Houstonians called Janssen a ' massive douche' and slandered Chicago as a ' trash city,' while a few Chicagoans told Gray her city's sculpture looked like a vibrator, or maybe a suppository. 'Nobody except Houston wants a leftover, second-rate bean.'īoth cities' denizens piled onto the scrum on Twitter, to various degrees of nastiness. 'It's a leftover bean, a second-rate bean that's been lying around in storage for the better part of 20 years, because nobody else wanted it,' Janssen shot back. 'Is Chicago feeling defensive? How bad is it there, knowing that Houston is set to pass you in population, taking your spot as third-largest city in the US? Are you feeling-well, to steal someone's joke from Twitter-like a 'has-bean?'' Gray wrote. The Houston Chronicle's Lisa Gray wasn't going to just lie down and take that, so she shot Janssen an angry email-kicking off a vicious back-and-forth that wound up getting printed in full. 'If being surrounded by a cultureless abyss insufficiently communicates to confused tourists that they are in Houston, the bean’s verticality will therefore act as an additional reminder of their poor life choices,' he wrote. Once Chicagoans saw the curved, oblong shape they quickly started calling it “The Bean” - and the nickname stuck.On Tuesday, Chicago Tribune columnist Kim Janssen fired the first shot in the battle of the beans with a scalding hit piece: ' Unoriginal 4th place Houston gets its own bean sculpture… whatever.' After a kind of lackluster diss about Houston's bean being 'uptight' (because it's upright) and Chicago's being 'chill' (it's horizontal), Janssen took out the claws. But when the structure was still under construction, renderings of the design were released to the public. Have you seen it? While the piece’s official name is Cloud Gate, artist Anish Kapoor doesn’t title his works until after they’re completed. The sculpture, which is officially titled Cloud Gate, is one of the worlds largest permanent outdoor. It weighs about 110 tons - roughly the same as 15 adult elephants. The Bean is a work of public art in the heart of Chicago. The Bean is 33 feet high, 42 feet wide, and 66 feet long. The Bean’s steel exterior is attached to the inside frame with flexible connectors that let it expand and contract as the weather changes. This allows the sculptures massive weight to be directed to its two base points, creating the iconic “bean” shape and allowing for the large concave area beneath the structure.

The rings are connected via a truss framework, similar to what you might see on a bridge.

Inside, it’s made of a network of two large metal rings. It was created using computer technology to precisely cut 168 massive steel plates, which were then fitted together and welded shut for a completely seamless finish. The exterior of The Bean is made entirely of stainless steel. Cloud Gate was his first permanent public outdoor work in the United States, and is widely considered his most famous.Įxplore more: Find more iconic public art in the Chicago Loop, from Picasso to Chagall. The Indian-born British sculptor was already well-known for his large-scale outdoor works, including several with highly reflective surfaces. It was designed by internationally acclaimed artist Anish Kapoor. The reflection of the sky above the park, not to mention the curved underside of The Bean serves as an entrance that visitors can walk under to enter the park, inspired the sculpture’s creator to name the piece Cloud Gate.

At first, many Chicagoans were extremely critical of this piece of metal especially since the structure was under construction during the inauguration of the park in 2004. Designed by the London-based artist Anish Kapoor, the work was selected out of two proposals that were submitted in 1999 for a showpiece sculpture that would sit in Millennium Park. The polished surface also invites visitors to touch the surface and observe their own reflection, giving it an interactive quality. The Bean is one of the best ways to capture Chicago’s beautiful skyline while still being in the photo. This shiny exterior reflects the people moving around the park, the lights of Michigan Avenue, and the surrounding skyline and green space - perfectly encapsulating the Millennium Park experience. The Bean’s reflective surface was inspired by liquid mercury.

Chicago bean