Lois Weisberg

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Lois Weisberg (born 1925) is the Commissioner of Cultural Affairs in Chicago, Illinois. She founded the Chicago Cultural Center and was responsible for the establishment of the renowned Gallery 37 program, which gathered Chicago youths to a vacant block in downtown Chicago to make art; she also created the Taste of Chicago festival, the Chicago Blues Festival, the Chicago Gospel Festival, citywide neighborhood festivals, and the Chicago Holiday Sharing It Program. She launched Chicago's Cows on Parade exhibit, the first in the US.

Renowned for the breadth of her acquaintanceship as well as for an ability to make keen and canny introductions, Weisberg was declared a connector by journalist Malcolm Gladwell in a January 11, 1999 New Yorker article titled "Six Degrees of Lois Weisberg." Portions of the article were republished in Gladwell's book The Tipping Point (2000).

She has won many civic and arts awards, including the League of Women Voters Civic Contribution Award, Governing Magazine’s Public Official of the Year Award, the Harold Washington History Maker Award, and the Chicago Tribune “Chicagoan of the Year” award.

Lois Weisberg is the mother of Slate magazine's Jacob Weisberg.