It's this century's version of the World's Fair, and like the 1893 Columbian Exposition marking the 400th anniversary of one Christopher sailing the ocean blue, it's late--in this case, about four years late. "It's the whole idea of what a city should be: the appreciation of the artistic community. That's the soul of a city," Mayor Daley recently told the Sun-Times in his singular syntax. Of course, if arts are the soul of Chicago, business is its heart. And Millennium Park, with its cavalcade of branded edifices is a mash note to corporate Chicago. As Mayor Daley went on to explain, "It's an outpouring from the business community. They wanted to make it so special that it would be the envy of the rest of the world." Right now, it's the envy of Chicago, at least those of us anxious to cross the fences and see for ourselves what a half billion bucks has bought us. This weekend we can, and thousands certainly will. For now, though, here's what it looks like from our perspective.


The Best of Millennium Park

The big bean
While much of Millennium Park can be measured solely in terms of its scale, London-based artist Anish Kapoor offers visitors a visual break from the usual bulky standards. It's easy to see why he was chosen, with works in the collections of such institutions as the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea in Prato, Italy. Yet, in keeping with the biomorphic work inspired by Hindu mythology that marks the artist's early career, his "Cloud Gate" crowns the aesthetic, conceptual, architectural and public-art accomplishment that Millennium Park aspires after. There's a 12-foot concave gap at the sculpture's base through which visitors are encouraged to pass while conscious of the devastatingly huge weight suspended above. It's a perfect metaphor for the pressures of modern city life. And as citizens of a major metropolis must adapt, so too must the sculpture: its internal trusswork structure will expand and compress in response to the weather.
At 66-feet long and 33-feet high, it transcends its 110-ton weight, with the 168 stainless-steel panels that are the "bean's" skin creating a reflective purity that mirrors the Chicago skyline. Kapoor says "Cloud Gate" was inspired by the amorphousness of liquid mercury, and that changing perspective gets reflected in its viewing. Depending on where visitors stand, the steel surface simultaneously causes the sculpture to disappear into the sky and creates the illusion of a city in the sky.

The bike station
What's the old saying? "It's like falling off a bike, once you learn how, you never forget"? Millennium Park boasts at least two amenities tailored to the personal tastes of Mayor Daley. Most eccentric may be the architect- and artist-designed birdhouses, which brother Bill told the Sun-Times was one of Richard's lifetime dreams. Next up is an edifice to match a city striped with bike paths, the Columbus and Randolph bike station, on levels five and six of the Park's parking garage. $3.1 million of federal grant money to ease traffic congestion was spent to build a heated, 300-space indoor bicycle-parking facility (partially solar-powered) to encourage a lucky or plucky three hundred commuters, park visitors or Metra users to bike downtown. (Yes, that's about $10,000 per cyclist.) No word yet on how the relative handful of spaces will be parceled out to the citizenry. Covering 17,000 square feet, the compound will house the Chicago Police Lakefront Bicycle Patrol Unit as well as a bike rental and repair shop. Further socializing will be encouraged with lockers and showers. Avoid that telltale athletic funk during office hours!

The cell-phone tours
It's hard to recall the time when a stroll in the park was peacefully cell-phone free. But in Millennium Park, at least some of us users and abusers have a legitimate reason to be on the phone this weekend. Dialing (312)742-2004 on their mobile, park visitors can connect to a new wave of audio touring--five artist-created audio pieces inspired by various Millennium Park landmarks. "This is sort of the way of the future. The thing is becoming almost a living entity," says organizer Devon de Mayo about the cell phone. "There was a definite need for the park to have a new technology component." Given the choice of five architectural sites, the artists riff off the park architecture in their own form of creative expression. Poet C.C. Carter narrates the bridge, for example, with musical accompaniment: "I thought it was symbolic of everything that could be put into a poem... the bridge in music is what connects two verses." The phone line is slated to close this Sunday, unless it gets extended.

It kicks Daley-Bicentennial's ass
One thing is for sure--the Mayor really kicked his dad's butt with this one. Daley-Bicentennial Plaza, the smaller park named after Papa D. that rests just east of the extravaganza off of Randolph, is now mashed into mincemeat. Bicentennial once held the cleanest, most enjoyable skating rink downtown, but Millennium now boasts a larger ice area, more sophisticated skates and popular rental rates. Bicentennial's field-house displays colorful murals for the kids, but that's nothing compared to Millennium's big shiny bean. Millennium's Great Lawn devours Bicentennial's rabbit-populated flower garden, and the Pritzker concerts will eventually out-duel Daley-Bi's infamous tennis courts. Though the old man's park actually has a playground for kids, Millennium's face mural will be a magnet for families. But, comparisons aside, young Daley gives dad the big bird with the giant Gehry bridge, which connects the two parks and literally annihilates Bicentennial's outdoor chess-table area, while cutting Daley-Bi's open park space in half.

The best may be yet to come
It's unlikely that Pablo or anyone else envisioned the Picasso sculpture in Daley Plaza as the giant kiddy slide it has become. But now you might argue that the human interaction is what makes this work the city's most popular piece of public art. Who ever plays with the Miro, anyway? Millennium has all the makings to be a dream for those with wild imaginations, prank-filled minds, or the desire to climb on big things. Of course, no one knows what those unintended uses might be, but here's our speculation. Proceed at your own risk, and use your own imagination. We're certainly not condoning such foolishness. 1) Skate the BP bridge: The twists and turns rival most city and suburban skate parks--just don't go head first over the edge. 2) Every time a new face appears on that Plensa water sculpture, take a "spit shower" in the fountain. 3) Bungee jump from the Gehry bridge atop Columbus Drive: call the media if you survive. 4) With a friend, climb into position on top of the Wrigley Square Monument and break out the mitts, because it's baseball time. Who doesn't dream of making a breathtaking catch in--or on--Wrigley?



The Worst of Millennium Park

The price tag
Exactly 111 years ago Chicago built another great populist carnival, the World's Columbian Exposition at a cost of more than $27 million. That's more than $532 million in 2004 dollars, which might make the $475 million cost of Millennium Park seem like a bargain in comparison. But the project's four-year delay has left Chicagoans with nothing to gaze in wonder at other than the cost overruns--the original projected cost was less than a third of the actual price. What else could $475 million dollars buy for the city of Chicago? Well, it could line the wallet of every Chicago resident with a cool 84 dollars. Or it could provide every Chicago Public School student with a brand new iBook. Or it could buy every homeless person in the city 2,000 lottery tickets--how about them odds?

The name game
Squeezed in amongst the Douglas firs lumber the corporate giants. There's the" BP" Bridge and the "SBC" Plaza. And let's not forget the McCormick "Tribune" Plaza or the "Bank One" Promenade. Corporate sponsors and the names of wealthy donors are emblazoned everywhere in Millennium Park, and the long list of individual donors that make up the uncrowned divinity of wealthy Chicago families has been enshrined in the "Wrigley" Peristyle with as much grandeur as if they'd fought and died in a war.
The link between wealthy donors and the naming of public edifices and spaces in their honor is a timeworn tradition, of course, second in popularity only to naming them after politicians. Consider Buckingham Fountain and McCormick Place. But Millennium Park seems to mark a new era in naming for Chicago, one drawn from the most pernicious page of professional sports, the selling of the name--not a sponsorship. For these entities are not named for today's fat cats /tomorrow's fertilizer; they're named for corporate brands, brands that, theoretically might live forever. Or at least until the next takeover or scandal; Enron Field certainly seemed like a good idea at the time. It's hardly an exaggeration to note that tourists visiting Millennium Park may very well need a few mnemonic devices to recall what press materials refer to as the "Grand Slam of Gehry, Gustafson, Kapoor and Plensa" instead of BP, Pritzker and McCormick. Ironically enough, the Bank One Promenade is an opening-day anachronism, in light of the bank's recent merger with New York giant JP Morgan Chase. Will the promenade be renamed just like the cash machines and branches it promotes? Or will it remain as a memorial to its soon-to-be-defunct corporate sponsor, which was itself the name of the company that devoured the once-mighty First Chicago?

It's going to be too busy
Those expecting an idyllic lunchtime getaway in the 95,000-square-foot lush green area of Millennium Park between Michigan Avenue and Columbus Drive designated the "Great Lawn" may first wish to consider a few facts. Grant Park Music Festival concert-goers will no doubt be pleased with the spacious 4,000 fixed seat and extra 7,000-person capacity. Equally excellent sound quality has been assured by outfitting the lawn with a clustered-speaker performance sound system capable of vying competitively for the attention of people with entertainment standards set by television, video games and riverboat casinos.
But "a day in the park" this is not. Under the proscenium of the Gehry bandshell all pretense to recharging one's batteries has been replaced with designs for a high-voltage outdoor concert venue. Whereas most visitors to public parks expect greenery and trees, blue sky and relaxation, the Great Lawn instead has been domed-in with steel piping mounted in concrete pylons at 65-feet intervals. The entire area has been built atop a three-level parking structure in and out of which traffic can rumble and Metra trains can deliver their commuter payloads. No lonely woodlawn spots here. More than a place to pursue the unforced nature of a "jardin anglais," unfurl the picnic blanket, or a leisurely walk, Millennium Park's Great Lawn has been built as a nighttime destination as pleasant as any overcrowded city bar.

It's a really small world, after all
A multicultural parade. An "immigrant orchestra." A photographic "family album" from around the world. They're all part of the Millennium Park opening festivities, events and exhibits meant to demonstrate "the beauty in diversity" and explore "the common bonds we all share as family members of the same planet," according to the official brochures. However, the motivating factor is more likely a hypersensitivity to political correctness, one masking the cultural homogeneity of the park's founders and funders. Set this event a hundred years ago, and we'd be sitting through blustery speeches delivered by the white middle-aged politicians and corporate fat cats who pull the strings. The more things change...

The worst may be yet to come
Will it age well? In the corner of Millennium Park facing the Art Institute visitors will find the Crown Fountain by Barcelona-based artist Jaume Plensa. As a choice for the fountain, Plensa boasts public-art projects at both the Torrelavega and Tenerife in Spain and Mion Nakasato and Fukuroi in Japan. His design combines two internally lit, fifty-feet high twin towers constructed of glass blocks with LED screens that project portraits of average Chicagoans and nature scenes. Given the park's overwhelming celebration of wealth, this nod to the average Chicagoan certainly registers as ironic. And doesn't projecting the faces of people onto a pair of twin towers offer unintended post-9/11 connotations? Both are mounted in what planners describe as a "black granite skin pool" that's 232-feet long by 48-feet wide. At only 1/8-inch deep, visitors are encouraged to walk in the fountain and gaze at the city reflected in its surface: but Plensa ain't Kapoor. Crown Fountain's vaguely tragic aesthetic drama more directly suits Plensa's history of costume and set design. While his "Personal Miraculous Fountain" at Dean Clough in Halifax was a boon for the Henry Moore Foundation Studio, his design here reflects an outmoded sensibility, post-1970's. Unfortunately, Chicago has a track record of embracing such utilitarian oddities: the bunker-like UIC campus design comes to mind. Crown Fountain, too, already threatens to read as the relic of a willfully forgotten era's bad taste.

The Best & Worst of Millennium Park was written by Nicholas Baer, Tom Lynch, Mehan Jayasuriya, Ray Pride and Michael Workman.
(2004-07-13)

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