I have only applied for three public art commissions over the course of my multi-decade career.

The first, many years ago, was at the urging of an artisan with whom I was working. It took a lot of time and we came in second, after which I vowed never to waste that amount of energy again. Instead, I continued creating the art I wanted to make, showing it to no one until it was done, at which point I would start to think about exhibiting it. But then several of my dealers—who seemingly meant well—inveigled me into other efforts.

In one instance, two enthusiastic female fans, both of whom were involved in the Beverly Hills Sculpture Park, approached one of my dealers because they wanted to introduce more women artists into the park. Having driven past those installations innumerable times during my two-decades living in Los Angeles, at the beginning of my professional career, I liked the idea of the city acquiring one of my newly created outdoor pieces—one of which had recently sold to the Whitney Museum in New York—and placing it in a visible location.

Because I want to focus on my most recent and disastrous (mis)adventure with Google, I will only say that after many years of effort, too much money spent on travel and lawyers and listening to endless excuses about why the city of Beverly Hills wouldn’t commit to a piece that they solicited, I insisted that we stop trying, much to that gallerist’s chagrin. One supposed reason for the delay was the price of the piece, even though the Whitney had paid the same amount. One male city councilor even stated that he did not think my work was worth the asking price. (This is a classic example of institutionalized sexism. Imagine a male artist peer whose work was being shown in major museums all over the world and who has a permanent installation at the Brooklyn Museum—an unusual achievement for any artist—being comparably questioned.)

Thompson Center, future home of Google’s headquarters, Chicago, IL 2025. Photo: ©Chicago Woodman LLC, Donald Woodman/ARS, New York

The Google Dream

Most recently, another well-meaning dealer suggested that I apply for a Google commission that involved the multimillion dollar renovation of the Thompson Center, an important, historic building in downtown Chicago (my hometown) that the company is planning to use as a major hub in its ever-expanding empire. At the time she suggested this, I was recovering from a long bout of illness and wanted to focus on all the work that had been negatively impacted by my diminished energy. Plus, I wasn’t enthusiastic about the idea of applying for any public art project, given my previous experiences. But my gallery persisted, assigning a staff member to submit a proposal using one of my landmark “Through the Flower” images for what would be a large terrazzo floor along with a 17-story glass elevator shaft.

Months passed and I forgot all about it; then, out of the blue, in the early fall of 2025, my dealer called to say that I had gotten the commission—or rather, we had, because there was no way I could accomplish such a monumental task without the help of my photographer husband, Donald Woodman, who has a background in architecture, understands the mechanics of building, and possesses an attention to detail that I lack, as I tend to think in more conceptual terms. But together, we could tackle it.

Google insisted that we make a site visit and meet the team of architects, construction managers, project managers, and other people tasked with making the “Google dream” come true. What was this “dream”? We were told that Google wanted to turn the Thompson Center into a space that was so warm and hospitable that it would entice employees to go to the office rather than stay home and work remotely in their pajamas; it seems that many young people are reluctant to engage in the synergy that arises from face-to-face encounters. As I have spent a great deal of time attempting to “soften” the male-built environment through my work, I seemed to be a perfect choice. Also, they wanted an artist who had a connection with Chicago (hence, Judy Chicago) and for the building to be a “destination site.” (When The Dinner Party was shown in a run-down section of the city, it drew so many people to the area that it began its gentrification. To this day, 20 percent of the traffic at the Brooklyn Museum is there to see my piece).

Judy Chicago, Drone view of the 250 ft. long Goddess figure created for Maria Grazia Chiuri’s (Dior) Spring-Summer 2020 haute couture show behind the Musée Rodin, Paris, FR 2020. ©Chicago Woodman LLC, Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo courtesy of Christian Dior.

What it Takes to Collaborate

In October, we paid our own travel expenses to fly to Chicago because, surprisingly, Google had allocated no money for the trip they had asked us to make. Even with no contract in place or money changing hands, we had already immersed ourselves deeply into this project. In preparation for our trip, we spent many hours delving into the history and structure of the building, poring over online images and trying to understand what this undertaking would entail, because that’s how we are. For us, it’s all about the art.

I had just concluded a five-year collaboration with Dior, which was the greatest creative opportunity I had ever had and involved working at a scale comparable to the Thompson Center. I started the Dior project wondering if art could have any real place in the world of fashion, as I am of the generation of feminists who viewed fashion as inherently oppressive to women. By the time it was over, I had discovered that that was not necessarily true.

One of the projects I did with them (What If Women Ruled the World?) had morphed into another: the giant goddess figure I created for Maria Grazia Chiuri’s January 2020 couture show behind the Rodin Museum (a paean to masculinity). The monumental fiber banners that hung within it have become a digital/analog presentation sponsored by Dmniti that is touring the world, inviting thousands of people to answer the questions my banners raise and demonstrating the power of art to transcend the many barriers between us at a terrible time in history.

The Google project seemed to offer the potential for a comparable impact. With hindsight, I realize that one of the reasons for the success of the Dior projects was that, from the start, we worked directly with the company’s principals, including upper management where all the decisions are made. This required an intense collaboration, which is what we assumed the Google project would involve.

Looking down at the existing Thompson Center atrium floor, Chicago IL. 2025. Photo: ©Chicago Woodman LLC, Donald Woodman/ARS, New York

The Initial Visit

Seeing the Thompson Center in person was crucial; photographs and drawings could not convey its sheer scale. It was truly overwhelming. From our perspective, the initial proposal was just that; a proposal—like a sketch—that would have to be developed in relation to the actual building. When an image is enlarged, it becomes distorted, especially something created on a computer, where anything is possible. Translating that into a physical space of monumental scale was going to require months of work, extensive testing, close collaboration with the Chicago team, and a flexible approach.

The trip involved two days of intensive, exhausting meetings during which we worked easily with the many people on the team (most of whom are great) to devise a plan to move forward with my images, which involved blended color, as much of my work does. We spent a considerable amount of time discussing the parameters for the design in the atrium. The original floor—which was made of cut stone—had featured a center rosette whose pattern extended across the massive atrium. Google had decided it wanted to replace that with a new installation but keep the rosette idea in the center. However, the removal of the floor left only a thin space for the new surface; hence, they were using terrazzo, which can be thinly poured.

And speaking of “replacing,” for some reason, Google had removed an historically significant sculpture by Jean Dubuffet despite the artist’s long connection to the city through the legendary dealer, Richard Gray. Originally located in front of the building, it has been put into storage and consigned to an uncertain future.

The Thompson Center would be Google’s first public building, and they planned to fill the large atrium with seating and, around that space, shops. Donald and I wanted to ensure that my design for the terrazzo floor would have a visual presence amid all that clutter; hence, the long discussion about the size of the rosette and framework of the image, which hadn’t been clearly established yet. The team in Chicago emphasized their tight construction timeline, as Google wanted the building done by the end of 2027. The terrazzo had to be completed before other aspects of the work could begin. To produce finished plans for the floor, Donald needed to create a pattern, but we did not have accurate architectural drawings or dimensions which we had been promised. Once the overall drawing and the position of the rosette were finalized, Donald would create a pattern and send it to Chicago so that the architectural team could run it through a CAD program to guarantee its accuracy. Then, Donald would print the pattern on drawing paper and I would do the final color studies.

Full-scale petal design for cancelled blending test, 2025. ©Chicago Woodman LLC, Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo: ©Chicago Woodman LLC, Donald Woodman / ARS, New York

A Litany of Challenges

The first challenge involved Google’s decision to use terrazzo even though that medium does not lend itself to the gradient hues of my Through the Flower image. On the second day of our visit, we all trooped out to the terrazzo factory where a member of the construction team, who has an art background, demonstrated that she could indeed blend a fine form of terrazzo, which prompted me to ask everyone if she could work with the terrazzo company. The answer was “yes.” As Donald and I have been able to bend many techniques to my aesthetic purposes, we felt confident that we could transcend the inherent incompatibility between image and media. But doing so would require extensive testing, which the terrazzo company assured us they were willing to do. We left the city extremely excited about the project. “Third time’s the charm,” I thought.

The proposal that was submitted to Google was based on a serigraph, which meant that it had a dot pattern that is not suitable for enlargement. Consequently, when we got home, Donald went back to my original sprayed painting, took out one petal and painstakingly re-created the overall image so that all the petals were the same. This took weeks during which we kept begging for architectural drawings of the floor, the final position of the design, the size of the terrazzo rosette and most of all, accurate dimensions, which were not included in the material we had been given. At one point, the Chicago team sent us what they had, but based on Donald’s walking the space when we were there, he knew that even those figures were not correct. Still, we used them to work on a design that extended out from the rosette to encompass a larger space, which is the plan we had all agreed on when we were in Chicago.

Color presented another problem in that it is quite different on a computer screen than in other forms. The terrazzo people had specified that I select colors from a specific paint company’s color deck even though they had said that they couldn’t match those exactly. And the range of Prismacolor pencils—which I use for my drawings—is not the same as any of those. My solution was to use my planned colored pencil drawings as the position guide for the image; the paint deck would give guidance for terrazzo color samples that the company would create and the actual color would be determined by those samples. This meant that the final color would be different from the preliminary proposal, which I wanted to adjust anyway because it was too pale to hold that immense space.

Also, as demanding as the floor was going to be, during our visit to Chicago, Donald and I realized that the 17-story glass elevator shaft—which would be the most prominent visual feature of the building’s interior—was going to be an even more daunting challenge. Little thought had been given to it, except that it was to be covered in vinyl with my printed design which, in the proposal, had also been based on my small serigraph and done on a computer. Moreover, there were not even accurate drawings of the wall; the only one we saw dated to 1981 when the building was first constructed. And presumably, no tests had been done to see what printed vinyl would look like in that scale or if using it was even technically feasible given the multiple openings in the wall, which had to be taken into consideration in both the design and the installation.

Then, as a harbinger of things to come, we were told that the young woman skilled at blending the terrazzo could not be involved after all. Moreover, Google placed a moratorium on any direct communication between us and the team in Chicago. We were able to get enough information from them to surmise how much space in the atrium my image could occupy, which allowed us to keep working. But because of the moratorium, we had to communicate with my gallery who had to communicate with Gray Area, the firm Google had hired to manage their art projects. They would then communicate with the Thompson Center project manager who would talk to Google—although what exactly this meant remained unclear. Was it the project manager or an anonymous group, all of whom had to be consulted before decisions were made? This cumbersome line of communication would then be repeated until word came back to us, which took days at best and sometimes longer.

Architectural drawing of rotunda with expanded Through the Flower floor design inserted, 2025. ©Chicago Woodman LLC, Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society(ARS), New York. Photo: ©Chicago Woodman LLC, Donald Woodman/ARS, New York

Stalled Progress

Predictably, progress on the project slowed down considerably, despite the tight construction timeline, which I kept pointing out in long e-mails, some of which took hours to write. I have no idea if they even made their way up the long chain of command. The supposed reason for this delay was that there was no signed contract yet. Presumably, once the agreement was fully executed, the communication system would change—or so we thought. When we questioned the efficiency of this plan, we were told that it had worked for many other projects; for example, the sculpture they had commissioned to replace the Dubuffet. I tried to point out that the two projects were not at all the same. When one commissioned a sculpture; the artist submitted a maquette which, once approved, was then blown up so “what you see” is (more or less) “what you get.” The Thompson Center was an entirely different proposition, but my arguments fell on deaf ears.

We didn’t see the contract until mid-November. As soon as we looked at it, we knew that it would never pass muster with my intellectual property lawyer as it drastically limited my artistic control. Moreover, our lawyer had another, completely unrelated piece of business with Google, so he needed a waiver from them. While we waited for the waiver, we kept on working.

Then, one Friday afternoon, Gray Area told us that Google had decided that there could not be the number of tests required to solve the blending problem. Then everyone disappeared for the weekend, leaving me and Donald to figure out the implications of this pronouncement. Google didn’t even bother to call us, present the problem that caused their decision, and ask if there was a possible solution. Instead, they simply made an arbitrary determination that would have required a complete rethinking of the design. This could have taken weeks, if not longer, and involve the cumbersome communication process that Google had established.

Left: Original computer-generated proposal for the Thompson Center atrium, 2025; Right: Revised computer-generated proposal with expanded floor design for the Thompson Center atrium, 2025.

At some point during this time, I was informed that I had until the end of the day to select a color for the cushions that would adorn the atrium space. I was also instructed to submit the colors for the atrium floor so that color samples could be made by the terrazzo company. Clearly, Google felt free to make demands on us even though there was no contract while using that excuse to justify everything they did or didn’t do. By then, it was the end of November. We had already spent many weeks working on a plan for the atrium that involved an expanded design but were suddenly told by Gray Area that Google had decided that my image was to be confined to the rosette, which—though I was disappointed—was still workable (or so I thought). But I didn’t like the rosette proportions in the original proposal, so Donald and I started focusing on that.

I also began to turn my attention to the elevator shaft. Because we still didn’t have any accurate architectural drawings, Donald did a rough layout based on the photos he had taken when we were in Chicago. Given the scale and reality of the glass wall with all its openings, the initial proposal was not workable. Because terrazzo is a hand process and printing on vinyl for the elevator shaft is digital, we had come up with the idea of integrating some hand-painted stained-glass elements into the design of the elevator glass wall to in order to tie these very different processes more closely together. As it turns out, someone with whom we have worked—who has a stained-glass company—also has a vinyl company.

Like us, he is not just interested in money but also in artistic challenges. He was willing to try and figure out how to accomplish this within Google’s budget for the elevator shaft (which of course, they would not share). I submitted the idea to the long chain of command and finally got a response: no, even though it would have greatly enhanced the space. However, we thought it important for the atrium floor and the elevator shaft to relate visually through form, color, and technique, which is why we suggested this change.

The terrazzo company had not yet produced any blending samples, which meant that I didn’t know if I would have to reconceive the rosette with flat color, which would have drastically changed the concept for both the floor and the glass elevator. Meanwhile, our lawyer had been communicating with Gray Area about the contract. There were many areas of disagreement and Google was slow to respond to his suggestions, so it seemed like it could take weeks to resolve. In December, Gray Area announced that the project manager had decreed that the rosette be made so small that it would look like a decoration in the middle of the vast atrium space, which was completely unacceptable.

Original computer-generated proposal for the glass elevator shaft based on inaccurate architectural drawing, 2025.

The Breaking Point

Donald and I believe that art is a process of discovery and in the case of a project as vast as the Thompson Center, discovery and flexibility were key. Why couldn’t the atrium design extend beyond the rosette as the original pattern did and as we and the Chicago team had decided? Could the terrazzo be made to blend? Would it be technically feasible or visually effective to cover the elevator shaft in printed vinyl? If not, what alternatives could there be? If we were not free to go down that path of discovery, which is the basis of the creative process, and were not able to control what the final work would look like, we couldn’t do it. After the investment of so much time, thought and money (on both travel and legal fees), we reluctantly instructed our lawyer to tell Google that we were withdrawing from the project.

While we were still licking our wounds, something unexpected happened. Although they were not supposed to communicate directly with us, we were contacted by some members of the Chicago team who told us that they really wanted to work with us and asked for some time to see if they could reason with the powers that be. At the same time, the gallerist who had gotten us into the project became more directly involved. She managed to convince the project manager to allow more space for the rosette, but we were told that her concession was quite unusual. For a little while, it seemed that the project might work out. Shortly before Christmas, we submitted our revised plan for the rosette and my initial sketch for the elevator wall. Everything came to a complete stop over the holidays. We kept working, but there was radio silence from Google for several weeks.

Shortly after the new year began, even though there was still no signed contract, Gray Area told us that the terrazzo company had produced a set of color samples and the first blending sample was done even if it was much smaller than originally planned. The color samples were en route to us (though, apparently, they were supposed to go to Gray Area), and they wanted to schedule a Zoom to discuss both those and the blending test (which we were only going to be able to view via Zoom). By the time of the Zoom, the color samples had arrived and they were unsatisfactory on several counts (the aggregate the company had used was much too coarse and not at all what we had agreed upon when we were in Chicago.) And even though some of the hues were fine, others were not and would have to be adjusted.

Via a computer screen, Gray Area showed us the blending test, which was dreadful. Clearly, it would have required multiple attempts to achieve my subtle blends. More importantly, Donald and I would have had to be on-site so that we could have provided direction, something we customarily do, especially on big projects. Gray Area’s interpretation of events was far different from ours. Their explanation for the poor results was that the terrazzo company had not followed their instructions. For us, the result was predictable; it was a physical demonstration that the process Google had put in place was utterly inappropriate for this project and, in addition, that they didn’t know what they were doing, something we had been saying from the start.

Judy Chicago standing in the center of the Thompson Center atrium with elevator glass wall in background, Chicago IL. 2025. Photo: ©Chicago Woodman LLC, Donald Woodman/ARS, New York

Insult to Injury

Then Gray Area announced that the project manager (a civil engineer) did not like my revised drawing for the rosette or my conceptual sketch for the glass elevator wall and questioned my color choices, having decided that some of the hues were too bright. Not to be immodest, but color is one of my strong suits as an artist. In the 1970s, I spent several years working on color in order to use it to express a range of emotive states. This resulted in my Color Book being acquired by the Getty Research Institute (GRI) for their collection of artists’ research on color. Recently, the Deputy Director of the GRI told me that my book is the most frequently requested object in their archive. And now, this civil engineer was telling me what colors to use? If it weren’t so insulting and infuriating, it might be funny.

The last straw was when Gray Area informed us that the project manager expected the final installation to be an exact rendition of the original proposal, as if one could take a small, computer-generated image and somehow magically project it into massive scale without any consideration of the limits of the physical materials involved. This statement left me and Donald speechless; the gap between her expectations and reality was too immense to traverse. So—even though it broke our hearts, caused many sleepless nights, and deep disappointment over the 5 months of work and the many thousands of dollars we had squandered—we had no choice but to say good-bye (which never happened formally because there was no contact after this).

It all seems so senseless because the Thompson Center could have been a great and historic project had it not been for Google’s ignorance and arrogance. At one point, the project manager actually said—in response to my lawyer’s questioning of the contract —“We’re Google,” as if that settled the matter. I wish I could say that we just moved on, but the pain is still too fresh. Although I have many projects to focus on, still, I wish that my last major undertaking would have been “Judy Chicago returns to Chicago at the end of her long career.”