On June 19, Tempo chronicled a five-year effort by a group of Chicagoans to honor social-work pioneer Jane Addams with a public statue.
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Acclaimed artist Louise Bourgeois had fashioned six sculptures, each depicting hands in open and helping gestures, as a symbol of Addams’ work, and the hope was that the pieces would be installed at Navy Pier Park, a small Chicago Park District site near Navy Pier.
But the sculptures were in storage waiting for work to begin on the site, which couldn’t happen until some government agency came up with the estimated $350,000 to $400,000 needed for the job.
Because of some budgetary maneuvering, it now appears work will begin at the site about September.
On June 24, the board of the Metropolitan Pier and Exposition Authority, which oversees Navy Pier, agreed to advance $300,000 to the Park District for the project. The district, in turn, agreed to reimburse the money when it received some anticipated state and federal grants, said Ed Uhlir, the district’s assistant superintendent for research and planning.
Beginning this fall, Uhlir said, workers will demolish the roadbed and parking lot at the site, do some rough grading and install electrical and drainage systems. Work will resume in the spring, when the site is relandscaped and the sculptures installed. He said it hasn’t been determined when the sculptures will be dedicated. When they are, it is expected the site will be renamed Jane Addams Park.
The Benjamin F. Ferguson Fund, a philanthropy administered by the Art Institute of Chicago, commissioned the Bourgeois work. A committee of the fund didn’t officially approve the sculptures and the installation site plan until July 12, according to Robert Mars, the museum’s executive vice president and its principal liaison with the fund.
Mars said the museum is considering putting the sculptures on exhibit late this year. He said the fund is withholding pictures of the sculptures in hopes of making the exhibition even more of an event.