Cloud Gate
Kapoor, Anish
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Alternative Title
Millennium Park: Cloud Gate
Date
1999-2005Description
View under the gate, showing the passage and the reflection above; Cloud Gate is British artist Anish Kapoor's first public outdoor work installed in the United States. The 110-ton elliptical sculpture is forged of a seamless series of highly polished stainless steel plates, which reflect the city's famous skyline and the clouds above. A 12-foot-high arch provides a "gate" to the concave chamber beneath the sculpture, inviting visitors to touch its mirror-like surface and see their image reflected back from a variety of perspectives. Inspired by liquid mercury, the sculpture is among the largest of its kind in the world, measuring 66-feet long by 33-feet high. "What I wanted to do in Millennium Park is make something that would engage the Chicago skyline...so that one will see the clouds kind of floating in, with those very tall buildings reflected in the work. And then, since it is in the form of a gate, the participant, the viewer, will be able to enter into this very deep chamber that does, in a way, the same thing to one's reflection as the exterior of the piece is doing to the reflection of the city around." -Anish Kapoor Source: Millennium Park, Chicago [website]; http://www.millenniumpark.org/ (accessed 7/12/2008)
Type of Work
sculpture (visual work)Subject
abstraction or non-objective, contemporary (1960 to present), parks (recreation areas), entry, portal, gate, reflective, Twenty-first century
Rights
Rights Statement
Licensed for educational and research use by the MIT community only