THE MORRISON-SHEARER FOUNDATION  401 LEE ROAD, NORTHBROOK, IL 60062

Mary Sue Glosser, Creative Director, Department of Lectures and Performance Programs at the Art Institute of Chicago Thom Connor, photographer

Mary Sue Glosser appearing at the Feinberg Theater of the the Spertus Museum of Jewish Studies. This architectural gem on Chicago's Michigan Avenue was the setting for a showing of dance films of Sybil Shearer created by Helen Balfour Morrison. The event inaugurated the publication of volume one of the Shearer autobiography, Within This Thicket. Featured were signature dances such as In A Vacuum, along with rare footage of the artist dancing on the hills outside her home and studio in Northbrook, Illinois.

Without Wings the Way Is Steep is a three volume autobiography. The first volume is a collection of correspondence between Sybil Shearer and some of the movers and shakers of the day, including an indelible exchange with a mentor/professor at Skidmore College and her impressions as an emerging artist dancing and studying during the turbulent and exciting seminal days of modern dance in New York and Bennington. It contains a DVD of dances, narrated by the artist.

Mary Sue Glosser, whose acclaimed talks at the Art Institute of Chicago have converted many to the joys of the arts, combined readings from Within This Thicket and anecdotes from her long association with Sybil Shearer.

The Midwest Inheritance, volume two of Without Wings the Way Is Steep is in preparation for publication. In it we follow the dance career of Sybil Shearer from her arrival in Chicago in 1942 to 1984, the death of Helen Balfour Morrison.

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The following photographs are from an event held Fall of 2009 at the Foundation.

Photographs by Chuck Osgood

Photographs by Chuck Osgood

Photographs by Chuck Osgood

Photographs by Chuck Osgood

Photographs by Chuck Osgood

Photographs by Chuck Osgood

Photographs by Chuck Osgood

Photographs by Chuck Osgood

Photographs by Chuck Osgood

Photographs by Chuck Osgood

About the Foundation

[not a grant-making organization]

MISSION STATEMENT

The Morrison-Shearer Foundation perpetuates the legacy of dancer-choreographer Sybil Shearer and photographer Helen Balfour Morrison and promotes new creativity in the arts.

THE FOUNDATION

The Morrison-Shearer Foundation was established in 1991 to preserve and exhibit the works and documentary materials relating to the careers of photographer Helen Balfour Morrison and dancer-choreographer Sybil Shearer; to maintain the home and studio where they lived and worked as a form of inspiration to others; and to sponsor new creativity.  It is a private operating foundation supported entirely by income from the Foundation investments.

Since the death of Sybil Shearer in 2005, the Foundation has been managed by a Board of Trustees, named by Ms. Shearer and guided by her wishes as expressed in her document "Purpose and Aims of the Museum" (1985).  The Foundation’s current priorities are to complete the publication of Sybil Shearer’s three-volume autobiography, Without Wings the Way is Steep; to preserve and archive all photographs, films, letters, manuscripts, reviews and other memorabilia; to provide modest annual Board-initiated grants in support of current work in the arts, especially dance; to explore the possibilities of creating an artists’ retreat at the home and studio in Northbrook, Illinois; and to share the Morrison-Shearer legacy through a website and other means.

MORRISON-SHEARER FOUNDATION TRUSTEES:

SYBIL SHEARER   (February 23, 1912 - November 17, 2005)

Sybil Shearer was a leading pioneer of modern dance and arguably one of the finest dancers of the 20th century.  She began her career at Bennington and in New York with the Humphrey-Weidman Company and Agnes de Mille.  After a critically acclaimed solo debut at Carnegie Hall in 1941, Ms. Shearer moved to Chicago, where she worked independently, close to nature, and in her own unorthodox way. Soon after arriving, she met photographer, Helen Balfour Morrison, who became her lighting director, photographer, filmographer, and artistic collaborator for the next forty years. Ms. Shearer has been described as an original, provocative, unpredictable, a maverick, a poet of movement, a near legendary figure, and a gentle rebel.  Critic Walter Terry called her "one of the world's foremost dancers" (Saturday Review, Feb 7, 1979), stating that her "technical skill, creative independence, and unpredictable innovations have made her what is known as 'a dancer's dancer'."

HELEN BALFOUR MORRISON   (August 1, 1901 – November 6, 1984)

In the 1930s and 1940s, Helen Balfour Morrison photographed some 200 notable personalities, among them Robert Frost, Helen Hayes, Nelson Algren, Frank Lloyd Wright, Alice B. Toklas and Gertrude Stein, Mies van der Rohe, Amelia Earhart, Jane Addams, and Saul Bellow; as well as persons from all walks of life. Most of these portrait sessions took place in Chicago or in New York.  Morrison was said to be able to "photograph the soul" (art critic J. B. Newman); and to possess the "uncanny ability to look into people and let the surface of a person reveal the inner being on a momentary as well as an eternal basis" (Sybil Shearer, 1990). Her collaboration with Sybil Shearer produced a large collection of extraordinary dance photographs and films, as well as an intense and sensitive documentation of the life of this artist. Today her extensive portfolio remains largely unpublished and unknown.

NOW AVAILABLE!
Sybil Shearer's autobiography, WITHOUT WINGS THE WAY IS STEEP,
Volume One, WITHIN THIS THICKET

Within This Thicket, the first of three autobiographical volumes, is now available.  It traces Ms. Shearer's early life as an aspiring artist and includes a DVD with archival dance footage.  Ensuing volumes will trace Ms. Shearer's prime as an acclaimed soloist/choreographer and her later years as a dance writer/critic.  The abundance of letters in all three volumes provides a unique historical and personal view.

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