The Bean

This past weekend I flew to Chicago for a mini-vacation with my mom and sister. None of us live there but it is a good meeting point between Colorado and New York. Chicago was great but FREEZING cold. We indulged in deep dish pizza, drank local Goose Island beer and saw a lot of art. We attended a first Friday party at The Museum of Contemporary Art which was very cool and we were able to catch the Edward Hopper show at The Art Institute as well as peruse their main collection (which I fell in love with when I was 8 — the last time I was in Chicago). But hands down, “The Bean” in Millennium Park was my favorite piece of art that I saw this weekend. The giant stainless steel sculpture is actually entitled, “Cloud Gate” but has been endearingly nicknamed “The Bean” because of its shape. Click “more” to see some of the images we took of the sculpture.“Cloud Gate” is British artist Anish Kapoor’s first public outdoor work installed in the United States. It is s 110-ton elliptical sculpture 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.This is the view looking up when standing under/in the sculpture. That’s me in red reflected from above and all sides. Really cool and impossible to capture in a photograph. Special thanks to former Chicago resident, Emil for recommending “The Bean” as a must see!