Jan. 14--Lois Weisberg, who as the Cultural Affairs commissioner for the city of Chicago, was an influential champion of the city's arts/cultural/entertainment scene, died Wednesday night in Palmetto Bay, Fla., where she was living near her daughter Kiki's family. She had been in ill health for a short time. She was 90.
Weisberg, Chicago born and bred, had a remarkable career before being tapped by Mayor Harold Washington to become the head of his Office of Special Events for six years. In 1989, following Washington's death, she became head of Mayor Richard Daley's newly created Department of Cultural Affairs. She would be the longest-serving member of Daley's original cabinet, finally leaving as the result of budget cuts and some contretemps in early 2011.
When she left, Lauren Deutsch, the executive director of the nonprofit Jazz Institute of Chicago, which programs the Chicago Jazz Festival, the oldest of the city's downtown summer music fests, said: "I think that we are all appreciative of her exceedingly creative approach to bringing an understanding of what public art means to the public."
As commissioner, she created some big events -- who could forget the playfully colorful Cows on Parade, an outdoor art exhibit that saw bovine beauties dotting the town in 1999? -- but her less splashy activities and arts advocacy are where she had a more profound and lasting impact.
She championed the World Music Festival and SummerDance programs. In 1991 she collaborated with her friend Maggie Daley to create the Block 37 arts program for students, which became a model for similar programs across the country and globe, and, in 2000, morphed into After School Matters. She helped nurture and expand neighborhood festivals, and programmed and staged many Millennium Park events.
Before joining city government, Weisberg helped found Friends of the Parks and led the renovation of the old central public library into the Cultural Center. She co-founded the newspaper Chicago Lawyer and worked in public relations and politics, toiling in the campaigns of people such as U.S. Rep. Sidney Yates.
She seemed to know everybody -- the comic Lenny Bruce once stayed at her house -- and that attribute was perfectly captured in the now-famous "Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg" article by author Malcolm Gladwell in a 1999 story for The New Yorker and later as a chapter in his first best-selling book, "The Tipping Point."
"Lois is far from being the most important or the most powerful person in Chicago," Gladwell wrote. "But if you connect all the dots that constitute the vast apparatus of government and influence and interest groups in the city of Chicago you'll end up coming back to Lois again and again."
She remained active until the end, in touch with friends in Chicago and elsewhere and ever-eager to offer her thoughts and ideas (and opinions) about a wide range of topics, large and small.
rkogan@tribpub.com
