Art at the James R. Thompson Center

“Are there any public officials or corporate executives with enough moxie to welcome a patriotic, old-fashioned, representational sculpture in a city in which the cultural tastemakers prefer baseball bats and steel flamingos?”¹ It was 1983, and the Chicago Tribune architecture critic Paul Gapp was bemoaning Chicago’s penchant for modern public art in the context of the neglect of Augustus Saint-Gaudens’s Standing Lincoln sculpture in Lincoln Park. As the park changed over time, Gapp argued, the Lincoln statue had been relegated to a position “half hidden” in the bushes. His proposed solution was to relocate Standing Lincoln to the large outdoor plaza of the new State of Illinois Center, known as the James R. Thompson Center after 1993 (or simply The Thompson Center), after former Illinois Governor James R. Thompson, as a way to give the sculpture the prominence it deserved.

A public sculpture had already been chosen for the plaza, and the still unfinished State of Illinois Center was already provoking criticism. Unveiled as a design to the public in 1980, Chicagoans analyzed the building with gusto. The James R. Thompson Center is the work of architect Helmut Jahn, who was ascending into his own personal and house style after beginning his career at C.F. Murphy Associates in the 1960s, modifying the name to Murphy/Jahn as his reputation grew. Originally scheduled for a 1983 completion, the construction was delayed by months, and then years. A 1981 strike by Local 150 of the International Union of Operating Engineers halted construction and allowed the excavation cavity of the building to fill with water. Five ironworkers plunged to their death in December 1981 when suspension rods holding a platform snapped.² Bids to fabricate the glass curtain wall were scant due to its complex design, which had to be revised in order for the curtain wall to be fabricated in the US. Then there was the design criticism. The photographs of the model prompted architectural historian Carl Condit to express that “the ponderously rounded elevations are strangely misshapen and ill-proportioned.”³ Paul Gapp said it was “a chunky wedge of little grace or elegance.”⁴ Citizens wrote to newspapers, eager to share their opinions. Its design looked “like a cow catcher with a lady’s compact hovering and opening on the top of it,” said one.⁵ “The proposed design is atrocious,” said another.⁶ Then as well as now, people were delighted to report hearsay that framed the building as unlikable. “I recently heard an architect refer to the State of Illinois building as an example of ‘fascist architecture,’” wrote a reader to the Chicago Tribune in 1984.⁷ All of this was expressed before the building even opened its doors to the public, before the tropes of smelly food odors and temperature problems provided a snarky language that could be used to argue that “hating it” was a more cultivated opinion than “loving it.” Yet, thoughtful criticism demands greater nuance.

The sculpture placed in the triangular public plaza of the Thompson Center was just as unusual as the building nicknamed “Starship Chicago” and “Postmodern People’s Palace.” Monument with Standing Beast by Jean Dubuffet is a twenty-nine-foot polystyrene work with four components, named “the Bush,” “the Beast,” and “the Cathedral,” as well as an untitled section. Resembling a mangled abstraction of Charles M. Schultz’s comic strip Peanuts, the Dubuffet acquired a cheeky Pop culture colloquial name: “Snoopy in a Blender.”

Before one could gaze at one’s reflection in the belly of Anish Kapoor’s Cloudgate (aka “The Bean”) or cool a hot summer body in the spurting spittle of Jaume Plensa’s Crown Fountain, one could enter the urban grotto of Monument with Standing Beast and grasp at cropped glimpses of the city. Like the Thompson Center, the sculpture’s image changes as you move through or around it. Also like the Thompson Center, Monument to Standing Beast is a public resource that has been poorly maintained. The sculpture’s texture and many blind spots have made it a subject of graffiti tags, lovers’ scribbles, and—due to a lack of restroom infrastructure—public urination.

“Dubuffet was working with a new material, which we now know is susceptible to various types of human and climatic damage,” states art historian Marin Sullivan. “If that damage is not managed, it ends up becoming something that people just pee in because it looks like something you could pee in.”

A team including Helmut Jahn and Museum of Contemporary Art founder Leonard Horwich selected the sculpture for the plaza. The work was donated to the State of Illinois by Ruth Horwich and her family after Leonard’s passing, and it was unveiled in 1984. Marti Belluschi worked at Murphy/Jahn in the 1980s as the talks to bring the Dubuffet to Chicago included her translating Jean Dubuffet’s French into English for Jahn, and vice versa. In a phone interview, Belluschi reflects on the unique design of Monument with Standing Beast: “I just remember, even having had exposure to art, thinking that the public would struggle with it a bit.”

Monument with Standing Beast appears alongside photos of the Thompson Center but also alongside citizens using the plaza to participate in political demonstrations. The Thompson Center’s plaza provided a place where protests could occur without a permit, widening the ability for expressions of free speech to occur spontaneously. It bore witness to a protest in downtown Chicago in 1990 organized by the Chicago Chapter of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power or ACT UP, demanding adequate health care for AIDS patients at Cook County Hospital. It lingers quietly amongst the sea of red created by the Chicago Teachers Union strike of 2019, which brought to light the struggles public school teachers faced in terms of compensation and resources.⁸ The sculpture is such a significant component to the building that it is a contributing feature to the building’s National Register of Historic Places nomination. The building was deemed eligible for the National Register by the National Park Service, but the building stopped short of being listed as its inclusion was rejected by the Thompson Center’s current owners, Prime Group, who purchased the Thompson Center from the State of Illinois in 2022. Prime will be building to suit the needs of its new tenant, Google, with Jahn as the architect of record. The firm has continued the work and legacy of Helmut Jahn after his 2021 death in a bike crash.

When the Thompson Center formally opened to the public on May 6, 1985, it promised to be the “most art heavy building in the city except for the Art Institute of Chicago.”⁹ That abundance was due to not only the Dubuffet, but a collection of artwork that would be displayed in the building, from the entrance to the atrium, to the upper floors used by the Liquor Control Commission, to the Office of the Governor. The State of Illinois Percent for Art Program, introduced in 1978, designated the allocation of .5 percent of the construction costs of public buildings towards the purchase of artwork to dress the building’s interior. To Paul Gapp’s displeasure, both the “Baseball bats and steel flamingos”—Claes Oldenberg’s Batcolumn at the Social Security Administration Headquarters and Alexander Calder’s Flamingo in Federal Plaza respectively— were artworks purchased by the federal government under this program. A similar City of Chicago-managed program brought other public art to the Loop and was also based on the construction costs of public buildings.

The stipend generated under the State of Illinois Percent for Art Program provided the means to commission eighteen original pieces for the Thompson Center’s collection. Other works were selected through a statewide competition in seven areas: painting, photography, ceramics/glass, fibers, printmaking, drawing, and sculpture. The collection, all the work of living Illinois artists, was distributed throughout the public areas of the building, with the original eighteen pieces growing into a collection of one hundred and fifty-one works, according to a State-managed inventory, including large-scale sculpture and paintings by noted Chicago Imagists such as Ed Paschke, Gladys Nilsson, and Roger Brown. This artwork, mirroring the uniqueness of the building it was housed in, was woven into the maze of cubicles, desks, and break rooms facilitating the work-life of State employees, and the public was encouraged to wander the building to see it.

The building was also home to the State of Illinois Center Art Gallery, operated jointly by the Illinois State Museum and the Illinois Arts Council. The gallery featured visiting shows by Illinois artists and held public art openings that kept the Thompson Center open beyond the 9-to-5 government workday. The gallery was accompanied by the Illinois Artisans Shop, which sold handmade items by Illinois craftspeople and hosted educational events. The Thompson Center was once so amenable to creativity that in 1991, choreographer Stephen Koplowitz presented a work of performance art inside the building. The Governed Body featured choreography set along the balconies of the atrium and in the elevators. Accompanying audio interrogated what it means to be governed, policed, and surveilled.

Security in the Thompson Center increased after September 11, 2001, and the public was no longer allowed access to the upper floors of the building, which limited the public’s access to the art. The gallery and shop closed in 2015, the same year that then-Governor Bruce Rauner first announced the James R. Thompson Center would be put up for sale.

While the State of Illinois continued keeping an active inventory of the works in the Thompson Center collection, pieces were subject to loan or maintenance, and some are, like the building, in need of conservation and repair. Karl Wirsum’s painting Public Squeaker #1, displayed along with a set of floor lamps titled Clouds Over the Illinois Prairie, which are not part of the collection but a gift given to the building’s namesake, James R. Thompson, are dirty and missing parts.¹⁰ Crain’s Chicago Business reported in 2018 that Phyllis Bramson’s work, Innocent Diversions, also displayed in the same area of the Thompson Center as Public Squeaker #1 and the floor lamps, was missing two of the four ceramic vases attached to its frame.¹¹

In July 2022, the Chicago Sun-Times reported that the sale of the James R. Thompson Center out of State hands would require Monument with Standing Beast to be moved out of the plaza, now shifted from public space to private space.¹²

The sculpture is bound for the plaza in front of 115 South LaSalle Street, a former 1975 bank building designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, purchased by the State of Illinois in 2022 to replace office space lost with the Thompson Center sale. The plaza at 115 South LaSalle is small and rectangular, and already houses a modernist bronze fountain by sculptor Russell Secrest, commissioned by the building’s original tenants, Harris Bank.

The Illinois Department of Central Management Services is administering the move of the rest of the works in the collection with assistance from the Illinois State Museum and the Department of Natural Resources. Like Monument with Standing Beast, some of the collection will move to 115 South LaSalle, while other pieces in the collection have been relocated to 555 West Monroe, another building that the State acquired to replace office space lost in the Thompson Center sale. “The relocation effort is ongoing,” stated Cathy Kwiatkowski, Senior Policy Advisor to the Illinois Department of Central Management Services, who confirmed in an email that the collection in its entirety would be retained by the State in order to “ensure the collection’s long-term preservation and the JRTC’s cultural legacy for future generations.”

“Once those works are taken into that collection and paid for by tax dollars, it’s not like a private museum where you can decommission what you want anymore,” commented Marin Sullivan. “They are either shown or stored, but they can’t be sold.” Works that have become ubiquitous to the Thompson Center’s legendary atrium, John Henry’s Bridgeport and Richard Hunt’s Illinois River Landscape, were removed this spring along with other artwork inside the building.

While the State is committed to caring for these works, it is not yet known where each piece will go, or if the public will ever have an opportunity to view the collection as such again. Similarly, Google has made a commitment to buy the Thompson Center from Prime Group “upon future renovation,” yet the public has only seen one set of vague renderings, released in December 2021, before Google or Jahn signed on to the project, leaving the public to speculate wildly on what the future building might look like, or how it will function: as public or private space?

As of June 2023, the Dubuffet remains in situ within the plaza, albeit surrounded by a crooked row of traffic barriers. Retail operations, including a Walgreens and a Dunkin’ Donuts, still remain, as does a post office, bringing into question Google’s anticipated 2026 completion date. The renderings have advanced—enough for them to be evaluated by both the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois in an endeavor to gain approval and financial incentives—but this evaluation has occurred behind closed doors, away from the public eye.

The artwork at the Thompson Center, from the monumental Dubuffet to the poster-sized Wirsum, are linked to the building’s role as a long performing civic resource and stimulate bigger questions regarding how the public will experience the Thompson Center—or the Google building formerly known as the Thompson Center—once the renovation is completed. Will the “public access” be instead “pseudo-public access,” and at the mercy of codes of conduct and surveillance? With the purchase is Google, taking the place of one level of government (the State), and now sitting at the seat of Chicago City Hall, the County Building, and the Richard J. Daley Center, looking to speak on the power of the corporatocracy?

This brings us back to Monument with Standing Beast. The move will change the nature of the public plaza, which is, at this moment, no longer public and owned by Prime Group. The role of the public plaza as a site for political speech is based on legal and spatial affordances. Like the Thompson Center’s characteristic abstractions of the colors of the US flag, the use of the plaza is an expression of government openness and transparency. Are Prime Group and Google uncomfortable enough with this history to erase it? And will the City of Chicago, the last bulwark in terms of how the building is both used and will look, comfortable enough with standing up to Google if they wish to turn the public plaza into one big curb cut, or festoon those “ponderously round” curves, perhaps bled of their original color, with their own colorful Google logo?

“Once we became familiar with the Dubuffet sculpture, we loved it as is, in all of its complications,” said Marti Belluschi, conveying a sentiment that could also apply to the Thompson Center. Yet, it is difficult to imagine the sculpture finding success elsewhere, as it is difficult to imagine a scenario where Google might go against their nature to monitor and surveil in favor of honoring the openness and transparency the Thompson Center was designed to convey and to which the public is accustomed. Public art, like public buildings, has the ability to deliver a promise that our government is present and serving the cultural and technical needs of its constituents. While it is ultimately positive that the art cannot be sold and the Thompson Center not demolished, that promise is fractured.

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank Marin Sullivan and Marti Belluschi for their interviews, Jonathan Solomon for assistance with content and photos, and Stephen Patrick Bell for the inspiration.

Art Inventory as of 2023

Edith Altman, The Phoenix (Drawing)
Ralph Arnold, Deco I (A.P.) (Print)
George Atkinson, Snow South of Wrran (Painting)
Barbara Aubin, Personal of Barbs & Barbarisms (Painting)
Don Baum, Contrapuntal Series (Sculpture)
Mike Baur, DEFILE 2 (Sculpture)
Robert D. Beard, Grant Park, Illinois 1984 (Photograph)
Robert D. Beard, Beecher, Illinois 1983 (Photograph)
Dr. Vera Berdich, Ambiguous Subjects (Print)
Susan Berkowitz Graf, Illusions (Drawing)
Barbara Blades, Fruitility (Work, Cut Paper)
Peter Bodnar,Triptych (Painting)
Debra Bolgla, Nightdream (Print)
Richard Bolton, Urban Landscape Series, No. 1 (Photograph)
Richard Bolton, Urban Landscape Series No. 2 (Photograph)
Richard Bolton, Urban Landscape Series, No. 3 (Photograph)
Charles Boone, Silver Platter (Painting)
David Bower, The Scholar's Playthings (Sculpture)
Bill H. Boysen, Ceremonial Vessel (Sculpture)
Phyllis Bramson, Innocent Diversions (Painting)
Deborah Bright, Soldier Field (Photograph)
Roger Brown, American Buffalo (Painting)
Joel Bujnowski, Fear and Loathing (Drawing)
David F. Bushman, French Chocolates, Margaux Purse Intaglio (Print)
James Butler, Clouds Overhead (Painting)
Francis Byrne, Barbers Shears (Photograph)
William Carlson, Contrapuntal Series (Sculpture)
Willie L. Carter, Blind Woman (Drawing)
William Conger, Militant State (Painting)
Barbara DaGenevieve, Folie A Deux (Drawing)
Harris Deller, Untitled Platter (Sectioned) (Sculpture)
Ellen Roth Deutsch, Beach People (Painting)
Robert Donley, Far Side of Town (Painting)
Gordon Dorn, Derrick for Temple Themis (Drawing)
Paul Dresang, Untitled (#6) (Sculpture)
David F. Driesbach, Magician's Sabbath (Print)
Don Duborff, Notre Dame Church Chicago (Photograph)
Jean DuBuffet, Monument with Standing Beast (Sculpture)
Ruth Duckworth, Clouds Over Illinois (Sculpture)
Vincent Dunn, Black & White Head (Print)
Gary Edgren, Rubys Roost (Painting)
Cheri Eisenberg, Untitled (Photograph)
Peter Fagan, None (Sculpture)
Barbara F. Factor, Checkerboard Squares (Work, Cut Paper)
Richard Finch, Figure with Blanket I (Print)
Jeffrey Gelick, Untitled (Drawing)
Roland Ginzel, None (Painting)
Karen Glaser, Untitled (girl with hand) (Photograph)
Harold Gregor, Illinois Landscape (Painting)
Glenn A. Hansen, Lake Street, Chicago (Photograph)
Carole Harmel, Natural Disasters: Flowers (Photograph)
Bonnie Hartenstein, Prayer Units (Sculpture)
James Hawker, A Small Project #2 (Photograph)
Sherry Healy, Dusk Fall IV (Work, Cut Paper)
John Henry, Bridgeport (Construction)
John Himmelfarb, Stream on Streamers (Drawing)
Joe Hindley, Paradise Found (Painting)
Kenneth Holder, Into the Canyon (Painting)
Richard Hull, Untitled (Drawing)
Richard Hunt, Illinois River (Sculpture)
Miyoko Ito, Tablized (Painting)
Michael Johnson, Storm Front, Lighting (Photograph)
Indira Frietas Johnson, Hand Glider (Sculpture)
Mary Jones, Untitled (Painting)
Terrence Karpowicz, Patching It Up (Sculpture)
Aligmantas Kezys, Hyatt Regency Chicago 1983 (Photograph)
Algimantas Kezys, The Art Institute of Chicago (Photograph)
Wesley Kimler, The Bulls/Kilimanjaro (Painting)
Linda King, Fire Man (Painting)
David Klamen, Untitled (Drawing)
Vera Klement, Yellow Oracle (Painting)
Doris Knoblock, Crested Bird Jar (Sculpture)
John Knudsen, A Working Day (Print)
Susan Kraut, Chair & Red Table (Painting)
Paul Lamantia, Tender Offering (Painting)
Ellen Lanyon, Survival (Painting)
Alice Lauffer, Garden Phantasy I (Painting)
Martin Levine, Chicago Water Works (Print)
Robert Lostulter, Sunbird at Sunset, 1985 (Painting)
Richard Loving, Spring's Rush (Painting)
Ben Mahmoud, Elemental Equation (Painting)
Mati Maldre, Aquarium Series No. 41-4 (Photograph)
Robert Malone R., Space Limitations (Print)
Susan Mart, Passage VII (Drawing)
Ernest Martin, Moon Building (Print)
MARTYL, FABRIC (Painting)
Robert McAuley, Last Dance (Drawing)
Edward McCullough, Crossing #4-Study 1 (Sculpture)
Owen McHugh, And then Again (Painting)
Robert Lee Mejer, Fantasy Landscape (Painting)
Robert Middaugh, Explanations (Painting)
Dennis L. Mitchell, Firmament (Sculpture)
Robert Mitz, Untitled (Print)
John Mutter, Untitled (Photograph)
Joel P. Myers, CFMBRG 19857 (Sculpture)
Dann Nardi, Between the Two (Sculpture)
Elizabeth Newman, Untitled (Drawing)
Gladys Nilsson, Dayly Upsen Downs (Painting)
Didier Nolet, En Revenant de France (Drawing)
Will Northerner, Cut the Corolla Zombie Guide, Put it in a Jar and Watch it Die (Painting)
Jim Nutt, Not So Fast (Painting)
Steve Oscherwitz, Architectonic Study 1 (Painting)
Larry Page, Cloud Cover (Sculpture)
Ed Paschke, Chicaucus (Painting)
Jeanette Pasin, Golden Dome (Drawing)
Kathryn Paul, Little Grand Canyon, Illinois (Photograph)
Robert Paulson, Montana Girl (Drawing)
Jerry Peart, Jellyrole Man (Sculpture)
Will Petersen, A Matter of Aesthetics (Print)
Marija Petrauskas, Space/Time Glyph (Photograph)
Bertrand D. Phillips, Variegated Riff (Painting)
Frank Piatek, Golden Dyad (Painting)
Barbara Pihos, Grasping Roots (Print)
Don Pilcher, Black Sphere (Sculpture)
Gordon Powell, Noble (Drawing)
Claire Prussian, Portrait of Florence (Drawing)
Daniel Ramirez, TCI Variation (Painting)
Dot Replinger, Tivoli (Work, Cut Paper)
Patrick Rodriguez, Sailor, Before the Storm (Drawing)
Charlotte Rollman Shay, Guadalupe Madonna (Painting)
Barbara Rossi, Two Lights (Painting)
G. Jesse Jr. Sadia, On Fourth (Work, Cut Paper)
Susan Sensemann, Shiki-bu (Painting)
A. Shaddle, Guadalupe (Drawing)
Marlene Short, I'm Meeting My Daughter On The 146 (Painting)
Hollis Sigler, She's Always Looking for Love (Painting)
Diane Simpson, Court Lady (Sculpture)
Lynn Sloan-Theodore, Untitled (83/5/7) (Photograph)
Dan Socha, No Title (Painting)
Eleanor Spiess-Ferris, Charities for a Sally (Painting)
Laurel Springola, Helmut Jahn, Architect, Series I (Photograph)
Tomas R. Stancliffe, Waldorf (Sculpture)
Mary Stoppert, The Angel with the Pink Lips (Sculpture)
Charles Swedlund, Courthouse (Photograph)
Bob Thall, Chicago, 1983 Entry #1 (Photograph)
Bob Thall, Chicago, 1983 Entry #2 (Photograph)
Barry Tinsley, Urban Moraine (Sculpture)
Thomas Walsh, Eioken: 1.84 (Sculpture)
Ruth Weiner, 4 Book Library (Sculpture)
Margaret Wharton, STOLE (Sculpture)
Bruce White, Breezing Up (Sculpture)
Frances Whitehead, Rosetta Series VI (Drawing)
Emerson E. Williams, Grande Mosque (Photograph)
Anne Wilson, Hair on the Dog (Work, Cut Paper)
James Winn, Fields West of Town (Painting)
Karl Wirsum, Public Squeaker #1 (Painting)
Char Wiss, Coiled Basket (Sculpture)
Christine A. Witnik, American Porch (Photograph)
Ray Yoshida, OBLIQUE AND OBVIOUS (Painting)
Claire Zeisler, Double Wall Triptych (Work, Cut Paper)