Is the Lucas Museum just like the Field, the Shedd, and the Adler? Another great civic institution funded by some guy whose name is on the building?
If it did, what we’d already have on the lakefront would be three museums celebrating the art of retailing. Maybe with a library of catalogs and a monument to Frango mints.
Followed by “I’m not going to give you a million dollars.”
John G. Shedd started as a stock boy at Marshall Field and Company, wound up as president, and wanted to give back to the city where he prospered. He followed Field’s philanthropic lead by funding the world’s first inland aquarium with saltwater exhibits (a million gallons of tropical ocean shipped from Key West by rail), but didn’t live to see the Shedd Aquarium open in 1930.
Its holdings, previously described as “unparalleled” and “vast,” are suddenly, in the museum’s own description, only a “seed” collection.
