Michael McAtee
| Rural planning »
August 28, 2005
McCormick Museum Competition
The McCormick Museum recently sponsored a competition for a signature sculpture or 'monument' to the freedoms of the First Amendment to be placed in the center of a new museum about these very freedoms. The new museum will be located in the Tribune Tower in downtown Chicago (once the site of another very famous competition). Nearly 700 entries were submitted from around the world, I was lucky enough to be selected, along with my partner Lauren Pett, to be one of 10 runners-up to 10 finalists.
The competition brief asked for a sculpture to commemorate the ephemeral freedoms found in the first amendment, no small task to give physical form to such abstract concepts. Primarily the emphasis was to be on the Freedom of Speech. In conceptualizing the design, there were several issues to struggle with. One: should this be an iconic, abstract form symbolizing Freedom, or a diaphanous form, something that could not be distilled into a concrete form. As this sculpture was to provide the central identity for the museum, it seemed as though the museum needed something concrete, though I struggled with myself about whether the "icon" distills and distorts meaning and if therefore an "iconic" form was inferior to the "irreducible". In the end our submission seemed to fall into a happy medium between these two ends. Two: should this be an interactive sculpture (involving sounds, projections, responding to inhabitants of the space, etc.) or should this operate in a more traditional sense, with a static piece whose form allows the viewer to create their own experience through observation and interaction. Though I contemplated projections and sound, it seemed as though a static object would allow greater reflection and interpretation by each viewer, allowing each individual to create their own meaning and read into the piece what they wanted. To see the text and image of our submission see the second link at the end of this entry.
Several of the finalists and runners-up seemed to have stumbled over these same conclusions (or the opposite) to varying degrees of success. Whereas I was attempting to create an abstract form, several entries were far too literal in the use of text and several went so far as to simply use the text of the first amendment or derivations there of as their pieces. This level of literalness does not allow for the viewer to distance themselves from the work, they do not allow the viewer to project their own selves upon the work or read additional meaning into them. Several of the submissions were so text based and interactive as to become sculptural exhibits, nothing more than creatively sculpted or displayed exhibits – there didn't seem to be enough separation between the works and possible exhibitions throughout the museum. The work of art needed to be a disconnect, a piece that both dislocates the observer from the context of the everyday and the language and form of the museum, but at the same time embodies and projects the concept of the First Amendment.
Three of the finalists in particular seemed to be headed in the same direction as we were with this project. The Lewis/Lee/Rhodes submission seemed to be a successful abstraction of the concept of freedom into a form that could be interpreted in various ways as it engaged the observer and the space. However, this piece seemed a bit too disconnected from the concept, nothing in the piece specifically (or tangentially) references freedom in either its material or construction. While it claimed to be a "tectonic distillation" of freedom, it was Aaron Kadoch's Libera Forma that truly blended a tectonic sensibility with the rigid framework of steel and ephemeral panes of glass they suspended. The growing undulating form reflects the plastic nature of freedom implying its adaptation and evolution in a fixed form. The projection of images would almost undermine the form of the sculpture itself; they are a bit too gratuitous. The most successful entry (also the winning entry) is by Amy Larimer and Peter Bernheim who create a completely textual, but utterly sculptural piece. The texts are abstracted through illegibility; the stories become far less literal than in the other submissions, and allow the viewer to embrace the form and concept and to be enveloped in the narrative of freedom established by the First Amendment. The sculpture appears to be very interesting and I am excited to see the end product; hopefully they don’t screw it up between now and next spring.
Follow the following links to view websites containing information regarding the McCormick Museum sculpture competition and the exhibition the competition was featured in at the Chicago Architecture Foundation. The first site lists only the finalists with video interviews of each of the entrant teams, providing interesting insight into the process and intent of the pieces. The second link has both the runner’s up and finalists and describes the competition in the context of several other notable international competitions.
Posted by mdmcatee at August 28, 2005 11:10 PM
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