About Us
portoluz – meaning harbor of light – was incorporated in Chicago as a non-profit, 501c3 organization, in 2007. portoluz was formed to provide sustainable environments for innovative artistic exploration, community development, and a wide range of cultural discourse.
We are interested in reclaiming and developing sustainable urban environments for progressive culture and are currently working toward the development of a performing arts center, restaurant, artist’s residence, and community gardens.
In the interim portoluz presents performances, exhibitions and other cultural and humanities events that build diverse audiences, foster international exchange and support grassroots development and social justice activism throughout the region.
We are also interested in facilitating dialogues, building alliances and exchanging practices with similar initiatives worldwide. To that end we envision initiating an internet project that will become a vehicle for posting a variety of content including live music in cyberspace.
Mission Statement
portoluz achieves its mission by: instigating and facilitating participatory multi-disciplinary events that create opportunities for high caliber artistic practices; that extend our collective resources into underserved communities and foster the international exchange of ideas and methods within the context of progressive social change praxis.
Vision Statement
portoluz is an internationally recognized hub for rich cultural expression and a catalyst for progressive social activism driven by multiple physical and cyber venues.
Our Core Values
- Education and advocacy for social justice via cultural and humanities programming
- Utilizing our resources for the inclusion of traditionally marginalized and disenfranchised voices
- Expanding the definition of culture to include high-quality artistic innovations and explorations
- Promoting international dialogue and the understanding of differing artistic traditions
- Modeling sustainable and progressive business practices throughout the enterprise
- portoluz cites its origins in the successful evolution of HotHouse.
We remain eternally thankful to these heroes and heroines who contributed early on to portoluz and helped fund our first web-site
Jane Wells
Bronzeville Adventure And Events/ Rushia Butler
Theodore Pearson
Mary Diaz
David Pavkovic
Lesa Ukman
Jennifer Tompkins
Barbara Koenen
Bruce Robbins
Peter Kuttner
Arlene Crawford
Floyd Mittleman
Joe Shanahan
Stephen Tappis
Carole Travis
Michelle Leblanc
Sheldon Baskin
Noma Richardson
Robin Wold
Ted Oppenheimer
Brief History of portoluz
In 1987 Marguerite Horberg established both the for-profit venue HotHouse, and the nonprofit Center for International Performance and Exhibition, primarily to organize concerts, dance and spoken word performances, humanities programs, film/video, and exhibitions of visual arts.
Under Horberg’s ongoing direction, over the next two decades, the organization built and successfully developed two renowned cultural centers. HotHouse evolved into a $2M organization employing 45 people and annually hosted over 500 multi-arts programs that attracted 70,000 people. It became one of the country’s most well regarded places to experience international culture, while locally it was known as a cultural institution that fundamentally changed the paradigm of community-based cultural centers in Chicago.
The mission of HotHouse was to showcase artists who were working in non-commercial genres, whose work was experimental, or from populations who were under-recognized and disenfranchised by either other arts institutions or the commercial marketplace. In 1995, the organizations merged as one non-profit organization. Under Horberg’s ongoing direction, the organization built and successfully developed two renowned cultural centers which offered a multiplicity of cultural events not replicated elsewhere in the regional market. HotHouse hosted over 7,000 programs that nurtured an array of emerging artists and provided much needed meeting space at low cost for hundreds of social service providers and other grassroots community activists. Through her nearly twenty years tenure as the Founder and Executive Director, Horberg developed HotHouse into a $2M organization (85% earned income) employing 45 people.
Nearly a fourth of HotHouse’s calendar of 500 annual events featured programs curated by artists, or was created by social service organizations or other community specific entities that addressed particular cultural concerns unique to their identity. These connections to community specific or ethnically located organizations positioned the organization to be of service to one of the most diverse populations in the country. The New York Times wrote: Few clubs anywhere offer a wider range of first-rate world music, from wildly vibrant Afro-pop to avant-garde jazz, than HotHouse.
HotHouse had, through its breadth of programming and outreach to diverse communities been able to attract racially and economically diverse audiences who looked to the facility as a community resource. HotHouse was at the forefront of supporting international arts exchanges and developing audiences for many unknown artists before they gained wider acceptance. It was one of the few cultural institutions in the city with international visibility, whose audience was multi-racial, multi-generational, and diversified across economic classes, and who lived throughout the entire metropolitan area. Audience surveys revealed that of the 70,000 people who attended HotHouse each year, approximately 33% of patrons were white, 27% African-American, 30% Latin and 10% Asian and Middle Eastern and 55% female.
In 2006, it became apparent that there were inherent business growth opportunities that HotHouse was not capturing and Horberg began to articulate these development concepts in written plans that became the basis for the new organization. In 2006, after twenty years building HotHouse, Horberg was locked out of the facility while away on a business trip. Further disagreement about the mission and direction of the organization taken by a board faction resulted in the majority of the Board members joining Horberg and leaving the organization shortly thereafter. Within months, HotHouse closed, and former stakeholders recognized an opportunity to expand upon the original business model and exponentially increase the impact of its achievements. portoluz was founded to capture these opportunities.
portoluz was incorporated by Horberg, a majority of former board members and stakeholders, and other successful Chicago-based practitioners in the fields of arts, technology, and social enterprise who convened after this contested takeover of HotHouse. They identified a need for new kinds of business prototypes centered on values and concepts of sustainability and the reclamation of urban space for progressive community-based culture.
From 2007 to 2009 portoluz focused primarily on activities related to incorporating and developing the infrastructure for the new organization. However ongoing issues related to HotHouse (the appropriation of the archives, mailing list, furnishings, artists contacts and other assets), coupled with public misinformation about Horberg’s tenure and other confusion surrounding HotHouse’s demise contributed to an uphill start for this new enterprise. Starting anew during this economic recession has also contributed to extraordinary challenging circumstances unforeseen at the onset of the project.
Notwithstanding these dissuasive factors, as a response to numerous requests by the public that we return to presenting public cultural programming and act to fill the void that was created when HotHouse closed, portoluz endeavored to develop the infrastructural capability to undertake this charge as itinerant presenters.
Since 2009, volunteer program committee members successfully organized numerous public programs including: from the Lion’s Point of View, the African Jubilee Series, concerts as part of the Chicago World Music festival, Noches Americanas, a series of multi-arts programs serving the immigrant Mexican community,a collaboration with The Lillstreet Arts Center in Lakeside Michigan: Jazz on a Summer’s Day and WPA 2.0, a brand new deal.
portoluz is supported in part by the following contributors
The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation
The Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation
The Joyce Foundation
The Pokagon Fund
The City of Chicago, Department of Cultural Affairs
The ArtsWork Fund
The Illinois Arts Council
The Puffin Foundation
as well as many individual donors. we appreciate everyones support