The James R. Thompson Center is marked by a massive, curved, glass-walled facade that rises seventeen stories above the sidewalk. Opened in nineteen eighty-five, the structure occupies an entire city block in the Loop. Architect Helmut…
Loop Plaza Public Art
This short walking tour guides you through the world-class outdoor gallery of Chicago's financial district. You'll stand before massive, iconic modern sculptures by Picasso, Calder, Miró, and Chagall, all sitting completely free on downtown plazas.
Listen to this tour in the Mira app →Walk it in street view
1. James R. Thompson Center
2. Untitled by Pablo Picasso
Rising fifty feet above Daley Plaza, this monumental untitled sculpture is crafted from Cor-Ten steel, the same weathered, rusted-brown material used for the exterior of the Richard J. Daley Center nearby. The structure weighs one hundred…
3. Miró's Chicago (The Sun, The Moon, and One Star)
Miró’s Chicago is a thirty-nine-foot tall, abstract figure that rises from a stone-clad base in the narrow space between the Cook County Administration Building and the Chicago Temple Building. Its curving, multicolored form, crafted from…
4. Louise Nevelson's Dawn Shadows
Dawn Shadows is a large, black, fabricated steel sculpture that stands at two hundred West Madison Street. Created in nineteen eighty-three by the artist Louise Nevelson, the work rises as a series of complex, geometric forms that contrast…
5. Chagall's Four Seasons
The Four Seasons is a monumental mosaic structure, seventy feet long and fourteen feet high, wrapped in thousands of glass and stone tiles in over two hundred and fifty colors. Located in the Chase Tower Plaza, the artwork depicts six…
6. Flamingo - Alexander Calder
The Flamingo is a fifty-three-foot-tall, bright red steel sculpture that rises from the concrete of Federal Plaza. Designed by the artist Alexander Calder, this massive abstract shape is known as a stabile, a term Calder used to describe…