We've already looked at a fair amount of sculpture on the Museum Campus in this blog(Kosciuszko, Kelpies, Another Thought, Man with Fish, and Copernicus, to name a few), but one of the most practical pieces is one that we are just talking about today. In 1967, British sculptor Henry Moore made the trek to Chicago to dedicate his work Nuclear Energy, which (in addition to marking the former home field to the U of Chicago's football team) memorialized the first self-contained nuclear reaction. Some 13 years later, Moore made another contribution to the city's cultural scene when he erected a fully-functional sundial outside of the Adler Planetarium.
This sculpture, known as Man Enters the Cosmos, can actually be used to tell the time of day, as long as you don't mind figuring in Daylight Savings Time(as the sundial is not adjusted to account for that) At the base of the sculpture are two plaques. One of them is a dedication plaque detailing the story of how the work of art came to be. Right next to it is a plaque instructing viewers how to use the sundial to tell time, with instructions and a conversion chart(along with the admonishment to figure in Daylight Savings Time).
Upon its erection in 1980, the sculpture stood directly in front of the museum. However, when the Adler added on the Sky Pavilion in 1997, the sculpture was moved to a point slightly north of the museum. Nowadays, the sundial is located just outside of the planetarium's food court, and still brings wonder to Chicagoans and tourists alike 33 years after its installation.
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