Whether by some grand conspiracy or maybe (probably) just coincidence, Chicago’s curators and gallery owners spent 2014 preoccupied with the idea of transformation. Two of the fall’s most highly anticipated shows, “David Bowie Is” at the MCA and “Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich” at Catherine Edelman Gallery, starring John Malkovich in Sandro Miller’s re-creations of iconic photographs, highlighted the multifarious incarnations of their subjects.
Meanwhile, Chicago continued its love affair with Vivian Maier with three more exhibits from the former nanny’s secret collection of photos. At Intuit, Jeff Phillips showed off a cache of slides of vacation snapshots he’d discovered in an antique mall outside Saint Louis; Facebook users helped him identify the couple in the photos as Harry and Edna Grossmann. Fittingly for a project that relied so heavily on 21st-century technology, the exhibit of the photos, “Lost and Found: The Search for Harry and Edna,” featured slide shows both on the wall, as the Grossmanns had intended, and on an iPad.
