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Exhibit in Chicago
1950 |
By his own count, 1950 was Haydon's
most productive year to date, with the completion of 128
paintings, 354 drawings and 14 mobiles. He was included
in 18 exhibitions, four of which were solo shows. In addition
to all this activity, he was still teaching full time at
the U of C. Further, Haydon continued being active in artists
groups and unions throughout the 1950s. In the late 1940s,
he had been most active in the Artists' League of the Midwest,
which had been an offshoot of the Artists' League of America.
While the Midwest group had remained active during that
time, the national group had reorganized, forming Artists'
Equity Association in 1945 and limiting its membership
to only artists with professional credentials. It was not
until 1950 that the Artists' League of the Midwest merged
with Artists' Equity Association and became the Chicago
Chapter of that group. As with previous artists' groups,
AEA's purpose was the economic betterment of artists by
expanding exhibition opportunities and educating the public
about artists and their relationship with society. Haydon
had been President of the Artists' League of the Midwest,
Chicago Chapter from 1947-48 and again from 1949-50. He
was instrumental in negotiating the merger with AEA and
became the President of the AEA's Chicago Chapter from
1950-52. Beyond that, he was a National Director of AEA
from 1951-53; Executive Secretary of AEA's Chicago Chapter
from 1953-54; and President again of the Chicago Chapter
from 1955-57.
In the year 1955, extraordinary events brought notoriety to Chicago's art community,
and because of his involvement with the Artists' Equity Association, drew Haydon
into the controversy. The infamous Ferguson Fund debate has been well documented
elsewhere,46 so only a brief description of the matter and Haydon's role is
necessary here. In essence, the Art Institute of Chicago received a bequest
of $1,000,000 from Benjamin F. Ferguson in 1905 that established a trust fund
to commission public sculpture for the city of Chicago. From then until 1933,
the Art Institute complied with the terms of the trust and commissioned sculptures
for parks and other public spaces in the city. In 1933 though, the Art Institute
went to court and received a ruling that the term "monuments" in
the trust fund language could include a building to house sculpture. From that
point on, no further public sculpture was commissioned, even though the fund
received applications from civic groups requesting money for that purpose.
In 1955 the Art Institute went to court again asking permission to use the
approximately $1,200,000 in Ferguson Fund interest, which had been accumulating
since 1933, to build a new administration wing, thus freeing much needed space
in the existing museum building for exhibitions. At this point the National
Sculpture Society of New York hired a Chicago lawyer and filed suit to bar
the museum from using this sculpture fund to build an administration building.
Before it was over, the Ferguson Fund controversy made its way to Time Magazine
and the New York Times. The Chicago newspapers showed dramatic pictures of
sculptures, commissioned by the Ferguson Fund many years before and which were
supposed to have been maintained by the Fund, that were now in a decayed and
desperate condition. The art community also criticized the Illinois Attorney
General, Latham Castle. In their opinion, by not challenging the Art Institute's
use of the Fund to build an administration building, Castle was not adequately
safeguarding Mr. Ferguson's wishes. Since Attorney General Castle was not inclined
to act, Artists' Equity attempted to place Haydon, as President of their Chicago
Chapter, into the suit by filing an amicus curiae brief.47 The court's opinion
was that there was no case, since the Fund's beneficiaries are the citizens
of Illinois and only the Attorney General can represent them in court. If the
Attorney General felt there was no need to intervene into the Art Institute's
handling of the Fund, there was nothing the court would do. Despite the court's
opinion, the scandal did not go away and remained a sore point among those
active in the Chicago art community for many years to come.
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