Visitors to Chicago may not be able to walk through the George Lucas museum—Friends of the Park shot that project down—but a new American Writers Museum near the Art Institute recently opened, and it includes, not surprisingly, John Updike.
The emphasis is on the published word rather than artifacts, so it’s an interactive museum of ideas. As a Chicago Tribune editorial recently pointed out, “This playful, thought-provoking museum encompasses the entire scope of American letters, from important novels, poetry and nonfiction books to potboilers, children’s literature and, yes, even journalism.
“If you’ve ever had a favorite book (or wanted one), your interests will be piqued. You’ll find everything from Vladimir Nabokov’s shocking Lolita to Robert McCloskey’s endearing Make Way for Ducklings. Not to mention Richard Wright, Sylvia Plath, Willa Cather and Henry Miller, among others. . . .
“American writing, protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution, tells the ongoing story of our turbulent nation with unfettered creativity and zeal. That’s the big idea this museum hurls at visitors through interactive exhibits, quotes, lists and the like.
“The museum, which opens Tuesday, is the brainchild of Malcolm O’Hagan, a retired manufacturing executive from Maryland who saw a museum of Irish writers in Dublin and thought America needed a similar one. He organized a board that has raised nearly $10 million in private funding. It’s located in a compact space on the second floor of 180 N. Michigan Ave. but packs a big punch of intellectual energy. John Updike, Octavia Butler and the Federal Writers’ Project (which employed Saul Bellow and Nelson Algren in Chicago) get mentions, among scores more. . . .
“The museum’s setup is modern, thankfully, with lots of video screens and quick capsules of information, as if to cater to the depleted attention spans of young people while subversively wooing them to read nice long books.”
Read the full editorial: “Lots of reading and thinking at the American Writers Museum”