Four months before choosing political retirement over the uphill battle for a third term, Rahm Emanuel promised to leave his mark on the art and architecture scene in Chicago in a way that, he hoped, would be long remembered.
With Santiago Calatrava at his side, Emanuel announced the Spanish architect, structural engineer, sculptor, painter and all-around Renaissance man had been chosen to create an outdoor sculpture as provocative as the Picasso at the Daley Center Plaza.
The red leafy sculpture — 29 feet tall and 25 feet wide — was supposed to be installed 15 months later at developers’ expense in the park at River Point, the 52-story office tower at Lake and Canal that includes a 1.5-acre public park over rail lines.
The August deadline has come and gone. But there is still no sign of the Calatrava sculpture. Why the delay?
It’s complicated, according to Greg Van Schaack, senior managing director of Hines, the global real estate investment, development and management firm in charge of River Point.
“The fabricator in Ohio had to bump us because they are also involved in the fabrication of two large NASA rocket fuel tanks. The tanks were completed, sent to NASA, tested and failed in the pre-flight tests due to design flaws. The tanks were sent back to AMECO to correct. NASA projects have priority over civilian projects,” Van Schaack told the Sun-Times on Tuesday.
“We’re disappointed. But we understand this is a complicated structure. It had to be made by a very specialized fabricator. ... This isn’t a big deal to us. We’re building skyscrapers. Stuff happens. You roll with it and you do the best you can.”
The fabricator juggling both rockets and sculpture should have Caltrava’s piece ready sometime this winter.
But Van Schaack acknowledged it’s going to be a challenge to install Chicago’s latest piece of outdoor art in winter, given the frigid temperatures and frozen ground.
“It’s weather-dependent,” he said, but the sculpture should be installed by spring, he said.
Whenever it makes its belated debut, Van Schaack said he’s confident the sculpture will add immeasurably to River Point.
“This building is really the terminus of the east-west branch of the river. It’ll just be a very highly-identifiable [piece] marking that end of the branch. The reflections from the building onto the plaza onto the sculpture will be magnificent. It’s really just a great finishing touch to our plaza,” he said.
A press release distributed last year said regardless of what direction the viewer approaches from, the “massive layered spiral will reveal stunning architectural depth, overhand and movement.”
Viewers will almost certainly have other ideas about what the sculpture is and is not, touching off a civic debate similar to the one that has raged ever since the Picasso was installed in Daley Center Plaza.
A model of the sculpture also was to be displayed at the Art Institute. But Van Schaack said it has not arrived, either, and he has a call in to Calatrava to determine when it will be.
Calatrava was so “enormously moved” by the commission — and viewed the sculpture as such an important contribution to one of the art and architectural capitals of the world — he arranged to be in Chicago for developer Larry Levy’s announcement in May 2018.
“You are the city that introduced public art. And you have more than 1,000 pieces of art in the streets of Chicago. Calder, Picasso, Miro, Kapoor … and many many other artists,” Calatrava, whose 2,000-feet-tall Chicago Spire was never built, told reporters that day.
“To have a contribution to this collection of public art that is accessible to everybody, accessible any time of the day and enhancing your city, one of the most beautiful architectural cities of the 19th to 21st Century,” is a tremendous honor.
After seeing Calatrava’s work in Jerusalem, Berlin, Buenos Aires, Madrid and Zurich, Emanuel on that day said he was thrilled to put “this exclamation point” at River Point, adding that “this day will be remembered … as not just a day for River Point but a day when the city of Chicago gave definition to our public space and our re-introduction to the river.”
