Imagine Millennium Park without the Bean in its current spot, sitting pretty atop the Park Grill restaurant.
The Cloud Gate sculpture, created by Anish Kapoor and known as the iconic symbol of Millennium Park, originally was planned for another area of the park, and a different sculpture was envisioned for the place where the Bean now sits.
During the planning of Millennium Park, an art committee considered artists from around the world who had done major outdoor public sculptures, said Ed Uhlir, executive director of Millennium Park Foundation and then-project director of the park.
The committee narrowed its sights on two artists: Kapoor and Jeff Koons. Koons’ Balloon Dog (Orange) sculpture became the most expensive piece of art made by a living artist when it sold for $58.4 million in 2013.
The artists were asked for ideas that were specific to a Millennium Park site, Uhlir said. Kapoor was given the garden while Koons had the plaza where the Bean currently resides.
Koons proposed an intertwined steel-and-glass sculpture of giant heads of a bunny, a goat and a monkey that would be 150 feet tall, three times the size of the glass block towers of Crown Fountain, Uhlir said.
“It would be dwarfing some of the buildings across the street. His idea was you’d walk up nine stories and then enter on a platform and get on a spiral slide that circled around until you finally got down nine stories,” he said.
The Koons piece seemed impractical, with the cost unresolved and the sculpture not accessible to people with disabilities, Uhlir said. It was considered too large and would impact the Michigan Avenue Streetwall (the row of historic buildings on Michigan Avenue facing Grant Park), he said.
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So the committee went with Kapoor’s idea, but decided to move it to its current location. A reinforced retaining wall beneath the Bean supports its weight.
Significant changes would have had to be made to the parking garage if the 110-ton sculpture went in the garden, Uhlir said. Plus, there was an inkling it was going to be an attraction.
“If you put it in the middle of the garden, we thought people would probably destroy the garden to get up to it,” he said. It turned out the central spot, highly visible from Michigan Avenue, was the best place for it, he said.
“We thought it would be popular, but not as popular as it would become,” Uhlir said. “It’s probably one of the most famous pieces of outdoor contemporary sculptures in the world.”
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