A new sculpture of Lorraine Hansberry outside Navy Pier depicts the late playwright, journalist and civil rights activist sitting on a tree stump.
The stump represents the Chicago native’s short life, says Alison Saar, the artist who created the sculpture and whose prominent artworks includes a larger-than-life Harriet Tubman sculpture in New York City.
Hansberry died of pancreatic cancer at 34.
There are few monuments of women in America. This one, titled “To Sit A While,” arrives in Chicago, where Navy Pier will be its permanent home, after a two-year U.S. tour that took it to Los Angeles and New York.
Five life-size bronze chairs surround Hansberry in a tight circle, encouraging people to sit.
Saar says each of the monument’s seats — an ottoman, a bar stool, an office chair, and two chairs that look like they belong in a kitchen — has a special meaning.
“These are casts of actual chairs,” says Saar, who was hired to design the statue by the Lorraine Hansberry Initiative, an effort backed by an advocacy group supporting women in theater. “One of the chairs symbolizing her work as a playwright was a bentwood chair, which is featured in ‘A Raisin in the Sun.’ A stool and an office chair kind of symbolize her work as a journalist.”
There’s also an ottoman to represent the playwright’s meeting in 1963 with Robert F. Kennedy to discuss civil rights.
“I think most of us know Lorraine Hansberry as the playwright who wrote ‘A Raisin in the Sun,’ ” Saar says. “But she was also an activist for African American and civil rights and also for LGBTQ+ rights and a feminist and also a journalist. So I tried to have each of those chairs represent those different, equally powerful aspects.”
Saar says she hopes the sculpture will encourage people to slow down, sit and reflect.
“We spend so much time on social media and on television,” she says. “And we really need to take the time to heal ourselves and take a breath.
“I also hope people will meet there and have poetry slams,” Saar says. “You know, make some music and dance. And there’s a picnic table right adjacent. You can have a picnic.”
The sculpture arrives at a moment when some Americans are questioning who should be memorialized in statues.
Carey Cranston, president of the American Writers Museum, says Hansberry was picked because of her prolific impact on the American theater.
“One of the things they recognized was that there are so few statues of women in public spaces in America,” Cranston says.
At a dedication ceremony in late August, city officials, Hansberry relatives and curious onlookers came together for the sculpture’s unveiling and a screening of the film version of “A Raisin in the Sun.”
Deborah Williams, who lives in Streeterville, passed by while walking her dog Lucky.
“So many people showed up,” Williams says.
She says her main recollection of Hansberry is “A Raisin in the Sun,” which made Hansberry the first Black female writer to have a play performed on Broadway.
William says the sculpture already seems to be drawing attention.
“I see people sit there,” she says. “I come by every day.”