Retro Saturday: Constructing Da Bean - Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate in Millennium Park

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 We knew it when it was just a ring.

Almost as soon as it was unveiled in 2004, Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate, a/k/a Da Bean,  not only became the centerpiece of the new Millennium Park, but it quickly took its place along with the Water Tower and Marina City as one of the most universally recognizable symbols of Chicago.  We were there to capture the construction, its imperfect debut with joins still showing, and the final careful sanding that created the seamless reflective liquid form that we see today.

Check it all out, photographs in abundance:

A photo essay on the making of Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate Sculpture

Millennium Park - Sculpture as Architecture

It's a Bean!  Big Tent Gives Birth (Again) to Kapoor's Cloud Gate Sculpture.

Chicago Rediscovered in a Luminous Field, at Cloud Gate.