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"It’s hard to describe the woke nonsense in the pink slip that was delivered to the docents by the Veronica Stein, the museum’s Woman’s Board Executive Director of Learning and Public Engagement....Of course, it is couched in language that would seem not to be racist at its core; it’s done in the name of inclusion and diversity, for the greater good, etc. and etc. Yet, boiled down, the justification for the firing is that the docents are white and women of means."
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Audio and summary Illinois bill would override local law to allow homeless living in all public parks – Wirepoints
April 14, 2026
29 Comments
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer: Chicago Fiscal Crisis Worse Than Pre-Bankruptcy Detroit, HIV Surge and Public Health Threat From Open Borders Goes Unreported
April 10, 2026
2 Comments
Summary and audio linked here.
Mark Glennon on AM560’s Morning Answer: Chicago pension buyout plan mostly shifts debt rather than eliminating it, property tax surge doubles inflation over three decades
April 3, 2026
9 Comments
Chicago’s political leadership is floating a pension buyout program as evidence it is seriously addressing the city’s thirty-six-billion-dollar unfunded pension liability, but Mark Glennon, founder of the Illinois policy research organization Wirepoints, said that the proposal moves debt from one column to another rather than reducing it, and that the broader fiscal picture facing the city continues to deteriorate across every measurable dimension. Audio here.
WBEZ and Chicago Sun-Times falsely blame Texas Gov. Abbott for 2020 to 2024 surge in Chicago Latino HIV, AIDS infections – Wirepoints Quickpoint
March 31, 2026
11 Comments
Expect no retraction or apology. This what they do.
Remember in Blazing Saddles where Clevon Little asks. “Where are the white woman at”?
Of course white women of means who have spent time learning to be docents and who may in real life be intelligent and articulate probably won’t be well-received by the patrons the Art Institute is trying to attract. Another problem may be that the art within its walls doesn’t “speak” to those would-be patrons. Those things, if true, won’t change overnight. But change is certainly in the wind and the fierce urgency of now demands that a new leader do something dramatic to validate her appointment. So, if we fire the docents and provide some $25/hr jobs for BIPOCs, it… Read more »
why not both.
One of the last remaining reasons to go to Chicago has just closed the door to culture for everyone. The racial division inserted into EVERYTHING has to stop – this is helping no one and certainly not our country. Are we going back to separation by race – aren’t we better than this? “A house divided against itself cannot stand.”
As a 35 year volunteer at The Art Institute if Chicago, I must, sadly. agree with your assessment of the situation.
Forgot to add- it will be interesting to see how the AIC programming changes in the coming years. I would expect to see things like the Monet of ‘Ferris Beuhler’ fame taken down and replaced with BLM ‘art’ like a broken window or pics of looters – The new Docents won’t have to study up to much. Perhaps aspiring artists will be paid to come and just spray paint graffiti?
That’s too on-the-nose. I’d suggest a “Liminal Spaces” exhibit containing photographs of desolate downtown business districts.
Already happening….
The idiotic word salad of the AIC director shows the nonsense of her agenda.
Yup, laughing at Leftists going after the well-to-do Democrat volunteers – breaking up the old girls club.
These ‘new’ audience members & visitors they are hoping to create as the new patrons of the AIC , will NOT write the checks to keep the museum the world class art institution it has been from the beginning;—no real “vision” in the changes they are implementing (just propaganda)…
There must be hundreds of under-employed graduates and alumni of the School of the Art institute of Chicago who would jump at the chance to be paid $25/hour to talk about art in a museum setting. Oh? Only BIPOC need apply? Public schools are the local petri dish for social indoctrination, but the Art institute of Chicago offers the megaphone of an internationally respected cultural institution. This is not about art. Keep your eye on the board of trustees, who find Ms. Stein a useful tool.
“The beatings will continue until morale improves…”
Get out the popcorn, its fun to watch liberals engage in cannibalism! I’m sure the fired liberal docents will bend a knee and walk away peacefully, but then again what they are saying in their privacy of their home after their beating is probably something entirely non-woke.
LOL all these woke liberal white docents now are fired for providing a free service!
You can’t make this stuff up. Inconveivable.
There is a bit of schadenfreude here as art docents are probably liberal, deep blue, Hillary-loving folks being canceled by their own alleged allies. But what gets me is a non-profit preferring to compensate a role that was covered competently by volunteers. In other words, volunteerism is a barrier of entry to poor minorities wanting this role (see below). It gives the perception the docents are nothing more than bored North Shore socialite housewives who need a hobby for when the cleaning lady and nanny arrive. As a civic institution, we acknowledge our responsibility to rebuild the volunteer educator program… Read more »
This is nothing more than a grift to redistribute AIC revenue and endowment to BIPOC loyal to Ms. Stein herself. I can only imagine what is going on behind the scenes with forced retirements, shadow firings, and ethnic nepotism/favoritism. Its only a matter of a time before few at the institution know anything about western art. Soon the institution will claim that notable collections are ‘outdated’ or ‘offensive’ or have ‘problematic’ pasts (like the depiction of Christian themes) and begin selling them off to purchase art, at inflated prices, from BIPOC connected or affiliated in the art community. It’s all… Read more »
Already happening there; propaganda has been implemented….
Guess they couldn’t get any retired BIPOC CPS teachers to volunteer.
Gotta love it!
I’m unsure of where we left off on the list, is this “reason not to visit Chicago” #56 or #57?
It’s actually #112
Stop supporting and donating to the Art Institute. They are anti-white.
The letter was issued to docents by Art Institute bureaucrat POC Veronica Stein, who is implementing dismantlement of docent program. Letter should be posted here for separate review and discussion. It’s an eye-opener screed, full-mode PC-POC hectoring, furtively attacking “white privilege” legacy of Art Institute’s original docent mission. Dennis Bryne’s blog-post (on Barbershop) is spot on. Yes, Art Institute leadership has fully embraced “equity” social-activism, as in having “immediate social relevance to all POC visitors”, as its #1 sole mission, to obvious detriment of its original primary mission, the formal presentation and intellectual deliberation upon “master class quality” Western European,… Read more »
Ms. Stein’s screed reduced to one sentence is: “We are in charge now and you are not.” She knows perfectly well what she is doing. First the docents are replaced with BIPOC ‘educators’. Next the museum will find large portions of the museum’s collection to be ‘offensive’. Most works of western art are of Christian themes, of Roman/Greek subjects, or are portraits of privileged white people. The only works of western art that aren’t ethnocentric are the ubiquitous bowls of fruit – and even those fruits represented are typically of western europeans’ diets, and don’t represent any other cultures….Those works… Read more »
Due to a complicated history, Detroit’s art museum was owned by the city when the city went bankrupt. Many retired city employees wanted the art sold to beef up pension funding. That was only prevented when the State of Michigan agreed to kick in to the bankruptcy settlement. Likely Detroit will need another bankruptcy in a couple of years. I gather the Chicago museum is owned by a charitable foundation but there is probably a legal path to sell the art (as you fear) and use the proceeds to provide housing or other free stuff to city voters. Whoever regulates… Read more »
Of course the docents will be unionized! As for the sale of the art, it’s another form of looting by the new board of communists to destroy the institution. The trustees and directors may not have the ability to provide freebies to city voter, but the proceeds will be distributed to their cronies. Look at the AIC’s identity page, it’s a bunch of mumbo jumbo that is one step away from dissolving the institution to pay reparations: https://www.artic.edu/about-us/identity The Art Institute of Chicago commits to advancing racial justice now and in the future. We recognize, at the heart of our… Read more »
“While this list of names was entirely aspirational given our modest collections at that time, it was also very limited in scope—almost entirely white, Western European, and male. The omission of artists of color, especially Black artists, as well as female, Indigenous, and non-Western artists, is glaring.” —- “we commit to critical self-reflection and participatory, recuperative action.” Translation: We intend to sell the Caravaggios and redistribute the proceeds to artists like Kehinde Wiley (the painter of the awful Obama presidential picture). It’s time to loot and sell your western heritage, because as I said earlier: “We acknowledge the adverse consequences… Read more »
Not too long a stretch to fix the underfunded pension problem through a haircut to those already retired … most of whom are likely white. Ditto police retirees. Ditto bondholders. We begin to make the argument for bankruptcy of both the schools and the City. While we’re at it, in bankruptcy we can also pay 2 cents on the dollar amounts long owed to white doctors and dentists who acquired their skills from an historically discriminatory and patriarchal system of professional education with high entry barriers. Also a good way to get rid of tenured professors (which I might support).… Read more »
Well wait until the “majority” of the residents of Chicago are Mexican immigrants; legal & illegal (not far off); what then, of the “new” mission of the AIC? Revisionist history does not belong in an art institution of scholarship & connoisseurship.
Sounds like Cultural Revolution truly arrived at AIC, complete with the self-criticisms, pejorative rhetoric, and “citizen unite to conquer white privilege” messaging.
What is so utterly SICKENING about this entire PC propagandistic top- down ( bottom-feeder?) take-over of the AIC is that ‘art’ is supposed to be about freedom if expression & interpretation!! The Docents of the AIC have helped teach visitors, not WHAT to think about the art in the museum, but HOW to open up to the experience & language only art can provide & speak to individuals. But in this era of group-speak, ignorance, & so-called progressive ‘superiority’ & knowing-better, we are being forced to watch & witness a world class art museum become an instrument of propaganda &… Read more »
Tribalism over Culture & Art historical fact & truth.
Perhaps the Antifa goons can fight the paleness factor at the institute with their own brand of incendiary protest.
All people need to do is to stop funding the AIC —-the institution has no endowment & is dependent on people paying to walk in & on major donors of ‘means’ to support it…
Streeterville, you are referring to the Stein letter at the very bottom of Byrne’s column, correct?
Keep voting democrat!
Keep the art institute- again another reason not to visit Chicago anymore!
How many of the fired docents are re-thinking their “Hate has no home here” signs and Democrat votes over the last 20 years?
When they wreck it? Black Culture docents! Here the mattress Fred Hampton died.
Your supposed to PAY (art inst used to be free) for the privilege too feel guilty, that’s the hustle. Maybe issue all white visitors a little mini black whip to flagellate themselves in front of Fed Hampton’s mattress while being berated by BLM activist docent and being posted on fb.. that should keep the upper-income guilt redden north shore types flowing in. They don’t need no middle-class/ worken class stiffs–your irrelevant
These people are hilariously clumsy. How much traffic/ attendance has fallen year over year? I can’t believe anyone would hang around downtown unless you’re a criminal.
“a new, sustainable program that is more closely aligned with our redefined mission, values, and identity.”
What have I been saying? What have I been trying to show you? The newest residents of Chicago, BIPOC, are replacing the old inhabitants, non-BIPOC, and are remaking every institution, landmark and street in their own name. They want everyone to know that non-BIPOC are no longer in charge, even if that means destroying the very institution that was responsible for the creation of the institution.
Great idea, pay people to do a job that highly trained people previously did for free. Veronica Stein sounds like a financial genius.
Another minority promoted way above her level of competence destroying what was a perfect, cost free, successful volunteer program with volunteers who actually cared about the job they volunteered for. Part timers, all of whom will most likely be black, will become overpaid and under educated art museum guides. Let’s get rid of all those paintings by them there racist white artists and get some hip hop graffiti up on them walls.
You got it correct!
SUE SUE SUE