Regional mentality helps arts flourish

Chris Jones column - chicagotribune.com: In the years leading up to Millennium Park's completion in 2004, philanthropist John Bryan led fundraising for the $475 million park, inarguably the most daring and successful cultural project in Chicago of at least the last decade. The gestation of the enterprise was fraught but, time now reveals, the bold idea of covering railroad tracks and a gravel parking lot with world-class interactive art, horticulture and performance spaces was transformative. And it was funded largely by private cash.