Blame Enron
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The untitled work consisted of six 22-foot-wide white plastic modules (think stretched Ws) strung on aluminum rods like a set of chunky beads and lit from within. It had been commissioned from Chryssa (like Michelangelo or Christo, she’s known by her first name) by the building’s developer and the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill at a cost of $275,000. Mason had been an admirer of the sculpture’s complex use of programmed neon light, which intensified and dimmed, moving very subtly within and among the modules over time. “It’s in our catalog of sculpture in Chicago,” he said to Bringe. “We need to remove it if it’s gone.” Approaching the first person they found who worked in the building, they asked what had happened to it. “The company that owns the building got rid of it,” they were told.
“They put it in the garbage.”
Word is that visitors, especially international tourists, still wander into the lobby, guidebooks in hand, eyes up.
Good-byes
