Nora Daley rarely carries fewer than two bags. By her own admission, she’s a tote-bag maximalist. On a recent Thursday, Daley has paired her poppy-red pantsuit with two favorites: a canvas Chicago Architecture Biennial tote and a black-and-white beaded bag that spells out “PUNK ROCK” in bold letters.
If a bag offers a glimpse into the woman, Daley’s totes reveal the tools behind a string of cultural victories that may not be evident to the average Chicagoan, but are the kind only someone with clout and confidence can pull off. Inside are a thick dossier on the Biennial, her laptop, a pair of Gucci pumps, two calendars and the oversized, black-rimmed reading glasses she’ll use later to scrutinize pages of operating budgets.
Daley prefers to keep things analog. That includes steering clear of social media, which, at 52, she has managed to resist entirely. “My uncle was secretary of commerce when the World Wide Web was exploding,” Daley recalls. “He sat all the cousins down and said, ‘Anything you ever type, even if you hit backspace, it lives there forever. So whatever you write, make sure you’d be comfortable with it on the front page of the paper.’”
The uncle in question is indeed Bill Daley, Clinton’s secretary of commerce and later Obama’s chief of staff. Which is to say, Nora Daley comes from that Daley family, the political dynasty that helped build modern Chicago and spent half a century running it. Her grandfather, Richard J., ruled City Hall for 21 years; her father, Richard M., for 22 more. In Chicago, few names carry more weight — or more scrutiny.
Daley, who speaks with her family’s signature Bridgeport inflection, is warm and grounded. In conversation, she will enthusiastically describe her nighttime magnesium foot balm routine, which she swears by for sleep; her needlepoint hobby (“I have to use a plate-size magnifying glass,” she laughs. “My kids find it mortifying.”); a newfound mah-jongg addiction; and The Gap’s recent resurgence. (Daley, like any savvy sartorialist, knows denim is the new black.)
She will also just as quickly dive into Chicago’s history and reputation, the importance of a healthy arts ecosystem and the question that has defined her family for generations: how to keep the city she loves on the global map.
Building Chicago back up from the Trump takedown
Focusing on what’s good and vital about Chicago has become harder in an era when the Trump administration has painted the city as an urban inferno and as a distracted City Hall — under a mayor focused on opposing Trump and ICE — has churned through cultural commissioners.
Amid that turbulence, Daley — who generally prefers to avoid the spotlight, making this profile a rare exception — has quietly built a reputation as one of the city’s most effective cultural brokers. Most recently, she helped transform the vacant former H&M space on the Magnificent Mile into a temporary showcase for the city’s Architecture Biennial.
While the role of cultural steward isn’t formalized or clearly defined, the work carries a legacy shaped by some of Chicago’s most powerful women. Most notably: philanthropist and matriarch Cindy Pritzker, who helped create the public library system; longtime cultural czar Lois Weisberg, a driving force behind Millennium Park; and Daley’s mother, Maggie Daley, whose youth advocacy transformed teen programs across the city.
Daley may represent a new generation of so-called soft power, but neither she nor the women before her could ever be described as soft.
“Nora has a great deal of political and social capital, and she uses it judiciously for the good of the city,” says Claire Rice, executive director of Arts Alliance Illinois. “There’s no ego in the work, which is surprising for someone in her position. She just wants to get things done.”
In recent years, that has meant retooling the state’s cultural arm, the Illinois Arts Council, where she led a full overhaul of grantmaking as board chair. This move prompted Gov. JB Pritzker to nearly double the agency’s grant pool to $17 million last year. As the former board chair, Daley also shook up Steppenwolf’s directors to help make the body younger and more diverse. Now she has turned her attention to the Chicago Architecture Biennial, where she signed on as co-board chair last February alongside the Graham Foundation’s Sarah Herda.
Daley joined the board because she believes the Biennial, which invites architects and artists from around the globe to explore how design shapes public life, can — and should — evolve. Especially when, after 10 years, the event still hasn’t quite nailed down what exactly it wants to be. “Architecture is one of the things that makes this city great,” Daley says. “The Biennial is the kind of thing Chicago should really own.”
The sentiment might sound like a pitch from a cultural commissioner, but Daley has deliberately stayed outside City Hall and the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. (Daley has worked as a consultant, but her many board positions are volunteer-based.) Rice says that decision is precisely what makes Daley so effective. “She’s able to work across administrations and political divides,” Rice adds, “and navigate around the boundaries that might come with a government role.”
A dual fluency in art and real estate
It’s a few minutes past 10 a.m on the sunny fall morning and Daley is already five hours into her work day. She’s wrapping up at the Cultural Center, which sits halfway between Daley Plaza and Maggie Daley Park and where she oversaw a panel discussion for Chicago architects. She’s now headed to the Arts Club of Chicago to give a second Biennial talk.
The club is about a mile away, and Daley plans to walk. Her friends joke the political scion is more likely to arrive at a black-tie benefit on a Divvy bike than in a car. Keeping pace requires comfortable shoes.
On Michigan Avenue, Chicago’s architectural canyons open onto a sweeping panorama. The city’s elegant, steel-beamed skyline stands in sharp contrast to the hellscape described by the Trump administration and conservative media.
Daley, like so many Chicagoans, has watched in horror as masked federal agents roam and terrorize the city. She also has cheered on Pritzker, now one of the country’s most prominent anti-Trump voices, because Daley knows the stress that can come with such a public platform.
“That spotlight is hard,” Daley says. “My dad was tough. He was made of Teflon. I’m a little too thin-skinned for things.” She pauses. “It’s a sacrifice for the whole family. A lot of people don’t realize that.”
Elsewhere along the Magnificent Mile, shuttered shops and papered windows serve as a reminder that Chicago is also still clawing its way back from COVID-19’s long shadow. Vacancy rates have more than doubled in recent years, and the commercial corridor has yet to recover. But retail trends aren’t the only factor; perennial fears around homelessness and crime have also unsettled businesses and tourists alike. Even Trump has taken note, declaring on Truth Social that “The Miracle Mile Shopping Center in Chicago … is ready to call it quits unless something is done about murder and crime,” urging to “call in the troops … before it is too late!”
Daley, for her part, has joined a chorus calling for a different, less draconian approach. Along with leaders such as Broadway in Chicago’s Lou Raizin and former cultural commissioners Mark Kelly and Michelle Boone — the latter now president of the Poetry Foundation — Daley has advocated turning the empty storefronts into cultural spaces as a form of civic revitalization. “We have to keep finding ways to use what’s already here instead of adding more,” Daley says. “It’s art, but it’s also showing that there is life here.”
That undertaking, however, comes with major hurdles, including persuading developers to open their spaces. Many of them are large international firms with little incentive to offer short-term leases. Convincing them otherwise demands a rare person versed in both art and real estate, a dual fluency Daley has seemingly mastered.
For the Biennial, Daley partnered with developer friend Robert Wislow of Parkside Reality, who lent the vacant space at 840 N. Michigan Avenue to the exhibition free of charge. She then tapped her network to raise the money needed to cover the steep insurance costs — a prohibitive expense, she notes, that keeps many downtown properties dark. The site, which opened last week, now houses some of the Biennial’s most ambitious projects.
Artist and MacArthur “Genius” Amanda Williams agreed to make a new piece for the location for one reason: “There are only a few people where, whatever they ask, I say yes,” Williams says. “Nora is one of them.”
Williams got to know Daley in the early days of the pandemic, when the two were part of a small group working late nights and early mornings to launch the Arts for Illinois Relief Fund. Alongside cultural leaders like Rice and Boone, Daley helped coordinate calls with city and state officials, philanthropists and artists, to figure out how to get emergency money to those whose livelihoods had vanished overnight. Together, the group raised almost $8 million.
“These were people who didn’t have to do that work,” Williams adds. “But Nora showed up. She chooses to commit to this city. She is someone who does things for now and for later, things that mean Chicago will always be great.”
Two different familial models of public life
A few minutes after Daley arrives at the Arts Club, the room starts to fill. It’s busier than usual. The Hermès-scarf contingent murmurs over their tea cakes, gossiping about the unusually large crowd for a lunchtime talk. Attendees include Illinois First Lady M.K. Pritzker, a close friend to Daley, Boone and powerhouse gallerist Rhona Hoffman, three cultural doyennes who might not otherwise turn up for a midweek architecture talk.
Daley isn’t just in attendance; she’s the draw.
When one woman north of a certain age learns Daley’s name, she repeats it, almost reverently. “Daley? As in Daley, Daley?” Moments later, when Daley sits down in a nearby chair, the woman leans forward and says, excitedly, “We love your family.” Daley smiles and thanks her, gracious and practiced.
The general affection isn’t unalloyed. Even now, 15 years after Richard M. left office, the Daley name can also elicit residual censure: the Democratic machine; lingering debt; that decadeslong parking meter deal. But Daley, who is married to a wealth manager and has three children, the youngest in high school, never considered dropping her name. “I’m really proud of my family,” she says. “I wear it like a badge.”
Growing up, Daley says her father rarely brought politics home. Weekends meant neighborhood cleanups or fishing derbies and tagging along with her parents, observing how they worked. When she recalls her father’s years in office, Daley tells a story about traveling to Amman, Jordan, with her parents. “When we landed, the mayor [of Amman] showed up at the airport and said he’d been mayor for six hours,” Daley says. “The king had appointed him right before we arrived because he wanted him to learn everything about being a city mayor from my dad.”
The two men spent the week together, trading ideas on how to tackle the housing and transportation crises in Amman. “Even when you’re halfway around the world, cities are dealing with the same challenges,” Daley adds. “It’s the same work.”
Her mother modeled a different kind of public life. She co-founded Gallery 37, which grew into After School Matters, the influential program that has kept hundreds of thousands of teenagers engaged in the arts after school and during the summer. She also founded the Francis Xavier Warde School, which expanded from a single storefront to a campus serving 900 students, and worked across parks, libraries and schools to open Chicago’s cultural institutions to young people.
“My mom never told me what to do,” Daley reflects. “I just saw how hard she worked to create new opportunities.”
A bag with Gucci heels and gaffer tape
Daley spends the rest of the afternoon in meetings. Around 5 p.m., she decides to zip over to the opening of Theaster Gates’ new Gray Gallery show, “Oh, You’ve Got to Come Back to the City,” in the West Loop. The title of the international art star’s exhibition resonates. In the back seat of a car — 4 miles, Daley decided, is too far to walk on a short timeline — she finally checks her email. There is a note from the city’s new interim cultural commissioner, Kenya Merritt, just days after she started the job. She wants to set a meeting. Daley might not work in City Hall, but she remains top of the call list.
“The role government can play, and has to play, is always going to be front and center for Nora. It’s central to who she is,” says Rice of Art Alliance Illinois. “That said, she can also navigate through private spaces and get things done. She’s willing to do whatever it takes, top to bottom.”
Inside Gray Gallery, Chicago’s art set packs the room. Daley inches her way through the crowd, bumping into friends every few feet. She stays just long enough to congratulate Gates, whom she has championed for years, before heading to a fundraiser for Francis Xavier Warde, which Daley has continued to support since her mother’s death in 2011.
In the morning, Daley will again start her day with the sun. After breakfast, she’ll pull on her sneakers and gather her totes. She volunteered to open the main Biennial exhibit at the Cultural Center. On any given day, Daley’s agenda might also include running to Home Depot for a last-minute roll of gaffer tape and fluffing — and re-fluffing — installation pillows. “When I get involved, I do everything,” Daley says. “That’s just the job.”
Elly Fishman’s reporting on news and culture has appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, GQ, Fast Company, Chicago, and WBEZ, among others. She is currently working on her second book, forthcoming from HarperCollins.