So, you've walked out of Millennium Station and now want to go see some sculpture. Well, you're in luck because Millennium Park has many works of public art in it, some of which can be considered bizarre. From the water-emitting photos of the Crown Fountain, to the winding nature of the BP Bridge, even to the Frank Gehry metalgasm that is the Pritzker Pavillion, Millennium Park certainly has the market cornered on quixotic sculptures. However, the most interesting piece in the Park has to be a certain highly-reflective metal sculpture.
When Millennium Park was first being planned out, a panel of art experts solicited and judged the entries of 30 different artists and asked two of them for a proposal for a work of art to put into the park. The first proposal was by the artist Jeff Koons, and can be best described as a 150-foot tall sculpture of a slide, featuring an observation deck 90 feet off the ground. Ultimately, this design was not selected, the panel opting for the second design, a 100-ton work by Internationally acclaimed artist Anish Kapoor. Officially known as Cloud Gate(owing to the fact that most of the sculpture reflects the sky and can be interpreted as a gate to such a place), the fact that it is shaped like a giant bean has lead everyone to merely refer to it as that: The Bean.
One of the more fascinating stories surrounding The Bean has to do with its construction. In 2004, construction of The Bean was started. The first step was the installation of two giant steel rings to act as the skeleton of the sculpture. After that, workers affixed 168 stainless steel panels(each one weighing as much as 2,000 pounds) to the framework. Finally, the whole sculpture underwent five stages of buffing to ensure that the exterior of the work would be totally seamless.
In the many years of its existence, it has quickly become an obligatory Chicago destination. Just go onto Facebook and look up a photo album of your friends in the city, and I guarantee that you'll see several shots of them taking a photo if their reflections in The Bean. Interestingly enough, this was not always the case though. When the work was first unveiled, the city attempted to prevent the taking of photos at The Bean, so as to protect the rights of the artist. Clearly, that initiative did not last long, and so The Bean carries on as likely what is Chicago's most photographed landmark.
When Millennium Park was first being planned out, a panel of art experts solicited and judged the entries of 30 different artists and asked two of them for a proposal for a work of art to put into the park. The first proposal was by the artist Jeff Koons, and can be best described as a 150-foot tall sculpture of a slide, featuring an observation deck 90 feet off the ground. Ultimately, this design was not selected, the panel opting for the second design, a 100-ton work by Internationally acclaimed artist Anish Kapoor. Officially known as Cloud Gate(owing to the fact that most of the sculpture reflects the sky and can be interpreted as a gate to such a place), the fact that it is shaped like a giant bean has lead everyone to merely refer to it as that: The Bean.
One of the more fascinating stories surrounding The Bean has to do with its construction. In 2004, construction of The Bean was started. The first step was the installation of two giant steel rings to act as the skeleton of the sculpture. After that, workers affixed 168 stainless steel panels(each one weighing as much as 2,000 pounds) to the framework. Finally, the whole sculpture underwent five stages of buffing to ensure that the exterior of the work would be totally seamless.
In the many years of its existence, it has quickly become an obligatory Chicago destination. Just go onto Facebook and look up a photo album of your friends in the city, and I guarantee that you'll see several shots of them taking a photo if their reflections in The Bean. Interestingly enough, this was not always the case though. When the work was first unveiled, the city attempted to prevent the taking of photos at The Bean, so as to protect the rights of the artist. Clearly, that initiative did not last long, and so The Bean carries on as likely what is Chicago's most photographed landmark.
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