Affectionately dubbed The Bean, Chicago’s landmark Cloud Gate sculpture by Indian-born British sculptor, Sir Anish Kapoor, has mesmerised the imagination of its citizens and visitors alike.
But for all its popularity, the majestic installation has another, darker side — a largely unspoken back-story of frustration and anxiety that better project management might have easily alleviated.
In a previous blog, (Complex public sculptures underline importance of project management), Todd Stuart spoke of another famous project and some of the troubled history behind it.
The work, Isamu Noguchi’s News, was commissioned in 1938 by the immensely wealthy Rockefeller family. It was destined to hang over the then headquarters of Associated Press in New York, and was the world’s largest stainless steel sculpture of its day. But the project was haunted by controversy, delays, and budget blowouts.
Painful, slow, and expensive
Hindsight suggests a lack of project management competence had much to do with the angst surrounding News. The same could be said of Cloud Gate’s sometimes painful, slow, and expensive progress towards artistic acclaim and popular fancy.
The process began in 1999 with a committee of patrons of the arts and public art officials from Chicago, according to an April 25 2004 report by Alan G. Artner, the Chicago Tribune’s art critic. The committee vetted submissions from 16 to 20 international artists. The brief was vague — the one criterion was that the applicants had to have completed one or more major outdoor pieces.
The committee shortlisted the entrants to two: controversial American artist, Jeff Koons, and the eventual winner, Kapoor. Both were initially asked to create pieces for different locations in Chicago’s Millennium Park.
Koons submitted a proposal for a 46 metre-tall steel and glass structure with a viewing platform at 27 metres. The selection committee deemed it out of proportion for the site, and abandoned it in favour of the Kapoor pitch when they realised the tower would need a disability lift.
Immediate concerns
Nonetheless, after winning the public competition, concerns immediately arose about a range of issues that would dog the evolution of the Kapoor project. They would touch on timing, costs, engineering and construction, transport, user experience, and maintenance.
Kapoor was unhappy with the proposed location, preferring it to have been installed further from the park’s skating rink. The move became necessary because of concerns about the as yet un-named sculpture’s weight — 99.8 tonnes.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2004-04-25-0404250487-story.html
Wikipedia’s entry for the project reports controversy also surrounded the function, construction, and transportation of the finished work. Officials worried that extremes of heat and cold could affect the integrity of the structure, and also pose a danger to members of the public touching and even licking its surface.
Construction was first planned for Oakland California, with the completed structure shipped to Chicago through the Panama Canal and the St Lawrence Seaway. When park officials ruled the risk was too high, they decided to have the construction firm assemble the sculpture in situ.
The project lagged behind schedule from the outset, eventually taking five years to complete. Destined to play a central role in the in the grand opening of Millennium Park on July 15 2004, Kapoor was again unhappy that it was revealed in its unfinished form. The work was finally completed on August 28, 2005, and unveiled officially on May 15, 2006.
Cost the telling measure of difficulties
The most telling measure of the difficulties surrounding Cloud Gate’s final installation in Chicago was its cost. The Chicago Tribune tracked the price of the sculpture from an initial estimate of $6 million to its final price tag of $23 million, an increase of more than 380 per cent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Gate
Todd believes the lessons to emerge from the Cloud Gate story may be simpler than the apparent complexities of a challenging project. Kapoor is undoubtedly one of the world’s most talented contemporary sculptors. The art world, and those often gifted but unrecognised critics — the public — have rightly anointed Cloud Gate as a work of lasting significance.
Yet Kapoor’s apparent lack of computer-aided processing may have told against him as the project progressed. The continual blowouts in cost and time suggest project management may not have been at its best. Good project management would have displayed a better knowledge of and experience with materials and process estimating, supplier contracts, price fluctuations, extended labour inputs and costs, and the host of other variables that such a large project entails.
The lesson from Cloud Gate is that great sculpture is more than artistic inspiration. It also demands estimation skills, engineering nous, process control, logistics ability and meticulous attention to detail. All of these should be in place long before the project commences.
If you have qualms about buying or commissioning a major public sculpture, call Todd Stuart on +61 4 5151 8865, or visit mainartery.art and put your mind at rest. You might also like to visit his blog on How to avoid plop and plonk sculpture: the value of strong diagnostics.
