On July 25 the Chicago Park District faxed a memo to Michael Lash, director of the city’s Public Art Program, notifying him that his agency’s services would no longer be needed. Beginning last August, Lash, PAP project coordinator Lee Kelley, and an 18-member advisory panel had spent eight months trying to choose an artist to create an outdoor sculpture for the proposed Soldier Field Veterans Memorial. But the fax only confirmed what Lash and Kelley had long suspected. The process had been stalled since the spring, when the advisory panel voted to suspend activities because it couldn’t identify an acceptable artist or style of work. “They thought the best thing to do was not have us do it,” says Lash. “They decided not to use a tried-and-true public art process. It’s been a great spinning of wheels in the mud.”
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The Park District sent Lash the fax after the Reader began inquiring about the status of the project. That same day, the Lakefront Redevelopment Project–the public-private partnership among the Chicago Bears, the Park District, and the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority that’s overseeing the creation of the new Soldier Field complex–announced that it had a solution. The $200,000 commission would be awarded to Chicago-based husband-and-wife sculptors Jeffrey Varilla and Anna Koh Varilla, who have made “classic realist” sculptures for public and private institutions all over the country, including the life-size bronze bust of Richard J. Daley that sits in the current mayor’s office. The Varillas say they weren’t aware of the original competition. But that’s because they were never invited to make a proposal.
Five more artists submitted portfolios over the next month, and in mid-November the committee narrowed the field to ten semifinalists, who were asked to submit proposals; nine did. Four of those were eliminated in December, leaving Ned Broderick, Michael Helbing, B.J. Krivanek, Jason Salavon, and Kris Yokoo, who presented models in February. None included figurative sculpture, though most planned to incorporate sculptural elements on the wall (like Helbing’s stainless steel EKG graph), along with inscriptions or reliefs memorializing the branches of the armed forces or significant events in American military history.
On Monday notification that the project was over finally went out to the selection committee. “It was a real, sincere effort,” says Sandor, “and veterans and people from all walks of life on our committee truly tried to do the right thing. But in the end, something was done behind our backs. That’s so disgusting–such a shame.”
