Hundreds gather in bid to push over Chicago's famous bean sculpture after claims man is trapped inside
Published: | Updated:
Chicago locals gathered for a fun mission this weekend after an amusing social media post went viral online.
A huge crowd met at Millennium Park in Downtown on Sunday afternoon to push the famous Cloud Gate aka Bean to save an imaginary man.
People gathered around the famous artwork and attempted to move the public sculpture by seven inches to the left.
People chanted ‘Push the Bean’ in unison in video appearing from the event.
However, they failed to move the 110-ton stainless steel sculpture after several attempts.
The event started as a viral joke online after which people started seeing flyers on Downtown streets, CBS News Chicago reported.
‘We need to move the bean 7 inches to the left. First push @12:47 pm 11/8/2026,’ the flyer read.
The reason behind the event was as jocular as the occasion itself. Internet folklore suggests that there's a man stuck inside the Bean and people gathered to save him.
Hundreds of people gathered at Millennium Park in Downtown Chicago to move the Bean by seven inches
The event started as a joke on social media but people then started seeing flyers about the event around the Downtown area (Photo Credit: Complex/Facebook)
The organizers of the event said in their Partiful invite that they wanted to move the structure to free the man.
The invite claimed that there could be a ‘latch door’ under the right side of the sculpture and moving it would let people give the trapped man ‘a pickle and other resources,’ Block Club Chicago reported.
Saniyah Whaley, a freshman at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, told the outlet that there were as many as 250 people at the event.
‘Yesterday night, I was scrolling on Instagram and I saw this post telling people to come to Millennium Park to push The Bean seven inches to the left,’ Whaley said.
‘It gave me something to do today because if I didn’t go, I wasn’t really gonna leave like my dorm or anything.’
She added that it was a fun way to meet new people.
‘In the back of everyone’s minds, we knew it wasn’t really gonna move,' she said.
‘I think these events are just for people to build stronger connections in community. A lot of people have these common interests, even if it’s [just] trying to push The Bean … It brought a lot of joy to a lot of people there.’
The organizers jokingly claimed that there was a man stuck under the Bean and they would help free him
The artwork was created by Anish Kapoor and is the centerpiece of Grainger Plaza at Millennium Park in the Loop community area.
It was constructed between 2004 and 2006 and was nicknamed ‘The Bean' because of its fabiform shape.
Kapoor’s design was inspired by liquid mercury to create a surface that reflects and distorts the city's skyline and clouds moving overhead.
While the artwork sees about 20 million visitors each year, the Bean became a topic of memes in 2025 when the ‘man in the bean’ jokes started circulating online.
It got so much traction that Chicago City Council member Alderman Brendan Reilly said his office was flooded with calls inquiring about the man.
‘I am happy to confirm that a man has not been trapped inside ‘Cloud Gate’ (a.k.a ‘the Bean’) for the past 21 years,’ Reilly wrote in a statement back then.
A mockumentary called Man in the Bean was also released on YouTube earlier this year.
KioskNews shows a cleaned-up reading view extracted from the publisher’s page — the original always lives on their site, not ours.