Childhood is Without Prejudice

Childhood is Without Prejudice, 1977

William Walker

56^th Street and Stony Island Avenue

            William Walker (1927-2011) was born in Birmingham, Alabama and raised in Chicago. His service in World War II and the Korean War entitled him to four years of college on the GI Bill. He entered the Columbus College of Art & Design in Ohio in 1953 as one of two black artists enrolled at the time. He later won the school’s 47^th annual group award, the first African Americans to receive the honor. After graduation, he painted his first murals in Memphis, but returned to Chicago in 1955.

            In 1967, at a time when African American’s were seldom seen in mainstream media, Walker painted the Wall of Respect on the side of a grocery-and-liquor store at 43rd Street and Langley Avenue, featuring 50 African American political, religious, artistic and sport icons. The inscription read, “Honor our Black Heroes, and to Beautify our Community.” It was the first mural to be created for a community.  Even though it was located in a high-crime neighborhood, it was never defaced. The building and the mural was destroyed by fire in 1971, but the piece established Walker as one of the fathers of the community mural movement.

            He co-founded Chicago Mural Group (later renamed the Chicago Public Art Group) in 1970. Childhood is Without Prejudice, sometimes referred to as Children of Goodwill, was created as a tribute to nearby Harte School (1556 East 56^th Street) where his daughter had been a student. Walker wanted to express his appreciation for the school’s promotion of racial harmony. Said to be the artist’s personal favorite, the piece includes a series of overlapping and interlocking faces that represent the potential unity of all races. 

            Walker continued painting until 1988, when he no longer could climb the scaffolding. His final mural honored Mayor Harold Washington. After Walker’s death in 2011, fellow CPAG artist Olivia Gude, professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told the Chicago Tribune, "Fifty years ago, there was no such thing as a community street mural movement. Now we take it for granted. It's hard to understand what Bill Walker — and the great Chicano artists of that era — created. They created a new art form." Gude and Bernard Williams restored Childhood is Without Prejudice  in 1993. One of Walker’s other works, Wall of Daydreaming and Man’sInhumanity to Man, at 56th Street and Calumet Avenue,  originally painted in 1975 with Mitchell Caton was restored in 2003.

Bird of Peace

Bird of Peace, 1963 (installed 1970)

Cosmo Campoli

Nichols Park

Near the fieldhouse

1355 East 53rd Street

            Also known as “Guarding the Nest,” this 5-foot tall ovoid bronze form is one of Hyde Park’s best-known sculptures. Sculptor Cosmo Campoli (1923-1997), who grew up on a farm in Indiana, recalled seeing chicks hatch as a child and once declared the “the egg is the most exquisite shape there is. You hold one in your hand and you are holding the whole universe.” He created the work in 1963 and kept it in his Hyde Park home until the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference suggested that it be installed in Nichols Park and helped raise funds to do so. The egg-shaped beaked bird, holding two eggs in its claws, has a satin finish and appears perched on its rough granite base, suggestive of a bird’s nest. The piece was dedicated on June 3, 1970.

            Campoli’s Bird of Peace has had anything but a peaceful existence, however, since its installation in the park. In 1981, the work was stolen and vandalized, subsequently recovered but in need of repair. Local residents raised money and repairs began in March 1983. In winter of 2000, the steel pins holding the sculpture to the base were sawn through and the bronze was rolled behind an apartment building on Kimbark Avenue, only to be tracked down later by a neighborhood dog. In the process, the sculpture was badly dented and scratched, requiring $10,000 in careful restoration. Chicago-based conservator Andrzej Dajnowski completed the repairs, involving wax-and-torch chasing and careful sanding to restore the patina of the damaged areas. The piece was reinstalled in September 2004, with tougher titanium steel rods, and rededicated under an archway in Nichols Park on March 19, 2005. 

Siblings

Siblings, 1997

Rosetta

West of the Matthew Laflin Memorial Building

2001 North Clark Street                                                                                                                 

In the mid 1990s, when the Chicago Academy of Sciences moved out of the Renaissance Revival style building, the Lincoln Park Zoo converted it to their administrative headquarters. In an effort to make the public aware of the new residents, the Lincoln Park Zoological Society purchased this piece with a donation from Charles C. Haffner III, a member of the family that founded commercial printing giant R.R. Donnelly & Sons. The Colorado-based artist specializes in sculptures of felines and created this bronze figurative sculpture of two young mountain lions reclining back to back.

Wallach Fountain

Wallach Fountain, 1939

Elisabeth Hazeltine Hibbard and Frederick Cleveland Hibbard

Burnham Park

Near 55^th Street, east of underpass leading to Promontory Point

            The donor, David Wallach, was a resident of the south side of Chicago who died in 1894. In his will, he designated funds for the installation of a fountain “to be kept and maintained for the free use of both men and beasts.” In the 1930s, the sculptor Elisabeth Hazeltine Hibbard and her husband Frederick C. Hibbard (the artist who created the Eagle Fountains and monuments to Carter Henry Harrison and GreeneVardiman Black in Chicago) were commissioned to design the work and Elisabeth modeled the bronze fawn on top after a doe that she has seen at the Lincoln Park Zoo. The fountain includes a pool for birds and dogs as well as drinking fountains for children and adults. Elisabeth Hibbard, known for her sensitive animal sculptures, assisted renowned sculptor Lorado Taft at his Midway Studios and she taught at the University of Chicago from 1943-1950.

Rites of Spring

Rites of Spring, 1952

Milton Horn

Lincoln Park Zoo, near antelope, zebra and kangaroo exhibits

2200 North Cannon Drive

            This terra cotta bas-relief is one of two identical panels originally created for display at the portico entrance of the Seneca-Walton Apartment building. In the late 1960s, when the building was demolished, the artworks disappeared. They were not re-located until the 1990s, when they were discovered in the causeway of a residential building on Irving Park Road. Remarkably, these were not the only sculptures by Milton Horn to have gone missing: his 1954 Chicago Rising from the Lake was lost following the demolition of a parking facility on West Wacker Drive in 1983 and was not restored to public view until 1998.

            Because the artist had expressed his desire that Rites of Spring remain accessible to the public, especially children, the Milton Horn Art Trust donated this panel to the Lincoln Park Zoo and it was installed there in 2004. The other panel is undergoing conservation and will be donated to the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago.

            Influenced by his time spent creating art with support from the Works Progress Administration during the New Deal, Horn was dismissive of many of his Modernist contemporaries, including Jackson Pollock and Alexander Calder, and he remained committed to his style of robust figures and heavy symbolism throughout his career. Here he depicts Pan, god of fields, forests, shepherds, flocks and rustic music, as he plays his flute for a ram. 
          Other prominent examples of his work created for the city of Chicago include The Spirit of Jewish Philanthropy, 1958, now on display inside the headquarters of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago, and Hymn to Water, 1966, located in the lobby of the Administration building of the James W. Jardine Water Purification Plant. His bust of A. Montgomery Ward is located in Grant Park.