Beverly Area Planning Association

We are proud to share BAPA’s entry in the Art Institute of Chicago’s Project Windows, created by our Marketing Director, Mairead Schoenfeld.

Her piece draws its inspiration from Willem de Kooning’s “Untitled (Village Voice),” c. 1976. Like de Kooning, who often worked his paint right over newspaper, Mairead built her composition on actual newsprint, letting the type, the color, and the motion of the brush all live on the same surface. The result feels alive and a little restless, very much in conversation with the original.

Project Windows brings the Art Institute’s collection out of the museum and onto storefronts across the city, linking world-class art with the neighborhoods and business districts that make Chicago what it is. For Beverly and Morgan Park, that kind of connection has always run deep, and we are glad to add our window to the citywide map.

“I love that de Kooning never tried to make anything tidy. I wanted to keep that energy but root it in our neighborhood, so I worked the paint over the newspaper the way he did. Getting to put BAPA on a citywide canvas like Project Windows, in coordination with the Art Institute, was a real thrill.” — Mairead Schoenfeld, BAPA Marketing Director

Voting is live. Stop by, take a look, and cast your vote for BAPA in the People’s Choice Vote. Link in bio!

A note from our ED:

June is here, and with it, Pride Month. 🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

When people picture Pride in Chicago, they often picture the North Side. The parades, the crowds, the rainbow crosswalks. Those things matter. But Pride lives here too, on the South Side, in neighborhoods like Beverly and Morgan Park, in the quieter and just as essential work of making sure everyone who calls this place home actually feels at home.

That work is part of what community development is really about. At BAPA, we talk a lot about blocks, corridors, and storefronts, but beneath it all is a simpler idea: a neighborhood should be a place where every family sees itself reflected. Where neighbors look out for one another. Where difference is something we welcome rather than something we tolerate.

I think about this as a professional, and I think about it as a dad. My husband and I are raising our son here because we believe this is that kind of place, and because we want to keep building it into that kind of place for every family that comes after us.

So this Pride Month, I am thinking about all the ways a neighborhood can tell someone you belong here. Not just in June, but all year long. That is the work, and I am proud to get to do it.

Happy Pride. 💗

More than a century ago, North Beverly neighbors made a lasting choice - preserving land at 91st & Hamilton as a place for tennis, connection and community instead of development. Today, the Beverly Hills Tennis Club carries that legacy forward as a true neighborhood hub. 🎾

Fun fact: the club has hosted Chicago District tournaments for decades and even welcomed celebrity players like actress Elke Sommer and Grand Slam champion Frank Parker. With eight Har-Tru clay courts, paddle tennis in the winter (yes, even in snow and 0° temps), and a season that traditionally kicks off on Kentucky Derby Day, there’s always something happening.

“It’s all about creating friendships with neighbors who you might not otherwise meet,” said manager Patrick Reichard.

Read the full article on this Icon in the May Villager or at BAPA.org.