Barnard as a child in Kankakee.

George Grey Barnard spent the formative years of his life, from age 5 to age 13, in Kankakee.

Those childhood years were imprinted indelibly on his mind. For the rest of Barnard's long lifetime - through his years of growing fame and success as a sculptor - childhood days and childhood friends in Kankakee remained a vivid presence.

As he wrote to one of those friends in 1936, when he was 72 years old, "...you are one of the near and dear of my childhood days. I am amazed at times, when the reality of those hours and days come back to me. Often, with closed eyes, I see them as they were. Sometimes, I think it is because I left you all and Kankakee so early in life that I remember so well its details."

Because of his strong feelings for the town of his childhood, the sculptor decided in that same year to donate a number of his studio plaster statues and studies for display in Central School. The surviving pieces from that gift, George Barnard's legacy to Kankakee, form the core of the Museum's collection.

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