Bean there, done that

QUIET RIOT Those who died because of the infamous Haymarket bombing are remembered in Mary Brogger’s The Haymarket Memorial.

Photo: Robert E. Potter III

Haymarket Memorial, 2004 (Desplaines St between Lake and Randolph Sts)
What does this monument to free speech and the labor movement have in common with Cows on Parade (1999)? Both were Public Art Program Special Projects, which are funded by the city instead of construction budgets. (PAP director Elizabeth “Lee” Kelley says the Cows’ auction has since funded many special projects.) Mary Brogger’s red-painted bronze sculpture of men standing on a wagon (pictured, below) marks the site where activists delivered speeches during a May 1886 labor rally—until an unidentified assailant’s bomb killed a policeman and sparked the so-called Haymarket Riot.

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