Thursday, noon, November 16. Intersection of Michigan and Roosevelt in Chicago. Grant Park. Despite the wind gusting from the lake, people keep pouring in. Various ethnicities, different age groups.  Speaking different languages: you can hear English and Polish, of course, but also Chinese, Spanish, and Russian. A tower of Babel? No, Agora.

Hundred plus iron-cast figures, constituting a peculiar headless crowd, populate the park’s landscape and face stone and glass Chicago high-rises.

Herodotus noted already five centuries B.C. that it is much easier to convince the crowd than an individual, remarked Magdalena Abakanowicz, sculptor and author of the iron-cast figures, during her interview with Agnieszka Flakus which appeared in last year’s PLUS Magazine. I witnessed the terror of Hitler and Stalin, I saw the crowds revere the leader, hate the leader, and destroy the leader. This is one of the aspects of Agora. Another one derives from meticulous observation, in the broadest sense of the word: observation of the planet where a group of people or a flock of birds, a swarm of insects or leaves, are merely variants of the same set, variations of a single law of nature which shrinks from identical repetition or is unable to reproduce anything in exactly the same way, just as the human hand can’t make the exact same gesture twice. Letting my immobile sculptures enter this rhythm, I conjure this uncanny law. And I don’t repeat. Each sculpture is singular and individual.

The artist always aims at finding a connection between her projects and the space in which her sculptures are going to be installed.

A sculpture must be intimately tied to its surroundings; only then can it breathe, only then does it have its own place. The moment I saw the project for the city landscape, it struck me that it is made for precisely this number of figures whose size will relate to the city, its energy, and everything that is going on around them.
Each figure weighs over half a ton and is nearly three meters high. They arrived in United States on a Polish ship. Magdalena Abakanowicz’s Agora shares space with sculptures by Pablo Picasso, Alexander Calder, and Henry Moor, as well as with the concert hall designed by the famous American architect Frank Gehry.
The project, financed by the Polish Ministry of Culture, by the Chicago City Mayor, and by American Polonia, took over two years to complete. Poland paid for the iron casting, while the City of Chicago and Polonia for shipping and assembly.

Professor Abakanowicz’s project, installed precisely in this city, is a testimony to the creative energies of both American and Polish spirit, to their kin sensibilities, and to the rootedness of both our cultures in the Greek tradition, stated the Minister of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland, Kazimierz Michał Ujazdowski. The American foun-ding fathers read the Greek classics, and great Polish bards were enamored of Greek literature. Today, we have yet another evidence of the continuity of European, Atlantic, cultural tradition in the language of contemporary art. We are very happy that Polish culture had once more a chance to demonstrate its universal significance, and that it could do that in such a wonderful place.

Magdalena Abakanowicz’s immense open-air installations can be seen, among others, in France, Israel, South Korea, and Japan. A project akin in physical dimensions to Chicago’s Agora, and constituted by twenty figures, may be seen, for a year and a half starting this spring, at the Vancouver Sculpture Biennale.

Art appears where words fail, says the artist. I can communicate equally well in Japan as in France or Australia, since art speaks to human experience. Suffering, pain, and astonishment are felt in a similar way, regardless of culture. I think that the enthusiasm with which the Chicago project was received in Poland speaks of a certain shared sentiment: Warsaw and Chicago have been sister cities for decades.
TimeOut Chicago, the local internet portal, posted a remark that the Polish gift is a huge thank-you to the city that has become the home to the largest Polish community outside of Poland.

As he was expressing his thanks to professor Abakanowicz, Minister Ujazdowski added: I have no doubt your wonderful work will provoke deep reflection in both residents and tourists visiting the city.

In the forest of these huge iron-cast figures, I ran into a young boy. He might have been twelve, thirteen years old.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“I don’t know.”
“What do you feel?”
“That if someone tried to climb them, he could get hurt.”
“Did you notice that the people have no heads?”
“Sure!”
“Why do you think that is?”
The youth looked up at me with a tinge of pity, and with the conviction of a sage who had examined the matter at depth, he answered:
“That’s obvious! They’re all stupid!”