Review: Inventive and sparing no expense, 'Hamilton: The Exhibition' is like nothing Chicago has seen
CHICAGO - As spinoffs go, "Hamilton: The Exhibition" - a U.S. history showcase derived from a play about a treasury secretary, mounted in a sprawling, spare-no-expense rendering in a sort of airplane hangar on a peninsula in Lake Michigan - stands up well against charges of crass commercialism.
Yes, you exit through the gift shop in this fresh take from the creators of "Hamilton: An American Musical," a little show you may have heard a thing or two about.
But otherwise the exhibition, which opened to the public Saturday after two years of development, plays more like a charmingly optimistic bet that Americans were dissatisfied with the fly-by view of history they got in high school, that the Founding Fathers itch discovered by Lin-Manuel Miranda's play demands much more scratching: more detail about the Revolutionary War, more debate over federalism, and way more exploration of early 1800s monetary policy.
Chicago has seen Rolling Stones artifacts out on Navy Pier. It almost got a George Lucas museum across the
