Jay Pritzker Pavilion

Jay Pritzker Pavilion, 2004

Frank Gehry

Millennium Park

Randolph Street between Michigan Avenue and Columbus Drive

            After agreeing to accept the commission for the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry (born 1929) stated that he would “like to design the relationship between the audience and the stage,” and, in so doing, he would answer the question of how to create an outdoor space “where the people who are far away from the orchestra feel like they are included in the performance.” The solution involved an innovative arching trellis and distributed sound system, which covers the elliptical lawn on the north end of Millennium Park, combined with his signature billowing stainless steel sails forming a “headdress” above the stage. The Pavilion includes 4000 fixed seats near the stage and it can accommodate an additional 7000 people on the Great Lawn. The twenty-two steel arches of the trellis, some of which span more than 400 feet, allow the speakers to be placed above the audience without blocking sight lines. The lead structural engineer for this project, John Zils of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, had worked with Gehry on his famous Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain as well as the Vila Olimpica in Barcelona.

            Cindy Pritzker, a member of the Millennium Park Committee, was instrumental in promoting Gehry as the best choice for this project and the Pritzker family, associated with Hyatt Hotels, made the largest private financial contribution for the Pavilion. Jay A. Pritzker, who died on January 23, 1999 and for whom the Pavilion is named, and his wife Cindy established the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1978 and it was awarded to Frank Gehry in 1989.

            Part of Gehry’s Millennium Park commission included the opportunity to complete his first-ever bridge design, resulting in the snake-like BP Bridge, a 925-foot long brushed stainless steel and wood bridge that spans the four lanes of Columbus Drive, connecting Millennium Park with Daley Bicentennial Plaza. Resembling the prehistoric Great Serpent Mound in southwest Ohio, the BP Bridge offers a stunning view of the Pritzker Pavilion while providing an acoustical barrier to lower the noise of nearby traffic. 

Running Table

Running Table, 1997

Dan Peterman

Millennium Park, east of Cloud Gate

201 East Randolph Street

            Originally located in the A. Montgomery Ward Garden in Grant Park, this 100-foot long picnic table with benches is one of two works fashioned from recycled plastic extrusions for the “Chicago Front Yard Picnic.” The second work, Chicago Ground Cover, a 50 x 50 foot dance platform, has been moved to the Spirit of Music Garden at 601 South Michigan Avenue and expanded to 4600 square feet in order to accommodate more dancers. Running Table now sits east of Anish Kapoor’s CloudGate ("The Bean") in Millennium Park.

            Running Table inspires introspection and interaction on a number of levels. Functionally, the table invites strangers from various walks of life to congregate as they eat. Sociologically, such interactions may reveal a sense of community, or lack thereof, in a public space in the city. As an object crafted from recycled extruded plastic (the equivalent of two million milk jugs) in a space often defined by city-sponsored fairs and tourism, it comments on the waste produced during such events and in American society in general. Because the table is modular, constructed from interlocking pieces, it may, theoretically, be extended endlessly. Thus, it could be understood to speak to the ongoing need for creative solutions to the issues of consumer waste and over-consumption or, perhaps, the ultimate futility of such endeavors.

            Peterman received his M.F.A. from the University of Chicago in 1986 and is known for works of art that engage with their environment and with the public in ways that explore networks of recycled and discarded materials. In 2002, he co-founded, with Connie Spreen, the “Experimental Station” on the south side of Chicago, a not-for-profit “incubator of innovative cultural, educational, and environmental projects and small-scale enterprises.” In addition to housing his studio and providing venues for various artistic and cultural events, one occupant is the Blackstone Bicycle Works, a youth education program that pairs skilled bicycle mechanics with young people from the Woodlawn neighborhood and the South Side in order to teach mechanical and other job skills. The shop promotes ecological practices as it refurbishes donated and abandoned bicycles and allows the interns to work toward purchase of such bikes, as well as offering them for sale to the general public.

                        

Crown Fountain

Crown Fountain, 2004

Jaume Plensa

Millennium Park

Corner of Michigan Avenue and Monroe Drive

In his review of the unveiling of Millennium Park in 2004, the Pulitzer Prize-winning, Chicago Tribune architecture critic Blair Kamin began by stating, “Roll over, Buckingham Fountain.” The installation of Crown Fountain brought “the art of the urban fountain into the 21^st century.”

Gifted to the people of Chicago by the Crown family and designed by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa, it is one of the major public art works at Millennium Park, a short walk from Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate. The fountain consists of two 50-foot glass block towers located at the ends of a 232-foot shallow reflecting pool. Unlike the basin at the Clarence F. Buckingham Memorial Fountain, here visitors are encouraged to walk through the water. Each tower projects a series of LED video images. With a reference to the traditional use of  open-mouthed gargoyles spilling out water as a symbol of life, this interactive fountain showcases images of Chicagoans who “spit” water from their lips. Filmed with a high-definition camera by students from the Art Institute of Chicago, the subjects were selected from a number of city organizations from a cross-section of 1,000 residents; they were not told they would be part of a fountain but should act as if they were blowing a kiss. These faces appear for five minutes at a time before fading with a cascade of water from the top of the structure. "I believe in the anonymous people building up a city. They represent all of us, they become symbols—they could be your son or girlfriend or grandfather," Plensa told the Sun-Times in 2007.  More than 11,000 gallons of water flow out of the mouths and through the fountain per hour.

Plensa’s work is featured in more than cities around the world, including Dubai, London, Tokyo, Toronto and Vancouver. Themes of his prior works—dualism, light and water—are evident in this fountain. He combines conventional materials, such as glass, steel, bronze and aluminum, with more unconventional media such as video, sound, and light. In this way, Plensa creates hybrid, energetic forms and his work evokes emotion as he connects with his viewers on an intuitive level.

Fountain of the Great Lakes

Fountain of the Great Lakes, 1913

Lorado Taft

South Garden of the Art Institute of Chicago

111 South Michigan Avenue

        For this first work of public sculpture funded by the B. F. Ferguson Monument Fund, sculptor LoradoTaft (1860-1936) designed a towering bronze fountain featuring five female figures, “of no time nor race,” pouring water from shells as a symbol of the continuous flow of water from the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence seaway into the Atlantic Ocean. In part, the concept was based upon his own memory of the myth of the Danaïdes, in which all but one of the 50 daughters of Danaus are convinced by their father to kill their husbands on their wedding night and are, subsequently, punished in Hades by being compelled to pour water endlessly into a vessel full of holes. Taft reduces the number of women to five, corresponding to the number of Great Lakes, and positions them in a relationship that mirrors the flow of water, from Superior at the top with Michigan on the side pouring into the basin held by Huron, who sends it to Erie. Ontario receives the water at the bottom and looks to the right (originally eastward) as it heads toward the Atlantic.

            After producing two sculptural groups for the Horticultural Building at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, Taft was sensitive to Chicago planner Daniel Burnham’s lament that no sculptors at the Exposition had made anything related to the natural resources of the Chicago region, including the nearby lake. The Illinois-born Taft was educated at the École des Beaux Arts in Paris during the 1880s, the school directly associated with the Greek- and Roman-inspired architecture adopted by Burnham and others for the “White City” buildings. In addition to answering to Burnham’s comment with this fountain, Taft believed it offered the kind of “enduring statuary” demanded by the Ferguson Monument Fund.

            Established in 1905 following the death of wealthy lumber merchant Benjamin Franklin Ferguson, the one million dollar bequest stipulated that monies be used for the erection and maintenance of stone, granite or bronze statuary “commemorating worthy men or women of America or important events in American history.”  Rather than create a work that “represented” Ferguson in a literal sense, Taft intended the fountain to “commemorate” the donor and honor his hope that Chicago would join the ranks of major cities of Europe that featured impressive statues and fountains.

            Although the Ferguson Fund was intended to be used only for public sculpture, the Board of Trustees of the Art Institute, who were charged with managing the trust, filed a complaint in the Circuit Court of Cook County and, eventually, were allowed to use the fund to erect and maintain an administrative building, resulting in a scandal amongst sculptors and other civic-minded individuals. When the Fountain of the Great Lakes was moved in 1963 from its original location on the south wall of the main building to the west façade of the new Morton wing, critics pointed out that the fountain’s new position would hide the bronze portrait of Ferguson on the back side of the work, as well as the engraved request from his will stating that the funds be used for enduring statuary and monuments.

Other works: 

• George Washington—Robert Morris—Haym Salomon Monument
• The Crusader: Victor Lawson Monument
• Eternal Silence: Dexter Graves Monument
• Fountain of Time

Two Deer, The Fawn

Two Deer, The Fawn, 1970s

John Kearney

Near Aon Center

200 East Randolph Street

            Animals from sculptor John Kearney’s “bumper zoo” may be found all over the city of Chicago. Crafted from steel automobile bumpers, Kearney (b. 1924) began working with automobile parts in the mid-1960s and by 1969 had developed an approach in which he welded the ends of unused but outdated bumpers into remarkable depictions of animals, including camels, horses, goats, bison, giraffes, deer, frogs and an elephant created for Lincoln Park Zoo. The two deer and fawn in this installation seem to graze naturally amongst the trees and plants and the surrounding greenery adds an element of color to the metal in sunlight.

            Kearney was born in Omaha, Nebraska and received his art training at Cranbrook Academy in Michigan. In addition to delighting viewers of all ages with his whimsical creatures, Kearney has been an active teacher and mentor to young artists who sought instruction as well as studio and exhibition space at his Contemporary Art Workshop, a non-profit institution that he co-founded with his wife Lynn in 1949. The workshop closed in 2009 when the Kearneys decided to retire. 

Other work: 

• Dorothy and Toto