Sunday afternoon in the Cyber-Age Park: the city's new greensward features Frank Gehny's latest, plus "interactive" sculptural works by Jaume Plensa and Anish Kapoor

Art in America, Nov, 2004 by Franz Schulze

With the end of summer it has become clear that Millennium Park in its first season has been an artistic, architectural and urbanistic accomplishment of the first magnitude. The obstacles that kept it from opening on schedule have been completely overcome and, as time passes, are likely to be forgotten. Credit for the success goes not only to the participating artists but to a number of citizens whose leadership was no less vital to its realization. Chief among these are director Uhlir, who saw the undertaking through from start to finish, and businessman John H. Bryan, one of the city's most devoted and effective arts patrons, who was responsible for raising most of the private money.

And mayor Richard M. Daley, consummate politician in the Chicago tradition, deserves a final encomium. It was he who championed this exemplary public project and guided it to completion despite many legal and financial difficulties. Indeed, the Millennium Park is part of u general greening of Chicago, seen in myriad floral planters and new gardenlike sites, that may well be his chief physical legacy to the city.

Franz Schulze is a professor at Lake Forest College in Illinois. His books include Mies van der Rohe: A Critical Biography (1985) and Philip Johnson: Life and Works (1994).