Sculpture artist Alison Saar’s rendition of renowned lesbian playwright Lorraine Hansberry, To Sit A While, will take up permanent residence on Chicago’s Navy Pier later this month.
The free and open-to-the-public dedication ceremony will occur Aug. 23 at Navy Pier’s Lake Stage at Polk Bros. Park from 5:45-9 p.m.
The dedication ceremony will include remarks by Saar; Navy Pier Vice President of Arts, Culture and Engagement Erika Taylor; The Lillys Founder and Former Executive Director, The Count Founder, playwright and book writer/lyricist Julia Jordan; and the first and only woman to be a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner for Drama playwright, screenwriter, installation artist, Columbia School of the Arts professor, Park Avenue Armory artist-in-residence and The Lilly’s Board Member Lynn Nottage; as well as performances by writer, playwright and poet Mahogany L. Browne with curation by Congo Square Theatre. There will also be an outdoor screening of the film A Raisin in the Sun to cap off the evening.
Hansberry’s sculpture was made possible by the advocacy organization The Lillys. Both Jordan and Nottage created the Lorraine Hansberry Initiative to advance Hansberry’s legacy. The permanent installation is a gift from the Lorraine Hansberry Initiative to Navy Pier and the City of Chicago, where Hansberry was born and raised.
Since 2022, the sculpture has been on a national tour in New York City, Philadelphia, Detroit, Minneapolis, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles and several Historically Black Colleges and Universities.
The sculpture features Hansberry sitting on a tree stump surrounded by five different life-size bronze chairs that represent different aspects of her life and work. People are invited to sit on those chairs with her and think.
Saar said that when she was invited to create this work for Hansberry, “I was excited to learn of all she did beyond her plays. I wanted to have the work show all the amazing contributions Hansberry made, so I created a work which had one chair to represent each of her passions. The title comes from a Hansberry quote where she said never be afraid to sit a while, meaning to allow oneself to take the time to simply think as an important part of the creative process.”
Jordan said, “The Modernist Chair recalls the chair Lorraine sat one while writing her plays. The Office Chair represents her career as a journalist writing for Freedom Magazine. The Stool represents her lesbian identity and stands for her contributions as a feminist and early LGBTQ activist. The Ottoman evokes the one she sat on in Robert Kennedy Sr.’s living room while educating the politician on civil rights, and The Bentwood Chair recalls Lorraine’s childhood home and A Raisin in the Sun. They represent her too-short life and under-recognized legacy and she would undoubtedly have centered her entire self in her public creative work. If her life had not been so tragically cut short.”
Nottage, who is also a MacArthur Fellow and multi-awardee, said Hansberry’s status as the first woman of color to have produced a play on Broadway “forever shifted the notion of whose stories could be places center stage. She emboldened generations of women writers like me, who because of her words, mustered the court to put our own truths on the stage.”
Among Nottage’s many works that speak to her own truth are next year’s opera This House at the Opera Theatre of St. Louis (May 2025) and recent productions such as MJ the Musical, Clyde’s and Intimate Apparel as well as the performance installation The Watering Hole at the Signature Theater.
Taylor said in the press release announcing this installation, “Navy Pier is thrilled to have been selected as the permanent home for To Sit A While, We are honored to share the life and legacy of Lorraine Hansberry with over 8 million guests a year. Our mission as the People’s Pier is to offer moments of discovery and wonder and this sculpture creates a literal and metaphorical space to reflect within the beauty of Polk Bros Park.”
Saar’s other works include Salon for the 2024 Paris Olympics; two sculptures installed at Monument Sculpture Park, the newest addition to the Equal Justice Initiative museum complex in Montgomery, Alabama; and later this year new works installed at Destination Crenshaw in Los Angeles.
She said, “I am so thrilled to have this work permanently installed at Chicago’s Navy Pier—not far from where Hansberry and her family lived, and close to the theaters where she first showed some of her work.”
Both Jordan and Nottage said they are honored to be included in this dedication ceremony.
Jordan wants this event to help “spread the word about the existence of the Hansberry-Lilly Fellowship for women identifying dramatic writers of color in graduate school. The funds are dedicated to our fellow’s living expenses, their rent, so while in school they have protected time to write.”
Nottage said her goal with this event “is to raise awareness about the breadth of Hansberry’s vision and amplify her voice by erecting a statue commemorating her vast contributions to theater, activism and American discourse, it is also a way to capture her strength and complexity as an artist and thinker and continue her mission to break down racial and gender barriers. Who we memorialize speaks to what we value, and the statue speaks to my desire to celebrate the contributions of Black women in shaping the American narrative.”
Prior to the dedication ceremony two ancillary programs in partnership with local organizations will take place—Lorraine Hansberry and Art as Place at Logan Center for the Arts, 915 E. 60th Street, Wednesday, Aug. 21 at 6 p.m. with panelists Sarr, Nottage and others TBA with registration information pending and The Lasting Influence of Lorraine Hansberry at the American Writers Museum, 180 N. Michigan Ave., 2nd Floor, Thursday, Aug. 22at 6 p.m. with panelists from Congo Theater J. Nicole Brooks, Michelle Y. Moore and Ericka Ratcliff. The Lasting Influence of Lorraine Hansberry event will occur in person and online.