News

Monthly Ragdale Ring Events on June  16th, July 15th and August 19th, lead up to our opening celebration of the Sybil Shearer Studio on September 18th ! We hope to see you there!  

The Morrison-Shearer Foundation (MSF) has named ALIDA SZABO as its new Board Chair, succeeding CAROL DOTY who, after retiring from the Morton Arboretum, joined the MSF Board in 2002 and has served as its Chair since 2006. “Carol is leaving some big shoes to fill, but having served on the Foundation Board prior to…

Construction paused recently to celebrate work on the new Studio House of Dance and Music, home to what will be the new Sybil Shearer Studio on the Ragdale campus in Lake Forest. In December, Northbrook's Morrison-Shearer Foundation provided a $1.5 million grant to the Ragdale Foundation to support construction of…

The Groundbreaking event at Ragdale for the construction of the Studio of Music and Dance/Sybil Shearer Studio at Ragdale was a long awaited and exciting day! The Chairman of the Ragdale Board who led the event, and our Board of Trustee members who attended, are: Barbra Shumann, Treasurer Brian Schaeffer,…

More than once in its evolution, the Morrison-Shearer Foundation has been fortunate to have just the right person appear with the very talents we need at that moment. In November, 2011, we were nearing the end of our five-year Strategic Plan and needed to find a new Foundation Manager. We…

After several years of working closely with the Ragdale Foundation, the Sybil Shearer Studio at Ragdale is underway in Lake Forest. The MSF gift of 1.5 million dollars is significant at a time when arts funding is floundering, and makes it possible for the development of both the dance studio and an…

After serving MSF as a Trustee since 2002 and Chair since 2006, it is poignant to be making my last report to you before my retirement at the end of this year. I met Sybil in 1993, not through dance, but through our mutual interest in Jens Jensen and The Clearing, his…

Another longtime project is the new MSF website, launched in November, 2020, thanks to our graphic designer, Amy Jeppsen Stern, along with Carol Doty, Sue Boléa, and Corinne Pierog. Besides calling attention to current Foundation activities, the site is intentionally deep in content about Sybil, Helen, and their legacies. Until now, research…

Sybil Shearer Autobiography, Volume III NOVEMBER, 2020 The publication of Volume III of Sybil Shearer’s autobiography, Without Wings the Way Is Steep: The Reality Beyond Realism, is another major project that was finished this year. This volume is about Sybil’s later years alone in Northbrook (1985-2004) as critic, writer, and Anthroposophist. In…

In preparing to send our gift of Helen Balfour Morrison’s portraits of GREAT AMERICANS to the Newberry Library, we found negatives from which we’d never seen prints. Among them was this photograph of CARRIE CHAPMAN CATT (1859-1947), who played an essential role in gaining the right of women to vote. Just now, as…