Commissioned by Boris Johnson as the Eiffel Tower of London, Anish Kapoor’s ‘Orbit’ Is Now More Than $15 Million in Debt

The mega-sculpture in East London co-designed by Anish Kapoor
for the 2012 Olympics at the request of Boris Johnson, the former
mayor of the city and now the UK’s prime minister, has seen a sharp
fall in visitor numbers and is falling deeper and deeper into
debt.

The Arcelor Mittal Orbit,
as it is now called, has landed the London Legacy Development
Corporation, which runs the park in which it sits, £13 million
($15.7 million) in debt as interest mounts on the loan provided by
the Indian steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal for its construction,
according to the Art
Newspaper. (Originally christened Orbit, the
artwork is now named after the ArcelorMittal steel company, of
which Mittal is chairman.)

Johnson, who selected Kapoor’s proposal following a design
competition, envisioned Orbit as a major tourist
attraction that would become a symbol of the city, akin to the
Eiffel Tower in Paris or the Statue of Liberty in New York.

But critics slammed the sculpture upon its completion, and the
public wasn’t particularly enamored of it either. In 2016–27,
193,000 people visited the site. That number has plummeted
to 155,000 in 2018–19.

To boost attendance, Johnson insisted that Kapoor revamp
the work to make it a more appealing attraction. The
artist—who is not a fan of
Johnson—wasn’t pleased, but
proposed working with another artist, Carsten Höller, to turn the
artwork into the world’s tallest and
longest slide. When Höller’s addition to
Orbit was unveiled in 2016, the price to visit the
observation deck and slide to the bottom was £17.50 ($21), and
organizers hoped that ticket prices would boost revenue.

Built in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in East London, the piece
was designed by Kapoor with engineer Cecil
Balmond. Orbit is the tallest work of public art
in all of the UK, at a towering 376 feet.

At the time that he unveiled plans for the work, Johnson was
confident the project would be successful. “Of course some
people will say we are nuts—in the depths of a recession—to be
building Britain’s biggest ever piece of public art,” he told the
Guardian.
“[But I am] certain that this is the right thing for the Stratford
site, in games time and beyond.”

The post Commissioned by Boris Johnson as the Eiffel Tower
of London, Anish Kapoor’s ‘Orbit’ Is Now More Than $15 Million in
Debt appeared first on artnet News.