Arts & Entertainment

New Exhibition on Richard Hunt, Chicago Sculptor Who Made Monuments for the Nation, Provides an Intimate Look

Richard Hunt’s talent was truly monumental.

Hunt created more public sculptures and monuments in the U.S. than any other artist — over 160 by the time he died in 2023. He spent more than 70 years grinding, welding and sculpting metal.

Nationally, Richard Hunt’s works are in the Smithsonian, and he transformed urban spaces in dozens of cities across the country.

Locally, you can see his creations everywhere — Midway Airport, the Loop, Ravinia, and next year at the Obama Presidential Center.

WTTW News spoke with Hunt two years before he died at age 88, when he was about to unveil a monument to Ida B. Wells in Bronzeville. He reflected on his changing hometown and his impact on it.

“It’s interesting how the cityscape has changed,” Hunt said. “I’m happy that I’ve had an opportunity to put a piece here and a piece there that hopefully enhances and draws attention to specific aspects.”

Hunt was interested in aspects of history and myth, freedom and justice. While still a teenager, he saw the body of Emmett Till in the open casket at his public funeral.

An early sculpture, “Hero’s Head” (1956), was inspired by Till. Hunt made it in the basement of his father’s barbershop, where he’d taught himself to weld.

Over the decades, Hunt made works of all sizes. They feature dramatic angles, graceful curves and soaring shapes. His body of work embodies elegance and transcendence.

Near the end of his life, he finished another work influenced by Emmett Till, “Hero Ascending.” There are plans to install the sculpture outside the Emmett Till/Mamie Till-Mobley historic landmark home in Woodlawn.

With so many big, breathtaking works on public view, it’s a pleasure to now see an intimate view of the great Chicago artist.

“Freedom in Form: Richard Hunt” opened Friday at the Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA).

In 2024 the exhibition premiered at the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library in Springfield.

“Freedom in Form: Richard Hunt” at the Loyola University Museum of Art runs through Nov. 15, 2025. (Marc Vitali / WTTW News)

WTTW News spoke with the Lincoln Library’s director of exhibits Lance Tawzer at a preview of the show at LUMA. He spoke about the artist – and holding an art exhibit in a presidential library.

“We got turned on to him by the First Lady of Illinois,” Tawzer said. “She had commissioned a piece in 2019 for the Governor’s Mansion. This was pre-pandemic, and she said, ‘You ought to do something with Richard Hunt. I know you don’t do a lot of art shows, but he’s important to Illinois.’ So, we came to Chicago, met with him and he said, ‘I’d love to do a show at the Lincoln Library.”

“But then he passed away in 2023 before the show had opened.”

The exhibition showcases important works from different stages of his career — at least, the ones that could fit into a museum. It is bookended by Hunt’s works about Emmett Till.

For some of the larger ones there are maquettes, which are smaller, draft models of the proposed sculpture. One, “Middle Passage,” is an unrealized monument that captures Hunt’s ethos of metaphors in metal.

Also on display: the heavy tools Hunt used to shape scrap metal. Early on, it was car bumpers and whatever he could salvage.

And there are selections from his personal library, 250 books that reflect the artist’s interests and influences.

“We wanted to bring people into Hunt’s studio,” curator Ross Stanton Jordan told WTTW News.

In 1971, Hunt bought a one-time electrical substation at 1017 W. Lill Ave. It became his studio for 52 years. His laboratory for sculpture, now cared for by the Richard Hunt Trust, is part wonderland and part scrapyard.

“That site became an artistic hub not just for him but for other artists, musicians and dancers,” Jordan said. “The studio space allowed him to stay in Chicago but allowed other artists to have an anchor point as well. It was groundbreaking and important.”

Richard Hunt’s studio is pictured in June 2021. (Marc Vitali / WTTW News)

Whether viewed in a studio, a public park or a museum, Richard Hunt’s sculptures reveal a mind that could think in three dimensions.

“Hunt had the ability and skill to make a shape become a cloud or liquid or mist – even though it weighs a ton [laughs],” said the curator. “It changes mass.”

“Hunt is responding to the metal. He’s responding to forms and shapes he’s seeing, and he’s growing or reducing them. He learns about what he’s making as he’s making it. He shows what metal can do. He loved bronze and steel.”

As Richard Hunt explained to WTTW News in 2021: “It’s dynamic. You can have a painting or a mural on a wall, and that’s something that you look at that doesn’t change. But if you have a sculpture, you look at it from here, from there, from another side. It reveals itself in different ways.”

“Freedom in Form: Richard Hunt” at the Loyola University Museum of Art (LUMA) runs through Nov. 15. LUMA is located at 820 North Michigan Ave.

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Marc Vitali is the JCS Fund of the DuPage Foundation Arts Correspondent.

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