Following an 8-year legal battle over ownership rights, Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre is being folded into the operations of Roosevelt University, and the theater’s new director “plans to more closely align the historic downtown venue with the educational institution that fought long and hard for the right to govern the Auditorium as it saw fit.” Brent Batterson, a 45-year-old set designer turned arts administrator, has been brought on largely because he has no history with the Auditorium, and therefore no axes to grind in the various wounds that developed over the course of the court fight.