Good News From Chicago

Best known for its star-studded lineup of Nobel Prize-winning economists and scientists, the University of Chicago wants to raise its arts profile--and, some say, shed its nerdy image--by erecting a $100 million creative and performing arts center along the south side of the Midway Plaisance.

To symbolize its ambition and spur fundraising, the university is holding a design competition for the still-unfunded project among five architectural heavyweights, university officials told the Tribune Tuesday. They include Daniel Libeskind, the planner for the reconstruction of New York's World Trade Center, and three winners of the field's most prestigious honor, the Pritzker Architecture Prize.
Citing a litany of star arts alumni--among them novelist Philip Roth, film director Mike Nichols, composer Philip Glass and the writer Susan Sontag--Danielle Allen, dean of the university's humanities division, said: "We'd like to see a building that will raise the profile of the really exciting--but heretofore stealth--arts world on our campus."
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