His 1995 work Turning the World Inside Out, far smaller than the one proposed for Chicago, served as the conceptual basis for the polished metal work-a representation of liquid mercury, to some-that would become Cloud Gate. His works are housed in museums around the world, from San Francisco to Parto, Italy, and Sydney, Australia.Īt the time of the Millennium Park proposal, Kapoor had yet to create a site-specific installation in the United States. Kapoor has enjoyed solo exhibitions at some of art’s most respected venues, including the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Reina Sofia in Madrid, among many others.
He was a standout at Hornsey College of Art and Chelsea School of Art Design, and his reputation as one of the world’s leading sculptors has only grown. The Artist behind the Chicago Beanīorn in 1954 in Bombay (now Mumbai), India, Kapoor moved to London in the 1970s. That optimistic estimate would be tripled before the final unveiling of Cloud Gate. The final decision, announced in 1999, budgeted just under $6 million for the project, with Ameritech contributing some $3 million. That space was also better suited to handle the 110-ton weight of the steel form. The solution was to move Kapoor’s unnamed project (Kapoor names projects only after their completion) to the space initially reserved for Koons. The only concern about Kapoor’s work, according to some, was that its location in the Lurie Garden might generate so much foot traffic as to trample the organic installations there. Reservations were in contrast to Kapoor’s proposal of a mirrored stainless steel object roughly 66 feet long.
The physical size of the work, the committee also feared, could come to dominate the space. Yet to make the vision a reality, other components would be necessary, namely an elevator that could ensure access to the work for disabled visitors. Visitors would be able to observe the park from on high, then slide down to ground level. Koons envisioned a 150-foot-long glass and steel slide raised 90 feet above the ground. The initial proposal from Koons, however, quickly ran into challenges. With the field narrowed, the committee commissioned both artists for works in separate areas of Grant Park-Koons’ in AT&T Plaza (then known as Ameritech and later SBC Plaza) and Kapoor’s in the Lurie Garden. Without soliciting specific ideas for the spaces in Millennium Park, the committee narrowed its list to just two artists: British artist Anish Kapoor and U.S. To start, the committee pooled a list of 16–30 artists (the number varies based on accounts) from around the world with experience in large-scale outdoor works. A committee that included representatives from the Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and some of the city’s foremost art patrons was tasked with narrowing the field and ultimately choosing the artists to tackle these public art installations. Part of Millennium Park included plans for several public art works. (Funds came from tax payers and private donors.)
Nor were its costs as originally anticipated, rising from a substantial $150 million to $475 million by the time of completion.
Planning for the project in a northwest corner of Grant Park began in 1997, but delays pushed its public unveiling to 2004, nearly half a decade after the transition into the 2000s. Millennium Park, in some ways, is a misnomer. This is the inside story on Chicago Bean history. The final product, a gleaming steel mirror that bends the Chicago sky and skyline around its surface, had a long path to fruition, from selection to development. In less than a decade, Cloud Gate, known by most simply as “the Bean,” has vaulted into one of Chicago’s top attractions.
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