Ravinia has unveiled the newest addition to its sculpture collection, a monumental painted stainless-steel figure by internationally celebrated Spanish sculptor Jaume Plensa, who attended the June 14 unveiling event.
Titled Silent Music, the 2012 sculpture is approximately 150 × 90.5 × 90.5 inches and lights up at night. The piece is on extended loan to the festival from the Joel and Carole Bernstein Family Collection. Plensa is best known locally as the designer of the Crown Fountain—popularly referred to as the “spitting fountain”—at Chicago’s Millennium Park. The sculptor found his inspiration for Silent Music in his early childhood experience of crawling underneath the family piano while his father played it, creating a complete sensory experience. “It vividly illustrates the full Ravinia experience in that our audiences can immerse themselves totally in music, just as one can literally crawl into Plensa’s sculpture to experience the artist’s vision from within, to be surrounded by art the way the boy under the piano was surrounded by music,” said Ravinia President and CEO Welz Kauffman.