The bedroom Loren Billings no longer sleeps in remains as it was when she lost her husband in 1998—the floor thick with Persian rugs, the classic movies (La Dolce Vita, Citizen Kane, Richard III) racked beside the television. And at the head of the bed they once shared, the bed in which he died, Loren has propped up amid the throw pillows a black-and-white photograph taken of the two of them when times were good.
Kasprzak, who because of the litigation declined to be interviewed for this story, argues in the suit that the museum building in the gentrifying West Loop was worth well over $1 million when the loan was made and accuses the bank of seeking to acquire the property through foreclosure and resell it at a profit.
“What you are about to see is high science,” she says. “Holography did receive the Nobel Prize in 1971. Holography is all about the atoms, particle physics. This is what you’re composed of—particle physics. So everything in nature is composed of atoms, including you, and every creature here on earth.”
The central gallery is a dimly lit space decorated with clusters of fake pink roses. Here are the larger holograms, many of them kinetic. A shark darts out of the darkness. A dinosaur skull looms, its jaw agape. A larger-than-life tarantula wriggles its tentacles. Mike Royko, that trademark wry smile on his face, revolves in a capsule.
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In the basement, a cool, dark maze of holography labs, old, stained lab coats hang from wall hooks. The building was originally constructed as the Free Methodist Publishing House, and the basement, insulated from the street by several feet of concrete, housed noisy printing presses. After the publishing house closed, the building was used as a coffin showroom. When Loren opened her museum, the thick foundation made the basement the perfect place for creating holograms: the reinforced walls prevented sound waves from interfering with the delicate production process.
“She’s not a threat to herself,” Dobija continues. “She can cook, she can take care of herself. She doesn’t leave the burners on. She doesn’t wander outside the building and get lost. We’re always on the lookout for little signs like that.”
