Chicago Bean won’t have visitors until 2024, because construction is taking place on Grainger Plaza. The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events announced on its website that access stops this week. The whole Millennium Park and Cloud Gate will not be available for public access and view (or the Bean) until two years from now, in spring.
Chicago Bean – One of the World’s Highest Public Installations
Anish Kapoor’s public sculpture always attracted many tourists, but they will have to wait at least two years to get close to this public masterpiece. “This necessary maintenance by the City of Chicago will replace pavers and make other repairs and accessibility upgrades to the Plaza. This will enhance the nearly 20-year-old Park’s appearance, visitor experience, and position as the #1 attraction in the Midwest”, the sector stated.
Cloud Gate (2006) is 33 feet high, 42 feet wide, and 66 feet long. With this numbers, it takes one of the first places on being the highest public sculpture ever created. Its installation costed $23 million. The installation consists of 168 plates of stainless steel, soldered together and honed to a dazzling shine.
This is the reason why tourists always take pictures and selfies near it, and why its so popular. The British-Indian artist expressed complex emotions over the wide appeal of the artwork and its propensity to elicit strong sentiments. “When I first did Cloud Gate in Chicago, I saw those pictures of hundreds of people around the piece. I thought, ‘Oh God, what have I done? Is this Disneyland?”. he said.
Get the latest articles delivered to your inbox
Sign up to our Free Weekly Newsletter
The Mistery Behind the Cloud Gate
The artist also added: ” I decided to go to Chicago to try to understand what’s really going on there. It didn’t take me long to understand that actually there is something mysterious about that object, and its mystery is to do with its scale. And that comes down to just one simple fact: it has no joints”.
Cloud Gate has also been a featured location for several television shows and movies, including Chicago Med, The Break-Up, Source Code, The Vow, The Beast, and the fourth installment of the film franchise “Transformers”.
The popularity of Cloud Gate has led Kapoor to accuse the Chinese city of Karamay of plagiarism in 2015 and to sue the National Rifle Association of America for copyright infringement after the group included an image of the sculpture in two videos. There is now a smaller version by the artist that finally opened earlier this year at the base of a luxury residential tower in Manhattan after years of delays.
