The Corporation and the Community
John H. Bryan, Chairman of the Board, Sara Lee Corporation

These remarks have been revised and edited from the more detailed lecture delivered by John H. Bryan at the Business Committee for the Arts’ Business in the Arts Awards presentation held in The Art Institute of Chicago on October 5, 2000.

Let me first welcome you to the great city of Chicago and to one of America’s preeminent art museums: The Art Institute of Chicago.

My assignment this evening is to deliver the David Rockefeller Lecture — an annual occurrence at BCA’s annual Business in the Arts Awards ceremony. However, I am afraid I do not think of my remarks tonight as a lecture. That, to me, sounds much too serious. But I do want my comments this evening to promote the cause of business support for the arts. After all, I have been under the tutelage of BCA President Judi Jedlicka for many, many years. And I have spent more than 25 years working for a company that focuses much effort and a significant portion of its philanthropic resources on supporting the arts.

To carry out my duties tonight, I plan to do two things: first, I shall offer my views about why businesses should involve themselves with community causes in general — and with art-related activities in particular.

And, secondly, I thought that you might be interested in an update on a real life current example of the business sector working with the government sector right here in Chicago: the magnificent Millennium Park that is under construction just a few blocks north of The Art Institute of Chicago.

It has long been my strong conviction that the business community should, for its own interest and for the interest of society at large, actively involve itself with the communities in which it conducts business.

There are, as you know, three sectors to our society. They are: the private sector where most of us carry out our work; the not-for-profit sector, which takes care of a lot of our needs such as education, health, and cultural services; and, of course, there is the government sector.

We often argue, as we are now in our political season, about which functions of society ought to be managed by which sector. But most of us would agree there is a place for all three. I am certain that our society functions so much better when all three work closely together. The success of our country and its cultural, educational, medical, and civic institutions are great testimony to that fact. The fortunes of business simply cannot be disassociated from the quality of life that exists in the communities in which we do business.

Thus, as a matter of policy, Sara Lee Corporation and I have insisted that our employees perform volunteer work for civic and social organizations. Sara Lee, in turn, has shared its financial resources at a considerably above-average level with the communities in which it does business. And as a result, I believe that together we have made a significant difference.

Occasionally I have debated people who try to make the case that it is not in shareholders’ interests for us to spend time or corporate resources engaged in activity outside of our pure business tasks. I think a society that denies business people the opportunity to work with their communities would be a manifestly less successful society, for the talents and resources of the private sector are vital contributors to community life. Also, given the spirit of volunteerism that is deeply embedded in so many Americans, business would be a rather sterile place for many of us if we were told we could not engage with the community.

As I have watched my city of Chicago prosper and advance over time, I am convinced that Chicago’s business community has made an enormously positive difference over the years.

The case for business support to the arts has many dimensions, some of which are born of pure self-interest. There are, after all, important community and employee relations advantages and even reputation enhancements that can accrue to companies that identify themselves with the quality inherent in art. But I have always preferred to advance support for the arts by simply talking about why I think art is so important to all of us. The primary reason art is important is that it is such a meaningful part of all of our everyday lives. We take art for granted but, in fact, it adds immeasurably to the lives of individuals.

To this point, a few years ago I had a letter from a woman who had come to Chicago from Denver for a Friday meeting of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. She was writing to thank me for hosting the meeting, and in her letter she said:

“I spent a spectacular evening in your beautiful city. Friday night, we were lucky enough to acquire tickets to ‘Xerxes’ at the Lyric Opera. Saturday, we spent most of the day at The Art Institute — what a treasure! I think I enjoyed the permanent collection as much as the Monet exhibition.” The blockbuster Monet show was on view at the time.

She then went on to say that all this reminded her of how abundantly clear it is that, “without the arts, we people are just primates with car keys.”

“Primates with car keys” — what life would be like without the arts!

In fact, last year more than seven million people visited our five largest museums here in Chicago. That is many, many more than all those who attended games of the Bulls, the Bears, the Cubs, the White Sox, the Blackhawks and the Fire combined.

But the arts are not just valuable because they enrich our lives as individuals. They also enrich society as a whole in so many ways. The arts are so important to society because they are a civilizing force, just as essential over time as adequate housing or a cleaner environment or other compelling causes.

And the arts are such a vital part of education, particularly at a time when funding for arts education has been receiving near-fatal cutbacks in public schools everywhere. I spoke recently at an annual dinner meeting for an organization here in Chicago called MERIT Music. It is an exciting organization that searches all through the inner city of Chicago looking for talented young people who deserve and want musical training.

As I spoke to them that evening, I could not resist quoting the noted 18th-century English poet, Thomas Gray. He wrote one of my favorite poems, Elegy written in a Country Churchyard. In it, he uses some powerful metaphors to talk about wasted talent.

          Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
          The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:
          Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
          And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

So, too, are many of today’s young people being wasted in the deserts of our inner cities. Without groups like MERIT Music, so many talented gems in our society would simply be undiscovered in today’s world. Just imagine how important it is for these children to have the chance to discover art.

The arts are so important because they are surely the grandest expression of our creativity. And, creativity, as you know, is absolutely critical to the success of our democratic capitalism. The times in which we live today bear such strong testimony to that fact. Free enterprise both fosters and feeds on new ideas; innovation and economic growth go hand in hand. It has been true since the days of Adam Smith, and it is even truer in today’s fast-changing world.

It is not raw materials or even the availability of labor that is crucial to business success today — it is ideas. So we must nourish our creative capital for it is truly our most important asset — and that is why we at the Business Committee for the Arts have, for so many years, been about the task of building support for the arts all over this country.

Let me now turn to my second message and talk about recent experiences wherein Chicago’s private and business communities have been working closely with the not-for-profit and government sectors in the creation of what we call a “cultural boom” over the past decade here in Chicago. Not since Chicago hosted the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 has this city witnessed such a cultural explosion.

It is probably more than just a coincidence that the last decades of the 19th and 20th centuries have been so significant. In fact, many believe that there is a very real impetus gained from getting prepared for a new century. That certainly has been our experience in Chicago.

Since 1990, we have built a new library and new museums, and we have expanded and renovated many of our cultural facilities. We have developed this nation’s only free municipal cultural center — a place where the city can dispense arts and cultural service to everyone at no charge. It is where Chicago’s First Lady Maggie Daley goes to work every day, and it has a staff of 100 people and a budget of $5 million.

We have made $250 million worth of major renovations and expansions of the facilities for our great Chicago Symphony and Lyric Opera, which were made possible by a $100 million gift from 33 Chicago businesses.

Several major new theaters have been built and, just next month, we will be opening the new Goodman Theatre complex, which is the lynchpin of our new theater district in Chicago’s North Loop.

We in this city can hardly restrain our enthusiasm for all that is happening these days. But, what I want to talk about now is a real jewel of Chicago’s cultural development of our time. It is Millennium Park.

Located just north of The Art Institute, I believe Millennium Park is the most important urban landscape created anywhere in America during the past 50 years. And it certainly is one of the most ambitious public-private partnerships ever undertaken.

The Park is a $400 million project consisting of 26 acres of new parkland on the rooftop of a 4,500-car parking garage, and it is filled with great architecture, public sculpture, and gardens. It will be a very high quality and culturally rich park, and it will be free to the public.

This project is the vision of our Mayor Richard M. Daley who, during his 12 years in office, has displayed a quite unbelievable passion for making Chicago a more beautiful and culturally rich place. The city agreed to provide the parking garages and the basic park infrastructure for slightly over half of the total cost of this undertaking. And then it turned to the private sector to create enhancements that would make Millennium Park an extraordinary place. Let me give you a current report of this project.

It began about a year ago and likely will not be completed for two more years. Millennium Park is bounded by Columbus Drive, Michigan Avenue, Randolph Street, and Monroe Street — just north of The Art Institute.

The project will transform space that formerly housed a rail yard into a world-class cultural recreational park of more than one million square feet. It will provide year round opportunities to enjoy gardens, ice skating, public concerts, art fairs, festivals, and music and dance performances in a formal setting on Chicago’s lakefront.

For the performing arts, we are building the indoor, 1,500-seat Music and Dance Theater — the only mid-sized theater in the downtown theater district. It will provide a home for 12 Chicago performing arts groups including The Joffrey Ballet of Chicago.

The Park also will have a beautiful new outdoor music pavilion designed by Frank Gehry. Crowned by dramatic ribbons of sculptural steel, the pavilion’s sculptured exterior will reflect Gehry's distinct style. The New York Times described Gehry’s design to be as “. . . urbane, sophisticated and exuberant as anything he has ever done,” and said, “The site for the building is extraordinary.”

This facility will offer, quite simply, the best free cultural programming in the world. A stainless steel trellis will span the entire 700-foot length and 320-foot width of the great lawn seating area. Its state-of-the-art sound system will give audience members — no matter where they sit — a full sense of the onstage sound. The main seating area will accommodate up to 4,000 people in fixed seats with lawn seating for an additional 6,000. The stage interior will be lined with Douglas fir and will accommodate an orchestra of 120 musicians. There also will be a choral terrace for 150 performers.

Gehry also has designed a pedestrian bridge which we think is a masterpiece. It will span Columbus Drive and link the music pavilion to the adjacent Daley Bicentennial Plaza.

Another feature of Millennium Park will be a stunning flower garden. Twelve of the world’s leading landscape architects and designers are currently in a competition to design the three-acre space in the Park’s northeast corner.

Jaume Plensa of Barcelona has designed a 21st-century fountain for the Park, which is an extraordinary work of art. It will feature two classical columns 35 feet to 50 feet high, 23 feet wide, and 16 feet deep, made primarily of glass. Forty-foot by 20-foot screens will project images and kinetic lights. The fountain’s black granite base will form a one-quarter inch deep pool spanning roughly 232 feet by 18 feet. The fountain will be connected to the World Wide Web and highly interactive. Computer images will be projected from within the fountain and people will be able to send messages to Chicago via the Internet.

In the very center of the park on Michigan Avenue, there will be an ice skating rink, a warming house, and a restaurant to provide welcoming gathering places for families.

Just behind the skating rink will be the signature sculpture of the park by internationally known artist Anish Kapoor. It will be Kapoor’s first public work installed in this country, and the first major addition to Chicago outdoor public art in six years. Made of seamless polished stainless steel, it will measure 60 feet long and rise 30 feet high. It is sure to become a highly recognized symbol of Chicago.

And finally, we will restore the historic peristyle, a semi-circle of classical columns, that graced the original park site until it was demolished in the 1950s to make way for the Grant Park garage. This is where we plan to recognize the very generous donors who have made Millennium Park possible.

Millennium Park is an example of what can happen when a business community cares about its city. And Chicago is a city where the business community has made an enormous difference over the years. We believe our cultural treasures are at a world-class standard largely because the business community and the private sector here care about the quality of life in our city.

Over the years, I have been a fundraiser here in Chicago for various not-for-profit institutions. In fact, I am actually a strange fellow because I like doing fundraising, and I will tell you why. If you raise money, you really can make a difference. And, I will tell you how you raise money: tell people that their money will make a difference. You appeal to a potential donor’s sense of pride about their city and its institutions, and their chance to be a part of making the place where they work and live a better place and maybe even a great place.

Today, that is the appeal we are making to those who are helping to make possible the creation of Millennium Park. And as a result, I think, increasingly, Chicago will be defined to the nation and to the world as a place of great beauty and culture and a place where the arts continue to flourish.
The new Millennium Park will likely be Chicago’s signature to the world — and it will stand as a tribute to the generosity of the private and business sectors of our city.

Let me conclude by saying that it has been a great pleasure to share my points of view with you this evening. I hope you enjoy all that Chicago has to offer.

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