Visit www.nancyhays.org. About Nancy Hays from Obituaries and Articles.
Nancy Hays Project of the Hyde Park Historical Society- learn how you can help or donate in the project to honor her legacy and process her enormous photographic work.
The Society has opened a temporary exhibit of select photographs, digitalized and enlarged, at its building at 5529 S. Lake Park Ave. Open house dates are 2-4 November 10 and 24 and December 2nd and 4th Sundays. Check at www.nancyhays.org/exhibit or www.hydeparkhistory.org.
This feature by Gary Ossewaarde is from the August 2019 JPAC Newsletter
Nancy Hays Project
launched by Hyde Park Historical Society
JPAC calls to its members and friends attention Hyde Park Historical Society’s
recently announced Nancy Hays Project. Nancy Campbell Hay’s legacy and
accomplishments include co-founding Friends of the Parks and serving on its
board. She was also a founder of JPAC and served as its president for many years
and up to her death in 2007. She photo-documented Jackson and other parks and
fought for nature, trees, park and historic preservation and against park and
neighborhood neglect and pollution and for fair and quality facilities and recreation
for all. She documented and participated in resistance to and replacement of
the Nike Missile bases, fought efforts to build expressways through Jackson
Park, and oversaw the revitalization of the 57th and 63rd Street Beach Houses,
Bike Paths, and the Beach underpasses. She worked with others for public safety
including through bringing people back into parks such as with the HPKCC Wooded
Island Festivals and Doug Anderson’s bird tours. She worked for naming
Wooded Island the Paul H. Douglas Nature Sanctuary and the 63rd beach house
for its former advocate Eric Hatchett. After her passing, the north bridge to
Wooded Island was renamed the Nancy Campbell Hays Memorial Bridge. In the larger
world she was an extraordinary, award-winning photographer who documented change
and peoples (especially children) around the world, and in Hyde Park for the
Hyde Park Herald (and free lance) from the 1960s on.
Nancy left her enormous collection of negatives to the Hyde Park Historical
Society. The collection is housed in Regenstein Library Special Collections
at the University of Chicago. The Society has launched fundraising for an initial
exhibit this fall to kick start and give publicity for what will be a long and
costly project to develop, process, and digitize the entire collection, mount
a museum quality major exhibit, and publish a biography.
To learn about Nancy and the Project: https://www.nancyhays.org.
(Donate: …/support-project.)
. To learn about the wide ranging, high quality work of the Society, visit www.hydeparkhistory.org.
The Society’s museum and headquarters is at 5529 S. Lake Park Avenue (the
cable car building).