When the fourth annual Chicago International Movies & Music Festival wraps up April 15, so will the Wicker Park Art Center, anchor venue for the fest and a low-rent option for some of the city’s edgiest art groups. The Near Northwest Arts Council, which established the center in Saint Paul’s Community Church at 2215 W. North in 2008 and originally planned to buy the building, is being booted: they have until April 18 to clear out. The handsome old church with its towering spire, crafted by Norwegian immigrants 120 years ago, has been sold to the Love Holy Trinity Blessed Mission.
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Founded 20 years ago as a Catholic Bible-study group, LHTBM is headed by Agnes Kyo McDonald and suspended Chicago priest Len Kruzel. It offers religious literature in English and Polish and has spread into parts of Iowa and Wisconsin. But over the last seven years, as claims have surfaced that it operates in cultlike secrecy and cuts members off from their families, it has fallen from favor with the archdiocese of Chicago and been banned from meeting in its facilities.
“I’m disappointed in the board of the former church,” Moreno says. “When they came to talk to me, I asked them, because of their not-for-profit status, to commit to [a purchaser with] an arts element integrated into the space.” As it stands, “I don’t know what they’re going to be able to operate in there.”
