Man Enters the Cosmos
Encyclopedia
Man Enters the Cosmos is a cast bronze sculpture
by Henry Moore
located on the Lake Michigan
lakefront outside the Adler Planetarium
in the Museum Campus
area of downtown Chicago
in Cook County
, Illinois
, United States
. The planetarium, which is both a National Historic Landmark
and listed on the National Register of Historic Places
, is located in the Near South Side
community area
of Chicago. Moore's sculpture is a functional bowstring equatorial sundial
created in 1980 measuring approximately 13 feet (4 m). The sundial was formerly located slightly further south at the steps of the main entry plaza to the Planetarium, but it now sits directly on the lakefront.
The sundial has two plaques on its base. The one on the left is a commemorative one discussing the benefactor and purpose of the sculpture. The benefactor of the sculpture was the B.F. Ferguson Monument fund, which has commissioned several works of art
throughout Chicago. Many of the Ferguson fund's commissioned works, such as the Fountain of the Great Lakes
, are housed in and on the grounds of the Art Institute of Chicago
or elsewhere in Grant Park
. The purpose of the commission was to recognize the space exploration
program. The plaque on the right is an equation of time
table to correct for the time differences caused by the axial tilt
of the Earth
as well as its orbital eccentricity
. As the plaque indicates with an additional correction, the equation of time table does not correct for daylight savings time.
Like most of Moore's work completed after 1954, this was a modeled sculpture instead of a direct carving. The sculpture is composed of two bronze semicircles, one set inside and at right angles to the other and a slim bronze rod that extends from one end of the outer semicircle to the other that serves as the gnomon
(indicator). The bowstring equatorial sundial derives its name from the appearance of the shadow-casting gnomon, which resembles a bow string
. The shadow of the rod projects onto the inner semicircle, which serves as the dial face (or dial plate), to mark the time of day when there is sufficient sunlight
to produce shadow
s.
Over the course of the year different sections of the rod serve as the style, which is the part of the gnomon that indicates the time by casting its shadow on the dial face. At the summer solstice
, when the Sun
is highest (farthest above the equatorial plane), the style is closest to the top of the rod, and at the winter solstice, when the Sun is lowest, it is closest to the bottom. At the equinox
es, when the Sun is on the equatorial plane, the style is exactly in the center of the length of the rod. The style of the equatorial sundial is parallel to the Earth's axis of rotation.
This type of sundial is known as an equatorial sundial because the plane of the dial face is parallel to the Earth's equatorial plane. Two primary examples of modified equatorial sundials are bowstring equatorial and armillary dials. Both of these modified equatorial sundials can be read year-round on the same surface, regardless of whether the Sun is above or below the equatorial plane whereas a standard equatorial sundial changes sides with each equinox and is virtually unreadable near the equinoxes when the Sun is located on the equatorial plane.
Between 1997 and 1999, The Adler Planetarium added a sky pavilion to the original 1930 architecture. When it did so, the roads were moved and the sundial was moved to its current location. The move was performed by contractors of the Adler Planetarium in two phases. First, the sculpture was removed and placed in storage to make way for the current roadway. It was later moved to its current position after the new roadway was built and the old roadway was replaced with a walkway. Now, a u-turn in Solidarity Drive runs through the original location of the sundial, and the sundial is located on the walkway that replaced the previous roadway the went around the planetarium. The new location and the u-turn can be seen on a Museum Campus map. This construction was contemporaneous with the $100 million project that reconfigured of traffic around the Museum Campus and caused Lake Shore Drive
to be moved during the mid 1990s.
's Research Information System (SIRIS) on display outdoors, in Chicago. All of them are bronze. His Nuclear Energy is situated on the campus of the University of Chicago
at the site of the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction
, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The site is also listed as a National Historic Landmark, and Chicago Landmark
. Other Chicago works include Large Interior Form
, which is located in the north garden at the Art Institute of Chicago
, and Reclining Figure, which is on loan to the University of Chicago and which is located in the Cochrane-Woods Art Center courtyard. The Henry Moore foundation lists several other indoor Chicago works at locations such as the Art Institute of Chicago and The Smart Museum.
Bronze sculpture
Bronze is the most popular metal for cast metal sculptures; a cast bronze sculpture is often called simply a "bronze".Common bronze alloys have the unusual and desirable property of expanding slightly just before they set, thus filling the finest details of a mold. Then, as the bronze cools, it...
by Henry Moore
Henry Moore
Henry Spencer Moore OM CH FBA was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art....
located on the Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America and the only one located entirely within the United States. It is the second largest of the Great Lakes by volume and the third largest by surface area, after Lake Superior and Lake Huron...
lakefront outside the Adler Planetarium
Adler Planetarium
The Adler Planetarium & Astronomy Museum in Chicago, Illinois was the first planetarium built in the Western Hemisphere and is the oldest in existence today. Adler was founded and built in 1930 by the philanthropist Max Adler, with the assistance of the first director of the planetarium, Philip Fox...
in the Museum Campus
Museum Campus Chicago
Museum Campus Chicago is a lakefront park in Chicago that surrounds three of the city's most notable museums, all dedicated to the natural sciences: the Adler Planetarium, the Shedd Aquarium, and the Field Museum of Natural History...
area of downtown Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
in Cook County
Cook County, Illinois
Cook County is a county in the U.S. state of Illinois, with its county seat in Chicago. It is the second most populous county in the United States after Los Angeles County. The county has 5,194,675 residents, which is 40.5 percent of all Illinois residents. Cook County's population is larger than...
, Illinois
Illinois
Illinois is the fifth-most populous state of the United States of America, and is often noted for being a microcosm of the entire country. With Chicago in the northeast, small industrial cities and great agricultural productivity in central and northern Illinois, and natural resources like coal,...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The planetarium, which is both a National Historic Landmark
National Historic Landmark
A National Historic Landmark is a building, site, structure, object, or district, that is officially recognized by the United States government for its historical significance...
and listed on the National Register of Historic Places
National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places is the United States government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation...
, is located in the Near South Side
Near South Side, Chicago
The Near South Side is a community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United States. It is located just south of the downtown central business district, the Loop, which is itself a community area...
community area
Community areas of Chicago
Community areas in Chicago refers to the work of the Social Science Research Committee at University of Chicago which has unofficially divided the City of Chicago into 77 community areas. These areas are well-defined and static...
of Chicago. Moore's sculpture is a functional bowstring equatorial sundial
Sundial
A sundial is a device that measures time by the position of the Sun. In common designs such as the horizontal sundial, the sun casts a shadow from its style onto a surface marked with lines indicating the hours of the day. The style is the time-telling edge of the gnomon, often a thin rod or a...
created in 1980 measuring approximately 13 feet (4 m). The sundial was formerly located slightly further south at the steps of the main entry plaza to the Planetarium, but it now sits directly on the lakefront.
Details
Work of art
A work of art, artwork, art piece, or art object is an aesthetic item or artistic creation.The term "a work of art" can apply to:*an example of fine art, such as a painting or sculpture*a fine work of architecture or landscape design...
throughout Chicago. Many of the Ferguson fund's commissioned works, such as the Fountain of the Great Lakes
Fountain of the Great Lakes
Fountain of the Great Lakes or Spirit of the Great Lakes Fountain is an allegorical sculpture by Lorado Taft in the Art Institute of Chicago South Stanley McCormick Memorial Court south of the Art Institute of Chicago Building in the Loop community area of Chicago in Cook County, Illinois, United...
, are housed in and on the grounds of the Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
or elsewhere in Grant Park
Grant Park (Chicago)
Grant Park, with between the downtown Chicago Loop and Lake Michigan, offers many different attractions in its large open space. The park is generally flat. It is also crossed by large boulevards and even a bed of sunken railroad tracks...
. The purpose of the commission was to recognize the space exploration
Space exploration
Space exploration is the use of space technology to explore outer space. Physical exploration of space is conducted both by human spaceflights and by robotic spacecraft....
program. The plaque on the right is an equation of time
Equation of time
The equation of time is the difference between apparent solar time and mean solar time. At any given instant, this difference will be the same for every observer...
table to correct for the time differences caused by the axial tilt
Axial tilt
In astronomy, axial tilt is the angle between an object's rotational axis, and a line perpendicular to its orbital plane...
of the Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
as well as its orbital eccentricity
Orbital eccentricity
The orbital eccentricity of an astronomical body is the amount by which its orbit deviates from a perfect circle, where 0 is perfectly circular, and 1.0 is a parabola, and no longer a closed orbit...
. As the plaque indicates with an additional correction, the equation of time table does not correct for daylight savings time.
Like most of Moore's work completed after 1954, this was a modeled sculpture instead of a direct carving. The sculpture is composed of two bronze semicircles, one set inside and at right angles to the other and a slim bronze rod that extends from one end of the outer semicircle to the other that serves as the gnomon
Gnomon
The gnomon is the part of a sundial that casts the shadow. Gnomon is an ancient Greek word meaning "indicator", "one who discerns," or "that which reveals."It has come to be used for a variety of purposes in mathematics and other fields....
(indicator). The bowstring equatorial sundial derives its name from the appearance of the shadow-casting gnomon, which resembles a bow string
Bow string
A bow string joins the two ends of the bow stave and launches the arrow. Desirable properties include light weight, strength, resistance to abrasion, and resistance to water...
. The shadow of the rod projects onto the inner semicircle, which serves as the dial face (or dial plate), to mark the time of day when there is sufficient sunlight
Sunlight
Sunlight, in the broad sense, is the total frequency spectrum of electromagnetic radiation given off by the Sun. On Earth, sunlight is filtered through the Earth's atmosphere, and solar radiation is obvious as daylight when the Sun is above the horizon.When the direct solar radiation is not blocked...
to produce shadow
Shadow
A shadow is an area where direct light from a light source cannot reach due to obstruction by an object. It occupies all of the space behind an opaque object with light in front of it. The cross section of a shadow is a two-dimensional silhouette, or reverse projection of the object blocking the...
s.
Solstice
A solstice is an astronomical event that happens twice each year when the Sun's apparent position in the sky, as viewed from Earth, reaches its northernmost or southernmost extremes...
, when the Sun
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...
is highest (farthest above the equatorial plane), the style is closest to the top of the rod, and at the winter solstice, when the Sun is lowest, it is closest to the bottom. At the equinox
Equinox
An equinox occurs twice a year, when the tilt of the Earth's axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun, the center of the Sun being in the same plane as the Earth's equator...
es, when the Sun is on the equatorial plane, the style is exactly in the center of the length of the rod. The style of the equatorial sundial is parallel to the Earth's axis of rotation.
This type of sundial is known as an equatorial sundial because the plane of the dial face is parallel to the Earth's equatorial plane. Two primary examples of modified equatorial sundials are bowstring equatorial and armillary dials. Both of these modified equatorial sundials can be read year-round on the same surface, regardless of whether the Sun is above or below the equatorial plane whereas a standard equatorial sundial changes sides with each equinox and is virtually unreadable near the equinoxes when the Sun is located on the equatorial plane.
Between 1997 and 1999, The Adler Planetarium added a sky pavilion to the original 1930 architecture. When it did so, the roads were moved and the sundial was moved to its current location. The move was performed by contractors of the Adler Planetarium in two phases. First, the sculpture was removed and placed in storage to make way for the current roadway. It was later moved to its current position after the new roadway was built and the old roadway was replaced with a walkway. Now, a u-turn in Solidarity Drive runs through the original location of the sundial, and the sundial is located on the walkway that replaced the previous roadway the went around the planetarium. The new location and the u-turn can be seen on a Museum Campus map. This construction was contemporaneous with the $100 million project that reconfigured of traffic around the Museum Campus and caused Lake Shore Drive
Lake Shore Drive
Lake Shore Drive is a mostly freeway-standard expressway running parallel with and alongside the shoreline of Lake Michigan through Chicago, Illinois, USA. Except for the portion north of Foster Avenue , Lake Shore Drive is designated as part of U.S...
to be moved during the mid 1990s.
Moore in Chicago
When Moore was alive, he took pride in viewing his sculptures in the open-air environment. He once said he would prefer to see his sculptures in any open landscape than in even the most beautiful buildings he knew. Including this sculpture, Moore has a total of four public sculptures that are listed in the Smithsonian InstitutionSmithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
's Research Information System (SIRIS) on display outdoors, in Chicago. All of them are bronze. His Nuclear Energy is situated on the campus of the University of Chicago
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois, USA. It was founded by the American Baptist Education Society with a donation from oil magnate and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller and incorporated in 1890...
at the site of the first self-sustaining nuclear reaction
Chicago Pile-1
Chicago Pile-1 was the world's first man-made nuclear reactor. CP-1 was built on a rackets court, under the abandoned west stands of the original Alonzo Stagg Field stadium, at the University of Chicago. The first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction was initiated in CP-1 on December 2, 1942...
, which is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The site is also listed as a National Historic Landmark, and Chicago Landmark
Chicago Landmark
Chicago Landmark is a designation of the Mayor of Chicago and the Chicago City Council for historic buildings and other sites in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Listed sites are selected after meeting a combination of criteria, including historical, economic, architectural, artistic, cultural,...
. Other Chicago works include Large Interior Form
Large Interior Form
Large Interior Form is a sculpture by Henry Moore. There are six productions of the work including the one pictured in the Art Institute of Chicago North Stanley McCormick Memorial Court north of the Art Institute of Chicago Building in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. It is work of...
, which is located in the north garden at the Art Institute of Chicago
Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is one of America's largest accredited independent schools of art and design, located in the Loop in Chicago, Illinois. It is associated with the museum of the same name, and "The Art Institute of Chicago" or "Chicago Art Institute" often refers to either...
, and Reclining Figure, which is on loan to the University of Chicago and which is located in the Cochrane-Woods Art Center courtyard. The Henry Moore foundation lists several other indoor Chicago works at locations such as the Art Institute of Chicago and The Smart Museum.