Chicago's Public Art Program

Call to Visual Artists for projects at the Belmont and Fullerton CTA Red Line stops. The CTA Arts in Transit Program invites Chicago, Regional, National and International Artists to apply.

Summer Public Art Tours: Learn about the range of artworks in the City of Chicago through its Neighborhood Tours, focusing on the South, West, North sides as well as city-wide "American Art American Century" in conjunction with the Terra Foundation for American Art. A great way to learn about the range of public art projects done by artists in Chicago, including Alison Saar, Inigo Manglano-Ovalle, Arturo Herrara, Magdelena Abakanowicz, Jackie Kazarian, and many others. Tour dates and highlights follow, for additional information see www.chicagoneighborhoodtours.com

PUBLIC ART TOUR HIGHLIGHTS – WEST August 13

Geraldine McCullough
Our King, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 1973
Martin Luther King Apartments, Madison St. at Kedzie Ave.
In this 9 ft high bronze sculpture, McCullough portrays Dr. King as a great African chieftain by employing the style and symbols of 15th-century Benin art of Nigeria. Dr. King is portrayed as a universal man of peace dressed in the costume of African royalty. The figure wears a tiger-tooth necklace to indicate courage and carries the broken Coptic cross to represent his assassination. The dove of peace on the headdress and the Nobel Peace Prize medal around the figure's neck both emphasize King's mission of peace. Twelve tiny heads around the crown of the headdress represent his followers

Elizabeth Catlett
Floating Family, 1995
Legler Branch Library, 115 S. Pulaski Rd.

Catlett carved each of these floating figures from a single Mexican primavera wood tree trunk. Arms and legs were carved separately from a third trunk and attached later. In much of her work, Catlett celebrates the beauty and dignity of African American women and motherhood. These figures could be interpreted as mother and child, drifting quietly, locked together by the touch of their hands.

*Kerry James Marshall
Knowledge and Wonder, 1995
Legler Branch Library, 115 S. Pulaski Rd.
This captivating mural celebrates the library as a source of mystery and wonder. Children and adults gaze into larger-than-life books that hold answers to questions about life and the universe. Books are depicted as active agents of the imagination while planets and stars mingle with cells and molecules, symbolizing the beginning of life and the vastness of the universe. The ladder to the right of the canvas suggests the library is a means for achieving higher goals.

Kristin Jones and *Andrew Ginzel
Panopia, 2005
15th District Police Station, 5701 W. Madison St.
This colossal suspended sculpture mimics the shape of an undulating wave. Painted “Chicago blue,” the wave supports colonies of convex mirrors that reflect and embrace the police station lobby and the viewer. By reflecting the activities of the station, Panopia suggests a link between the police department, its officers and patrolmen, and the Austin community.

Trish Williams
Commune 1; Commune 2, 2005
15th District Police Station, 5701 W. Madison St.
Two textiles celebrate the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and the Austin neighborhood. Commune 1 is organic in shape and sewn with white, black and gold checkerboard patterned fabrics reflecting the uniforms of CPD officers and patrolmen. Interspersed in the patchwork of these patterns are colorful African-inspired textiles, a reflection of the rich histories of the Austin community residents. The shape of Commune 2 outlines the geography of the Austin district by incorporating photo transfer images of historic landmark structures such as the Austin town hall and Columbus Park.

*Ann Wiens, 2004
Five paintings
Chicago Center for Green Technology, 445 N. Sacramento Blvd.
Wiens combines the practice of scientific illustration with the painterly style of Op Art. In these five paintings, she portrays various animals native to the Midwest against backdrops of patterns influenced by the architecture of the building. For example, a Black Swallowtail caterpillar is superimposed against the grid of a solar panel. The animals depicted in the smaller paintings represent wildlife indicative of the four seasons.

PUBLIC ART TOUR HIGHLIGHTS – NORTH July 2, August 27

*Mary Brogger
The Haymarket Memorial, 2004
DesPlaines St. between Lake St. and Randolph St.
Brogger’s sculpture commemorates the 1886 Haymarket incident that took place during a labor rally and sparked a tragedy of international significance. Over the years, the site has become a powerful symbol for a diverse cross section of people, ideals and movements. Its significance touches on issues of free speech, the right of public assembly, organized labor, the fight for the eight-hour workday, law enforcement, justice, anarchy, and the right of every human being to pursue an equitable and prosperous life. Drawing on the symbolism of a freight wagon used as the speakers’ platform, Brogger’s sculpture marks the precise location where the wagon stood and the historic events occurred.

*Louise LeBourgeois
Untitled, 2004
17th District Police Station, 4650 N. Pulaski Rd.
LeBourgeois’ inspiration for ten compositions made from architectural glass came from Lake Michigan, an open space that is beautifully framed by lakefront parks and beaches and is essential to Chicago’s equilibrium. Equally important, the visual simplicity of the water and eastern sky reminds onlookers that a reality different from Chicago's exists and balances the bustling activity of the city.

*Jackie Kazarian
Chicago Landscape #1;Chicago Landscape #2, 2004
17th District Police Station, 4650 N. Pulaski Rd. at Leland Ave.
Inspired by the surrounding neighborhood, these two large paintings, one a landscape and the other a row of bungalows, bring lively bold colors and forms into a formally designed building. Kazarian employs the concepts of enclosure and freedom to reinforce the relationship between the police officers and the community. This has been accomplished through the contrast of the artist’s warm curvilinear technique with the building’s cool geometry.

Christine Rojek
Fruitio, 2004
Peterson Park Gymnastics Center, 5801 N. Pulaski Rd.
Peterson Park occupies the site of the former Chicago Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitarium, a 160-acre refuge for tuberculosis patients that operated from 1915 until 1974. Inspired by this history, Rojek’s outdoor sculpture commemorates the patients in isolation and celebrates the hard-fought victory over the disease. Fruition invites viewers to rest, reflect, and rejoice in the joyful sounds that now echo from the Peterson Park Gymnastics Center.

43rd and 44th Ward Sculpture
Various locations including Lincoln Ave. at Damen St.; Southport Ave. and Grace St.; Roscoe St. and Broadway St.; 3000 N. Lake Shore Dr. at Wellington St.; Fullerton Ave, Halsted St. and Lincoln Ave.; and North Ave. and Wells St.
View newly-placed sculpture that is part of the Lincoln Park Community Sculpture initiative sponsored by Ald. Vi Daley (43rd) and Ald. Tom Tunney (44th).

Ellsworth Kelly
I Will, 1981
Lincoln Park, NE corner of Fullerton Ave. and Cannon Dr.
I Will, the title of Kelly’s Minimalist sculpture, was the motto adopted by Chicagoans after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The hollow stainless steel column, rising from the ground at the fire’s northernmost end, is dedicated to the determination of Chicagoans to overcome the destruction of the fire and rebuild the city. The shape of the column correlates to the forms of skyscrapers to which the city of Chicago “gave birth.” Characteristic of Kelly’s work, I Will gives the impression of a flat, two-dimensional image despite its sculptural nature.

AMERICAN ART AMERICAN CITY PUBLIC ART TOUR HIGHLIGHTS July 16

Claes Oldenburg
Batcolumn, 1977
Harold Washington Social Security Administration Building Plaza, 600 W. Madison St.
Chicago’s skyscrapers, chimney stacks, neoclassical columns, steel bridge cross-bracing, and construction cranes inspired the design of Oldenburg’s heroic scaled, lattice-shell baseball bat. Batcolumn demonstrates the artist’s fascination with scale and changes in the significance of everyday objects when they are enlarged to monumental proportions. It can alternately be seen as a reference to historical monumental columns, a salute to the American institution of baseball or a tribute to the steel industry.

Alexander Calder
Flamingo, 1974
Federal Center Plaza, Dearborn St. and Adams St.
Calder’s abstract stabile anchors the large rectangular plaza bordered by three Bauhaus style federal buildings designed by Mies van der Rohe. The sculpture’s vivid color and curvilinear form contrast dramatically with the angular steel and glass surroundings. However, Flamingo is constructed from similar materials and shares certain design principles with the architecture, thereby achieving successful integration within the plaza.

Milton Horn
Chicago Rising from the Lake, 1954
Columbus Drive Bridge, Columbus Dr. at the Chicago River
Horn’s bronze bas-relief is symbolic of the city of Chicago. The female figure represents Chicago, emerging reborn from the bottom of Lake Michigan following the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. The sheaf of wheat, bull and eagle reference Chicago’s historic role as a center of commerce, the livestock market and air transportation, respectively. Floral forms evoke the city motto, Urbs in Horto or (City in a Garden.) Finally, the bronze ring arching across the relief represents Chicago’s central geography within the United States.

Lorado Taft
Fountain of Time, 1922
Washington Park; Midway Plaisance, Cottage Grove Ave. and 59th St.
Taft’s sculptural allegory of humanity’s relationship with time positions a tall, imposing figure across a reflecting pool from a 110-foot-long mass of figures representing the universal human themes of love, war and the cycle of life. This sea of humanity appears to strain in unison across the void toward the solitary figure.

Daniel Chester French
The Republic, 1918
Jackson Park, Hayes (63rd St.) and Richards Dr.
This 24-foot-high “Golden Lady” is about one-third as tall as the original, which at 65 feet in height and standing on a 35-foot base, towered over the eastern end of the Grand Basin that filled the Court of Honor, the heart of the grounds at the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893.

Hermon Atkins MacNeil, Edward Kemeys, J.A. Holzer,
Jacques Marquette Memorial, 1894
Marquette Building, 140 S. Dearborn St.
The Marquette Building, designed by Holabird & Roche, incorporates major artworks that depict events in Chicago's early history through Native American and early French exploration themes. The bronze frieze over the exterior entrance designed by sculptor Hermon Atkins MacNeil illustrates the 17th century Midwestern journeys of missionary Father Jacques Marquette and explorer Louis Jolliet. Sculptor Edward Kemeys’ bronze portrait plaques over the elevators portray important Native Americans and early French explorers of the area. The mezzanine glass mosaic illustrating events in the Midwestern journeys of Father Marquette was created by the famed Tiffany Glass and Decorating Company and designed and supervised by its chief mosaicist J. A. Holzer.

About Chicago's Public Art Program:

Expressions of a culture’s concerns and beliefs through murals, paintings, sculpture and other artistic forms have existed for thousands of years. Artists and communities around the world continue the tradition of erecting monuments to commemorate events and people of importance. Chicago is no exception. Monuments were erected in the city before the city’s incorporation in 1837, a tradition that continues to the present day.

The current trend of installing non-commemorative sculptures throughout the city began in 1967 when Mayor Richard J. Daley dedicated Picasso's untitled sculpture located at the Civic Center Plaza. The installation of the Chicago Picasso inspired a cultural renaissance, which evoked a public interest in private and public investment in public art. Since then, the downtown streets of Chicago have become a “sculpture gallery” displaying works by many world-renowned artists. The city’s collection of outdoor sculpture is as distinguished as its world-class architecture. However, public art in Chicago far exceeds sculptures installed in the downtown area. It encompasses all areas of the visual arts and is exhibited in municipal buildings and neighborhoods throughout the city.

In 1978, the Chicago City Council unanimously approved an ordinance stipulating that a percentage of the cost of constructing or renovating municipal buildings be set aside for the commission or purchase of artworks. At that time, Chicago was one of the first municipalities, and the largest, to legislate the incorporation of public art into its official building program. Today, there are more than 200 similar programs in cities throughout the United States, due in large part to the success of the Chicago ordinance. The Public Art Program was developed to implement the ordinance’s mission to provide the citizens of Chicago with an improved public environment through the enhancement of city buildings and spaces with quality works of art by professional artists. The ordinance stipulates that at least half of the commissions be awarded to Chicago-area artists to provide opportunities to the local arts community.

The City of Chicago Public Art Program also encourages and facilitates collaborations between government agencies, the private sector and other sponsors. The collaboration with Chicago Gateway Green and Sister Cities International for the International Sculpture Exchange Program is a significant example of this type of public/private partnership. Epitomizing such collaborations are the artworks and improvements of Millennium Park, which were made possible through the generosity of corporate and private sponsors. It is through such collaborations that Chicago has built one of the finest collections of contemporary public art in the world.

From time to time, the Public Art Program also oversees special projects that further contribute to the cultural enrichment of Chicago. Among special projects to date, the 1999 Cows on Parade exhibition is perhaps most broadly known.

More information about the Public Art Program and slide registry forms for artists are available through the City of Chicago website at: http://www.cityofchicago.org/PublicArt.