Tour: Around Hyde Park and Kenwood start.
A Sampling of Outdoor Sculpture and Architecture in Hyde Park-Kenwood. Part 1 Sculpture.

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Lorado Taft's Fountain of Time, concrete, 1922-1923, in Washington Park just west of the Midway (5900). It's the most prestigious Hyde Park sculpture and most important artistically, historically, and technically, although Henry Moore's Atomic Energy is probably more widely known. See Fountain of Time for history and description, also Washington Park page and Trish Morse's Midway Tour. 100 figures. Top left scenes depict dawn of mankind, rise from youth, innocence and barbarism to civilization (with its own barbarities. Bottom show the terror of inevitable decay and death. Along the way we see a soldier on horseback, couples, refugees, family life. Observing aloofly is Father Time. Said to be inspired by a poem by Austin Dobson, "Time goes, you say?. Ah, no, alas. Time stays. We go." 110'. It was meant to be complemented at the east end of the Midway by Fountain of Creation. Recently restored, basin being restored 2005.

Atomic Energy. Henry Moore. 1965 commission by Ferguson Sculpture Fund of the Art Institute of Chicago. Installation 1967. On the National Register; Chicago Landmark 1971. 5600 blk Ellis, south of the new Palevsky West dorm by Mexican architect Leguim? West of the present library, it is on the site of a playing court under the grandstand of old Stagg football Field. Here man first achieved a controlled self-sustaining chain reaction. The sculpture and nearby commemorative plaque draw memorial and anti-war activist activities on Hiroshima Day. 12 foot, bronze. Moore said he was more influenced by ancient heads and helmets in the British Museum than by the idea of a mushroom cloud. Different views can suggest either the destructive or protective, positive side of this quintessentially modern "force."

Alfonso Iannelli made the important though little-known sculptures here for St. Thomas Apostle School, 5467 Woodlawn, and Church, 5472 S. Kimbark. The 1922 school and church, including the rooflines, are festooned with unusual terra cotta designs. (Iannelli also did figures for Wright's Midway Gardens in 1914.) This Mediterranean revival-yet-Prairie design of the church and school, by noted church architect and former Wright employee Barry Byrne, was unusual for churches.

Ram, by John Kearney (http://www.johnkearneysculptor.com/). At McCormick Theological Seminary, here as at present at the new McCormick Seminary, 5400 block of S. University, (a building itself sculptural) and here at the former McCormick-Howard Van Doren Shaw-designed building at 56th/Woodlawn, now the UC Alumni Center.

Masaryk (The Blanik Mountain Knight St. Wenceslaus)
Thomas Garrigue Masaryk, first president until 1935 of Czechoslovakia, as the Blanik Knight, said to be in waiting to come down and save the nation.
On the east end of the Midway (5900 S.) at Dorchester Ave. Albin Polasek (who taught at the School of the Art Institute), cast 1949, installed here May 29, 1955. Description in Midway. Masaryk was a visiting scholar on campus early in the 20th century. The plaque compares the president to the saint: "crusader, liberator, statesman [who] fought to realize his nation's fondest dream."

(Carolus) Linnaeus (Linné),
on the Midway at 59th and Greenwood. Centerpiece of the north Readers and Winter Garden. More views in Midway.
By Johan Dyfverman. orig. date ? That here is a replica of his at the Royal Gardens in Stockholm. This replica was relocated from its 1891 placement in Lincoln Park Chicago to the Midway in 1976, this author was told, because it was subject to vandalism and much of the Swedish population had moved from the vicinity. Relocation was perhaps requested by Swedish organizations, perhaps as a Swedish-American contribution to the U.S. Bicentennial: Linneus belonged to the 18th Century and was a fountainhead of the Enlightenment. Presumably the move had their consent because a large ceremony was held on April 19, 1976 presided over by the King of Sweden, Karl XVI Gustave and Mayor Daley. (The king's signature was carved into the granite pedestal.) Since Linneus was the founder of modern taxonomy and plant nomenclature, it is appropriate that this fine bronze casting and its plinth be located at a great university and be made the center of a garden, especially one devoted to reading and enjoyment of winter and summer plants in the midst of the city.

Caryatids on the west end of the Museum of Science and Industry, west pavilion by 57th/Cornell Drives. Inspired by Parthenon decorations under a World's Columbian Explosion committee led by Augustus St. Gaudens under Daniel Burnham. Present realization 1930s.

On the Ellis plaza at the University of Chicago Hospital entrance, further south of 58th on Ellis
Left: Grande Disc (related to evolution, creation and creativity) cast in Milan in 1976 by noted Italian sculptor Armando Pomodoro. From the collection of Nathan Cummings. See Smart for another piece by Pomodoro.
Right. By Jene Highstein c. 1980. From a show of art from Texas, on the UC Quads by the Renaissance Society. Now in the south lawn of the Brain Research Pavilion, Ellis south of 58th.

Gary Wolzniak's water sculpture and fountain in Nichols Park at 55th and Kimbark. Ded. 1972. It's had its share of vicissitudes. In foreground is a curving bench with pottery subscribed-commemorative plaques by local artists.

Other sculptures on campus are that at the Cummings Life Sciences Center 930 E. 58th, Hinds Geophysics (including Ruth Duckworth's inside) 5700 block of Ellis, and Virginio Ferrari's 'Dialogo' at Alfred Pick International Studies building in the 5800 block of University.

'Dialogo was cast in 1971 by the Italian sculptor Virginio Ferrari, who was artist in residence in the 1970s. The work, said in student legend to cast the Hammer and Sickle on May Day, represents a meeting of the four corners of the world.
Ferrari worked with Ray School to design an place a set of stones in the lawn to the east of the school. His large stainless piece that resembles an O in a C was designed with Hyde Park in mind, and spent time on the State Street Mall, in the front yard of Midway Studios and at Ravinia Park.

Sculptor Virginio Ferrari, and Italian who has long lived in Hyde Park, announced at the June HWAC meeting that Bruce Clinton has donated one of Ferrari's pieces, the tall bronze abstraction "Ecstasy." This piece stood at Midway Studios at Ingleside and 60th, and for several years was at Ravinia in Highland Park until bought by Clinton in 1998. Calling the piece an urban sculpture, Ferrari persuaded Clinton the piece should be on display in Hyde Park, preferably at the east end of 51st/Hyde Park Blvd. where it could anchor a sculpture garden and balance the horizontal Model Yacht Basin. Decision was to install it in the basin itself, scheduled for completion spring 2007. Ferrari is also working on another piece with a donor, 8 foot tall geometric shapes that had been suggested for the Model Yacht Basin or for the adjacent lakefront. The next step is park district investigation of proper siting and supports and approval by a commission that looks at all sculptures in parks.

Ferrari has at least 30 public pieces in Chicago, including 4 in Hyde Park--"Dialogo" at the U of C Pick Building in the 5800 block of S. University, the set of concrete balls in Ray School yard (Kenwood north of 57th) called "Like the Time They Go," and "Interlocking" (stainless steel) at the Lab School. His most famous work is the stainless "O" within a "C" that stood on State Street.