Hundreds of people gathered around Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate in Chicago's Millennium Park on Sunday and pushed against its mirrored steel surface, trying to shift the 110-ton sculpture seven inches to the left. Their aim, set out in a flyer that had circulated online in recent weeks, was to reach a hatch that would supposedly let them pass supplies to a man said to have been trapped inside the work since it was built. The sculpture did not move.

The gathering grew out of a joke that has been circulating since the summer of 2025, when a group calling itself the Man in Bean Coalition began claiming that Kapoor had sealed a baby inside the sculpture during its construction in 2004. The claim has no basis: Chicago alderman Brendan Reilly said publicly in August 2025 that nobody has been trapped inside Cloud Gate. Even so, it has repeatedly drawn a crowd, and local reports put Sunday's turnout at around 250 people, some of them dressed as beans, pressing their hands to the steel and pushing in unison. Videos posted online showed the group straining against the reflective surface.

Cloud Gate, universally known as the Bean, has been a magnet for stunts since it was installed. A 2017 April Fool's joke claimed it was being moved to another location, and a 2021 gag imagined a camera broadcasting the sculpture's thoughts to the internet. The work, Kapoor's first outdoor public sculpture in the United States, measures 33 feet high and 66 feet long, its 168 stainless-steel plates welded together and polished to a mirror finish inspired by liquid mercury. A sign beside it warns visitors not to touch it.

Kapoor himself has kept his distance from the landmark's fame, saying in 2019 that he dislikes the Bean and regards it as a piece of design rather than a work of art. He has not commented on Sunday's push, and his studio had not responded to a request for comment before publication. As of Sunday evening, the supposed man inside remained, officially at least, unfreed.