ArchitectureChicago Plus Blog Overrun - It's a Bean! Big Tent Gives Birth (Again) to Kapoor's Cloud Gate Sculpture



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It's a Bean! Big Tent Gives Birth (Again) to Kapoor's Cloud Gate Sculpture

Expanded ArchitectureChicago Plus posting from August 25th , 2005

Since January of this year, Anish Kapoor's Millennium Park sculpture Cloud Gate has been housed in an enormous tent as ironworkers set to grinding and polishing away the seams between the sculpture's 168 separate metal plates. Now, eight months later. the tent has been removed and this Sunday, August 27th, the entire sculpture will be available to the public, much closer to the perfection that Kapoor originally envisioned, a spectacular uninterrupted. curving mirrored surface.

The cost of the sculpture has now officially risen to $19,000,000, more than double the original estimate, and it's still not complete. Beginning in October, its underside will be closed off from public view to polish away the last exposed seams.

Cloud Gate in Chicago's Millennium Park - the Last Scaffolding Comes Down
August 24th, 2005 - the last of the scaffolding comes down.

Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate Sculpture in Chicago's Millennium Park - Some Last Minute Touchups

Some final adjustments along the sculpture's northwest surface.

Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate Sculpture in Chicago's Millennium Park

Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate "The Bean" Sculpture in Chicago's Millennium Park

Scaffolding is piled up to be trucked away.

Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate "The Bean" Sculpture in Chicago's Millennium Park - mirror reflections

Two examples of reflections in Cloud Gate's spectacular curving mirrored surface.

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