Mary Reynolds

Glen Hansard, along with most of the world, has been in quarantine and attempting to make sense of everything.

The Art Institute of Chicago announced today a collection-changing acquisition of Marcel Duchamp's boundary breaking readymadeBottle Rack (1914/59). Signed by Duchamp in 1960 for its owner-a young Robert Rauschenberg-this ever-provocative and still-astonishing work has a deep connection to two significant artists who radically challenged and redefined our notions of 'art' and changed the course of art history. Acquired from the internationally respected Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, through Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris, Duchamp's Bottle Rack will go on view today, February 13, 2018, in the Art Institute's Gallery 395B, contextualized within the museum's exceptional galleries of modern art.

In the 1930s, thousands of formerly enslaved African-American elders dictated their full life stories during interviews that were conducted by the US federal government. The transcripts, filled with crucial details about American slavery as disclosed by the ex-slaves, were stored in six archives in the United States. Their accounts are essential to Black History Month.