We have brought in the architectural community to be part of the city’s civic work. That was nonexistent before. We should build theaters in Chatham, galleries in Bronzeville. Whether it’s architects or painters or playwrights, I want them to stay involved in the beautification of the city. Of our soul. Of our shared humanity.
Q: Do you have confidence that the next administration will do that?
A: Actually, I do. Lori’s wife, Amy is on the board at Steppenwolf. So there is a personal interest in theater, just as we would probably agree that I had a personal interest in architecture and dance. I think Lori and Amy know that the arts are the soul of a great city. Martin Luther King used to say the most segregated day in America is Sunday. The arts can make the other six days more integrated. Technology is Balkanizing and dis-aggregating people. Only a government working with artists can create equity across shared experience.
Q: There’s a line in “Hamilton” — who lives, who dies, who tells your story? How do you feel as you leave?
A: I feel satisfied. Not spike-the-ball satisfied. The challenges were numerous — the fiscal crisis, the education crisis, the CTA crisis. But I thought what was most challenging to the city when I took office was the loss of the can-do spirit. The city of big shoulders had started to get wobbly and started to have doubts about its nerve and its capacity. I walk out of a city that doesn’t have those doubts. The best thing I did was help us get our game back.