Richard Hunt’s sculptures are all over Chicago, but there isn’t one mural of him. One Hyde Park artist wants to change that.
The project is a three-story portrait of Hunt planned for an apartment building at 54th Street and Lake Park Avenue. Devins said a mural of Hunt, who was born in Woodlawn and died in 2023, is long overdue in a city filled with his work.
“Richard Hunt is America’s foremost and preeminent sculptor, who has acted as a cultural ambassador for the city of Chicago for the past five or six decades,” Devins said. “He deserves to be honored by the city.”
Born in 1935, Hunt was known for monumental abstract metal sculptures that fused modernism with African and African American themes. He studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and returned after a brief Army stint to build an internationally recognized career. In 1971, he became the first Black sculptor to receive a retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art.
Hunt’s works include the Ida B. Wells National Monument and pieces slated for the Obama Presidential Center.
Richard Hunt poses in front of his sculpture “And You, Seas” in St. Joseph, Michigan, 2002.
Provided
The project has been in the works since 2024 but stalled after Devins was denied a City of Chicago Neighborhood Access Program grant. With an estimated $50,000 price tag for art supplies, he has turned to crowdfunding to get the ball roling.
Devins said he isn’t relying on GoFundMe to cover the full cost, but wants to demonstrate community support to potential funders.
“We’re not necessarily relying on the GoFundMe to fund every portion of the effort, but we’d like to show funders we have community support,” he said.
Devins, who holds a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of Illinois Chicago, said his mural work cross-pollinates with his professional experience by “marketing the community and strengthening the community’s identity.”
“You can use public art to hold onto a community’s identity,” he said. His work, he added, only follows one rule: “No rules, no commissions, no committees, no permission,” as seen in his recent guerrilla wheat-pasting of a shuttered church on Blackstone Avenue.
The idea for the mural was proposed by Ida B. Wells’ great-granddaughter, Michelle Duster, after his work on the Bronzeville Legends Initiative. That initiative, a 2023 multi-site placemaking campaign, featured massive photorealistic portraits of Black cultural icons like Gwendolyn Brooks, Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong and Lorraine Hansberry.
Sculptor Richard Hunt handles metal in his studio, 2023.
Provided
Devins said his interest in honoring Hunt is personal as well as professional. He met the sculptor while working on earlier public art projects and spent time in Hunt’s studio.
“He was like a Superman character — he was surrounded by sculptures that weigh tons, and he’s working with sheets of metal that are half-inch thick,” he said.
Devins said he asked Hunt how he navigated public art commissions and bureaucracy without losing his vision.
“A guy who does public art like that, where it’s required that 50 people have to weigh in, has to be a man of steel,” he mused.
Devins originally sought a wall in the South Loop for this project, but when tenants in the building complained, he said he shifted his focus to Hyde Park, the “downtown of the South Side.”
Devins said that “within 10 minutes” of reaching out to the Hyde Park building owner, he got an excited call and the go-ahead to paint the mural.
“He and his team understood the importance of Richard Hunt,” Devins said. “The synergy of having a mural right there in our downtown is evident.”
