A few years back I enrolled in a course at Harold Washington College entitled “Public Art” and taught by Jeff Huebner.  I found it very captivating, somewhat surprisingly for an engineer like myself.  I carried around my camera and snapped pictures of just about everything.  I had no problem passing the course, which consisted of researching and writing a paper.  When I bicycle through the area with my cycling friends I act like a docent.  Even visiting tourists lend an ear.

One particular part of the course dealt with a fund started by Benjamin Franklin Ferguson, a wealthy lumber merchant who died in 1905 and left a bequest of $1,000,000 to be used for public art and administered by the Art Institute of Chicago.

This thread under the category “Ferguson Fund” will tell the story.