Oil Bubbles Sculpture At Well No.1 In Karamay, Zhou Jianling / Getty photo, Tourists visit a sculpture in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region of China.

The piece has been under construction since 2013 at the site of the first oil well in the western Chinese city of Karamay, according to the People's Daily account. Photos accompanying the story showed something The Bean doesn't have: a grid of LED lights on the ground beneath the sculpture. They bounced jagged blue and green reflections off its mirrored underside. A caption praised the "gorgeous light effect." But the sculpture, whose artist has not been identified, drew fire in China and Chicago.

"It's such an obvious copy. Our designers are embarrassing us," read one comment on a Chinese microblog, according to The Wall Street Journal. "It's definitely a rip-off," said Edward Uhlir, executive director of the Millennium Park Foundation, a nonprofit that supports the park. "We've had lots of Chinese visitors coming to Millennium Park. Somebody probably took a photograph and took it home and said, 'Make me one of those."........Continue Reading

> via chicagotribune.com