Cloud Gate Chicago

Cloud Gate and the Rest of Millennium Park: Two Hours Well Spent

Anish Kapoor was awarded the commission for Cloud Gate in 1999 and completed it in 2006, which anyone who knows Kapoor’s relationship with deadlines will recognise as a relatively prompt delivery. The sculpture weighs 110 tonnes and is made from 168 stainless steel plates, welded and polished to seamless mirror quality. No visible joint lines, no bolts, nothing to interrupt the reflection. Up close, the engineering achievement is the part that actually impresses; the photographs don’t convey the scale or the precision of the surface.

The nickname “the Bean” was apparently disliked by Kapoor but has completely won. You will not find anyone in Chicago calling it Cloud Gate.

What You’re Looking At

The form is based on a liquid mercury droplet and the surface is concave on the underside (the omphalos, or navel), where reflections of the city converge and distort in a way that produces genuinely strange visual effects. Standing underneath looking up, you see a compressed and inverted Chicago skyline meeting itself. The surrounding buildings of Millennium Park and the clouds above appear around the edge, which is why the sculpture’s official name is accurate even if nobody uses it.

It is free to visit. Millennium Park is free to enter. This is one of the more convincing arguments for Chicago as a city: serious public art, well-maintained, accessible to everyone.

Millennium Park

Cloud Gate is in the southeast corner of Millennium Park, the 99-acre park on Chicago’s lakefront that opened in 2004 and replaced a former rail yard. The park is genuinely excellent as an urban space.

The Jay Pritzker Pavilion, designed by Frank Gehry, has 4,000 fixed seats and room for 7,000 on the lawn. The Great Lawn’s speaker system was the first in the United States to allow orchestral-quality outdoor sound across a public space. Free concerts run throughout summer, the Grant Park Music Festival is free and runs weekly from June through August.

The Crown Fountain, by Catalan artist Jaume Plensa, has two 15-metre glass block towers displaying video of Chicago residents’ faces, with water flowing from a gap between the lips. Children wade in the reflecting basin between the towers in summer. It is more playful and interesting than it sounds in description.

Lurie Garden, at the south end of the park, was designed by Piet Oudolf (the Dutch landscape designer behind the High Line in New York) and is one of the best examples of naturalistic planting in any American city. Free, open daily.

Around the Park

The Art Institute of Chicago (111 S Michigan Ave) sits directly south and is one of the great American museums. The Impressionist and Post-Impressionist collection is particularly strong: Seurat’s Sunday on La Grande Jatte is here, as are works by Monet, Cézanne, Picasso, and Edward Hopper. Admission is $26 for adults; free on Thursday evenings 5-8pm.

Grant Park extends south along the lakefront; the Lakefront Trail runs 18 miles north-south along Lake Michigan. Navy Pier is about 2km north along the lake. The Riverwalk, the lower-level path along the Chicago River, connects the park area to River North.

Where to Eat

The Gage (24 S Michigan Ave) is directly across from the park, serves honest American food at reasonable prices given the location, and has enough regulars to suggest it’s not purely a tourist operation. For Chicago specifics, deep dish pizza, Italian beef sandwiches, Lou Malnati’s and Portillo’s are the names locals actually give visitors when asked.

Randolph Street’s Restaurant Row in the West Loop, about 20 minutes’ walk from Millennium Park, has the city’s more serious dining concentration. Avec, Girl and the Goat (Rick Bayless’s Frontera Grill is in River North) for evening meals in the $50-100 per person range.

Where to Stay

The Fairmont Chicago on Columbus Drive overlooks the park. Rooms from around $200-350 per night, location-efficient for anyone spending time at Millennium Park. The Chicago Athletic Association Hotel on Michigan Avenue is a former private club from 1893 converted to a design hotel; the rooftop and common areas are excellent.

Budget: the HI Chicago hostel on E Cermak Road has dorms from $40-60 and private rooms from $100.

Getting Around

The CTA Red Line and Blue Line stop at Lake/State and Monroe/Dearborn respectively, both within 10 minutes of Millennium Park. A 24-hour unlimited transit card costs $10. Rental bikes from Divvy (Chicago’s bike-share, around $1 per 30 minutes) are the most practical way to cover the lakefront and wider downtown.