The Birth of Western Civilization
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To many in Elmhurst, King-Hookham has become a symbol of the positive role art can play in a person’s life. In addition to raising money for the museum, she’s painted and exhibited her own work in galleries around the world and until recently taught weekly art classes in her basement to some 150 men, women, and children.
At a time when even the largest art museums scramble for funding, opening a museum in a town of 44,000 residents might seem misguided. The Elmhurst museum will need $300,000 annually to stay afloat. The money will come from admission fees, art classes, a recently established endowment, and various fund-raising efforts. But King-Hookham, among others, believes the western suburbs will benefit from the museum, especially when public-school funding for arts education is dwindling. “We need more attention devoted to art out here,” says Eileen Broido, director of the Gahlberg gallery at the College of DuPage, which is one of the few serious exhibition spaces west of the city.
The new program, whose working title is Line One, will fill the 90-minute weekday slot given over to The Mara Tapp Show for the past seven years, though ‘BEZ program director and general manager Torey Malatia says the show could wind up running between 90 and 150 minutes. In gestation for more than two years, Line One will require the station to boost its operating budget for local programming by 30 percent. Much of the money will go into hiring more segment producers, and Malatia says he also plans to hire a host to guide listeners through the mix of segments.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Eleanor King-Hookham photo by Nathan Mandell.
