Monument with Standing Beast
sculpture by Jean Dubuffet
Monument with Standing Beast is a sculpture by Jean Dubuffet previously located in front of the James R. Thompson Center in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois.
History and description
It was across the street from Chicago City Hall to the South and diagonal across the street from the Daley Center to the southeast. Weighing 10 short tons (8.9 long tons; 9.1 t), the structure was made of fiberglass and was 29 feet (8.8 m) tall. It was unveiled on November 28, 1984. The state government announced plans to relocate the sculpture after Alphabet Inc. acquired the building in 2022. It was dismantled in the spring of 2024 and was bound for a state warehouse.
This is one of Dubuffet's three monumental sculpture commissions in the United States. It has been taken to represent a standing animal, a tree, a portal and an architectural form. The sculpture is based on Dubuffet's 1960 painting series Hourloupe.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Monument with Standing Beast” is sculpture by Jean Dubuffet. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Monument, Standing and Beast, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “sculpture by Jean Dubuffet” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6906917. Authority coordinates are 41.885, -87.631. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1984, 2022, 2024 and 1960.
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This entry incorporates text from “Monument with Standing Beast” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.