Cloud Gate

168 plates, and the work of hiding the joins

The plates were made in California. Performance Structures Inc., of Oakland, fabricated the 168 metal plates and shipped them to Chicago. MTH Industries, a Chicago glass and architectural metal contractor then 120 years old, installed the sculpture over what its engineer called a totally unique, two-year-long experience.

Underneath the mirror is a frame. Lou Cerny, vice president of engineering at MTH Industries and the project manager, described starting with two large fabricated 304 stainless steel O-shaped rings, one at the north end and one at the south, held together by criss-crossing pipe trusses. The ring-core subframe was built in sections and field-bolted with welded reinforcements.

The plates were then hung one at a time. The dome on the underside went up first, suspended from the truss on a temporary four-point system of hangers, cables and springs, and the springs were readjusted after each new plate to rebalance the load. Every plate had a four-point spring support of its own.

The tolerances were the hard part. Lou Cerny said the plates were put together to a 0/0 clearance and that the aim was not to overstress any joint, because a plate striking the one below it could cause problems. He added that the job had never been done before and that they had been told it could not be done.

Grinding the seams out

Welding came after hanging. Once every plate was installed and the exterior plate welding was complete, permanent weld-ups were done on the inside of the shell. The final phase was grinding and polishing.

Lou Cerny stated the goal plainly: to eliminate any visible trace of the seam, so as to maintain the reflective quality of the sculpture. His reasoning was about exposure rather than neatness. People can walk up to it from every possible angle, he said, and it is fully exposed under the brightest light available, the full sun at high noon. The work therefore had to remain invisible for the piece to work effectively.

The omphalos was finished last. Millennium Park recorded the final stage as grinding and polishing the seams inside the underbelly, with the archway entrances walled off in clear plastic and the chamber closed to the public while it went on.

The American Welding Society recognised the result. It gave its Extraordinary Welding Award to the project in 2007, honouring MTH Industries and Performance Structures Inc. among others.

The tent, and an opening before the work was finished

Assembly was meant to happen elsewhere. Lynn Becker's photo essay on the making records that the original plan was to assemble the sculpture offsite and ship it to Chicago finished, and that this soon proved impracticable. It was built in the park instead, in public.

A tent then hid it. The first structural piece went in during March 2004, a protective tent went up in April, and by June the work was shielded from view. The tent was partially opened in July for ventilation and the public could watch again.

Millennium Park opened on 16 July 2004 with the sculpture unfinished. The seams were still visible and still to be welded and ground. The work was untented completely only by 28 August 2005, and the omphalos polishing ran later still, which is why the sculpture carries a date range rather than a single year.

Who owns the copyright, and who may sell a photograph

The sculpture belongs to the city; the copyright does not. The Christian Science Monitor reported in 2005 that the artist retains copyright in the work. Chicago had bought a licence instead. The attorney Henry Kleeman, who negotiated with the park's artists, described it as a perpetual paid-up license to reproduce the artwork for commercial purposes.

That arrangement caused a public row. Security guards ejected a professional photographer, telling him he could not photograph the sculpture because its copyright belonged to the artist. The park's project director visited gallery owners and demanded they stop selling postcards of it. The city later said the ejection had been about permits rather than copyright, and suspended its photo-permit policy.

Casual photography was never the issue. The same report noted that a tourist taking a picture is protected by the fair-use exemption in the Copyright Act. The dispute was about who may sell the image, not who may make one.

Anish Kapoor has enforced the copyright since. In 2018 he began a copyright action against the National Rifle Association over a fleeting shot of Cloud Gate in its recruitment video The Violence of Lies, and settled out of court in December. He called the video abhorrent and said it sought to promote fear, hostility and division in American society, and he asked the organisation to donate a million dollars to charities supporting victims of gun violence.

The name nobody uses

Cloud Gate is the title and the Bean is the name. The nickname attached itself during construction, when the unfinished shape looked more like a bean than a gate, and it has not been dislodged.

Anish Kapoor gave up resisting it. He told the Chicago Sun-Times that he calls it the Bean too.

The title describes what he wanted. He said the point was to 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. Because it is in the form of a gate, he added, the viewer can enter a deep chamber. That chamber does to a reflection what the outside of the piece does to the city.

Damage, cleaning and closure

A mirror in a city needs maintenance. The lower plates are wiped daily and the whole surface is washed twice a year, because the sculpture is at hand height and several million people a year touch it.

It has been scratched. Chicago newspapers reported an instance of deliberate damage to the surface, which the authorities described as rare.

The plaza beneath it was rebuilt. Cloud Gate was fenced off while Grainger Plaza, the paving it stands on, was reconstructed, and the city announced in June 2024 that the sculpture would fully reopen to visitors.

Close reading

Reading the work, detail by detail

The photograph is taken from across the plaza, end-on to the sculpture and some distance from it, under heavy cloud. The whole object is in frame, with the Chicago skyline behind it. What appears on the sculpture's surface is that skyline reflected and compressed; it is the city and the weather, not anything Anish Kapoor shaped. The underside chamber is visible only as a dark opening.