One of Chicago’s iconic pieces of public art will be getting a new home. French artist Jean Dubuffet’s sculpture “Monument with Standing Beast,” in place in front of the Thompson Center since the building opened in 1985, is moving to a different spot in the Loop. — Chicago Sun Times
Following last week’s $105 million sale of the Thompson Center to Google, the famed Dubuffet sculpture will be relocated to a former bank building at 115 S. LaSalle Street, a space purchased by the state of Illinois to house office space lost with the sale. The 29-foot, 10-ton fiberglass sculpture was seen as an extension of the Helmut Jahn-designed building. Nicknamed “Snoopy in a blender,” the piece is made up of four shapes representing an animal, a tree, an architectural form, and a portal. It was inspired by Dubuffet’s 1960 series of paintings called Hourlope.
“Monument with Standing Beast” was donated in 1984 by Ruth Horwich, an art collector and co-founder of Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, in memory of her husband, Leonard Horwich. It was unveiled outside an under-construction Thompson Center in November of that year. A date for the sculpture’s arrival at its new home has not been announced.
3 Comments
Well, I find this sad. But change happens. I just loved its loopy black and white form next to the Thomson grids.
I hope Google is willing to replace it by locating and buying a similar sized piece by the same artist. They are among the few companies that could actually afford to do that. A great aspect of development in the Loop from the mid '60s to the early '80s was the inclusion of gigantic pieces of public sculpture. It would be great to see that revived.
It is a shame it is being moved, it belongs with the Thompson Center, not shunted off to a microplaza where it will have no room to breathe.
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