Lorado Taft

Helen Farnsworth Mears is commissioned to sculpt a design of a woman and winged eagle, titled Genius of Wisconsin, for the Wisconsin Building at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

The twenty-year-old Mears, who attended Oshkosh State Normal School (now a branch of the University of Wisconsin), receives some encouragement from the American sculptor Lorado Taft, whose long career as teacher and public lecturer began at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1886.