Taft as Municipal Art Czar
As I noted in the newsletter about the ill-fated Christopher Columbus statue, in the summer of 1899, the city created a Municipal Art Commission to make decisions about public art outside the parks. The commission consisted of the mayor, the president of the Art Institute, the presidents of the three park commissions, William Le Baron Jenney, Lorado Taft, and his friend, the painter Ralph Clarkson. Taft was excited because he wanted more public art, and he thought this was a sign of support. Turned out, it was as much about attempting to prevent art he didn’t like.
In 1903, the commission blocked a statue of Kosciusko on a snorting charger because it was mediocre in their opinion, thus infuriating the Polish community. The community had been raising money for the Polish hero of the American Revolution since the 1880s. They wanted to put it in Humboldt Park, where the Polish community lived. There was a donation from Padrewski, pianist and prime minister of Poland. “In 1893, Chicago, the “largest Polish city outside of Warsaw,” set a competition for all Polish sculptors, either in Poland or abroad, to create a memorial to represent Kosciuszko on a horse, in an American uniform, wearing the order of the Cincinnati.”1 They commissioned Kasimir Chodzinski to make it. While in Chicago from Poland, working on the design, he lived at 7212 South Chicago Avenue.
He was rather surprised when the design was presented to the Municipal Art Commission, and they voted against it. When he asked for specifics, Lorado Taft said that
“You can’t begin to criticize it. The whole thing is a weak cheap effort. If you start with the horse you will never reach the rider. It is the effort, apparently, of a man who has made no study of the advancement of art. It is badly patterned after the snorting charger of fifty years ago. You entertain such fears that the horse will off the pedestal that our eyes do not rise to the man at all. There isn’t a city in these United States that would allow that statue in its parks.”
But the Polish community had votes, so the design was modified to put all four feet on the ground, Kosciusko got a sword, and the statue was erected in Humboldt Park before 50,000 people. Just as the case with the Linne statue for the Swedes, there were annual festivities at the statue. And, like the Swedes, the Polish-Americans moved away from the neighborhood. The Park District took it down until Polish organizations sponsored its relocation to Northerly Island.
Taft and the commission lost another round in 1907, when the commission was mocked and over-ridden by city council because it tried to block a fountain that the Schoenhofen Brewing company wanted to install in a small triangular park across from the brewery that it was trying to create. As the headline in the Inter Ocean cried out, “Thirsty Babies Rout Art Board.” A bronze bird stood in the center as jets of water dropped to a pool below.
Taft said it was a horrible representation of a stork. The Schoenhofens replied that Taft didn’t know his ornithology. It’s a crane. The alderman basically said, hey, the brewery wants to pay for the fence, flowers, and fountain, let them. I was very sad to take a quick look via Google Maps and it’s sadly now a parking lot.
Part I of the Taft Hyde Park Stories
Here’s what all the research was building up to—a look at how active Lorado Taft was in his community, especially the community of women activists. Also, how he fought the good fight to preserve a memory of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition—the Palace of Fine Arts, now known as the Museum of Science and Industry. Just to be clear, this is material that has NOT appeared in a newsletter.
Part II will be what the Fountain of Time meant to Taft.
A Photo of a White Rabbit?
While using very different search terms, I suddenly stumbled on this unidentified photo in the Chicago History Museum archives. It’s labeled “woman artist at the 1893 World’s Fair.) It seems as though this is likely to be one of Taft’s team of White Rabbits working on the frieze of the Horticulture Building.
My best guess is that it’s Bessie Potter, who went on to have a career specializing in small statues. She remained part of Lorado Taft’s circle for decades. The Art Institute of Chicago owns seven of her works. Here’s an undated photo of her. Let me know if you think this might be the same woman!
Inquiries at the Hyde Park Historical Society
I'm fielding inquiries at the HPHS. Some of them provide interesting rabbit holes to go down. I got asked if there was information about when and who built 5312 S. Blackstone Avenue. I pointed to the research aids available and then did a quick dig through the Herald. The first mention of someone living at 5312 Blackstone is E. F. Randle, who was Captain of the Green for the Chicago Archery Club in 1931 (the shooting range was in (George) Washington Park.
But the really interesting residents, were Albert and Vera Weisbord. I’d just been lamenting that Hyde Park doesn’t have the artists and leftists it used to have and here was proof of both. Albert was born in Brooklyn to a Russian-Jewish family, got a degree from the City College of New York, and a law degree from Harvard. He evolved through memberships in the IWW, the Socialist Party of America, the Young People’s Socialist League, the Communist Workers Party, and eventually the Trotskyist Communist League of Struggle. He led strikes, ran for the US Senate from New Jersey, and fought in the Spanish Revolution.
But the one who really fascinates me is Vera Buch Weisbord. She was central to the struggle to organize workers. They moved to Chicago in 1935 where she helped organize the Congress of Racial Equality in the 1940s (which I’ve written about here). In 1952, she went to the Art Institute of Chicago and became a prolific painter, participating in Hyde Park’s art scene. And now, having met the Weisbord’s, I’m tracking down Vera’s memoir. Shockingly, for someone who died in 1989, she seems not to have left a publicly available photo of herself. She’s apparently one of the women in this photo. My guess is the second woman from the right with the belt/sash.
http://chicagopublicart.blogspot.com/2013/08/thaddeus-kosciuszko-monument.html This is a great blog on Chicago’s public art.
Fascinating stuff!!