Seeing Race Before Race
Newberry Library
September 8-December 30
Drawing on the work of the research collective RaceB4Race, the Newberry Library explores—through annotated and illuminated manuscripts, Renaissance costume books and travel books, maps and cartographic volumes—how people categorized each other in medieval and early modern Europe in order to consider the questions, “When, where, and why did conceptions of race come into being? How might learning about its history help us better understand the complex role that race plays in our lives today?”
Harriet Monroe & the Open Door
Poetry Foundation
September 14-January 13
The foundation celebrates its founder, Harriet Monroe, with an exhibition of artifacts and new imagery inspired by her legacy as the longest-running- and still-only-woman to lead the magazine. “Her early establishment of the ‘Open Door Policy,'” which advocated editorial openness to contemporary poems without allegiance to “any single class or school,” led to the publication of some of the most influential English-language poets of the modern era,” the foundation notes.
Fall Festival
Chicago Humanities Festival
Starts September 17
Zadie Smith, Naomi Klein and debut novelist Millie Bobby Brown lead off the annual festival of ideas. Guess which one of those also has a meet-and-greet? As the fall progresses, the series leans heavily into celebrity, with Henry Winkler, Thurston Moore and Bob Odenkirk on the docket.