“Richard Driehaus Foundation Names Anne Lazar Executive Director,” by S.M. O’Connor

The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation announced this month that lifelong Chicago resident Anne Lazar is its new Executive Director. She has served as Interim Executive Director since Monday, March 11, 2019. Kim Coventry stepped down in March after five years at the helm.

A Loyola University of Chicago alumna, Ms. Lazar has a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in marketing. This is the second time she has worked for Richard H. Driehaus as she worked from 1987 to 1992 at Driehaus Securities Corporation, where she managed operations and trading for its international equity portfolios.

High culture is an abiding interest of hers. For six years, she has been a member of the Women’s Board of the Joffrey Ballet. She and her husband co-chaired its 2016 annual gala. Further, that same year, she co-chaired the annual See Chicago Dance gala, which honored Richard Driehaus for his contributions to dance in Chicago.

Ms. Lazar will remain on the Board of Trustees of The Richard H. Driehaus Museum. She is currently Chairman of the Developing & Marketing Committee. Ms. Lazar also spends time very week assisting oncology patients and their families at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital (formerly Children’s Memorial Hospital) in Streeterville.

“Anne and I go back a long way to her days at Driehaus Securities in the late 1980s, before she left to raise her daughter,” stated Richard H. Driehaus. “I am delighted to welcome her back to the Driehaus organization as executive director of my foundation. She shares my commitment to efforts that create stronger, more vibrant communities in the built environment, arts and culture, investigative journalism, and economic opportunity for the working poor. She is the exact right person to lead the foundation in its fourth decade of grant-making.”

“I look forward to furthering the excellent work of the Driehaus Foundation,” commented Ms. Lazar. “It is an honor and privilege to carry on the foundation’s important legacy on behalf of such a successful entrepreneur and philanthropist. I see the foundation as an extension of the nonprofit work I have done for so many years. This role allows me to continue my long relationship with Richard, and I am delighted to be working for him once again.”

Founded by Richard H. Driehaus in 1983, The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation made grants that totaled $6,000,000 in its first ten years of existence. In 1992, he established a family board and hired an executive director. Today, it makes $5,000,000 in grants annually. Some of these grants are made in partnership with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. The Richard H. Driehaus Foundation’s interests include the preservation of historic buildings, the encouragement of high-quality architecture and landscape design, the conservation of open space, arts and culture, investigative reporting, government accountability, and organizations that provide opportunities for the working poor.

Richard H. Driehaus is the President of the Board of Directors. Dorothy M. Mellin is the Vice President. Elizabeth A. Driehaus is the Treasurer. Christopher Mellin is the Sectretary. The other members of the Board of Directors are Frank Garcia and Marzena Mellin.

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The Field Museum of Natural History in March, 2018

The Field Museum of Natural History’s entrance pavilions are at opposite ends of Stanley Field Hall, which has a north-south axis. The two porticos (porches) are each reached by two successive flights of stairs.

Both porticos of The Field Museum of Natural History are flanked by two small porches, which each have two caryatids (columns in the shape of maidens). On the facade, the wings are adorned with a colonnade of attached fluted Ionic columns. The building’s fluted Ionic columns have volutes (spiral-scroll-shaped crowns).

Each portico of The Field Museum is tetrastyle in antis with double-ranked fluted Ionic columns capped by volutes. An entablature crowned by a pediment rests atop the columns. The continuous frieze in each case is relatively plain. The wave-themed acroteria that crown the pediments are borrowed from the Palace of a Fine Arts, which housed The Field Museum until 1920 and now houses the Museum of Science and Industry.

The Field Museum of Natural History isn’t “just” a museum. Visitors can watch scientists at work through windows at the Daniel F. and Ada L. Rice DNA Discovery Center’s Pritzker Laboratory.

Mrs. Charles (Laura) Schweppe, a daughter and co-heiress of John Graves Shedd, the former partner of Marshall Field I who succeeded him as president of Marshall Field & Company, and who, under the guidance of Stanley Field founded the Shedd Aquarium, donated an exhibit of 100 bronze sculptures by Malvina Hoffman to The Field Museum. They represent every race, nation, and tribe in the human family (more or less). On January 9, 1933, the first group, Unity of Man, went on display.

In addition to the four figures Henry Hering (1874-1949) made for the corners of Stanley Field Hall, he also made the twelve plaster round lion head shield escutcheons that line it. These are replicas of the marble round lion head shield escutcheon he made for the pediment of the facade of The Field Museum of Natural History.

Christmas at Chicago’s Union Station

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a POLAR EXPRESS display in the Great Hall of Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a closeup of the THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is the headlamp of THE POLAR EXPRESS steam locomotive mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Union Station Company rail car loaded with super-size gifts is part of THE POLAR EXPRESS mock-up in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This is a Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Chicago’s Union Station.

Credit: S.M. O’Connor Caption: This Christmas tree in the Great Hall of Union Station in downtown Chicago has emblems of Amtrak, Metra, and historic railroad companies whose routes they now operate like Burlington.

Cinemas sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) Helped Design

This is the Pickwick Theatre Building, an Art Deco movie palace and office building erected in downtown Park Ridge, Illinois in 1928.

The architects were Roscoe Harold Zook and William F. McCaughey. Sculptor Alfonso Iannelli, who also worked on the Adler Planetarium, contributed to this building.

In recent years, the Vlahakis family, who’ve owned the building for 50 years, have been able to turn the building into a multiplex by adding smaller theaters around the original auditorium. The latest one, with a screen four times the size of the one in the auditorium, will open in time to screen INFINITY WARS in May, if all goes well.

The Catlow Movie Theater is a cinema that opened in downtown Barrington, Illinois in 1927. The Tudor Revival style of architecture is not confined to the facade of the cinema. As with the Pickwick Theatre in Park Ridge, Illinois, sculptor Alfonso Iannelli (1888-1965) played a role in the design and decoration of The Catlow Movie Theater.