Londoners Plan to Nudge Marble Arch 7 Inches, Copying a Chicago Stunt
A public listing on Partiful, a party-invitation website, is calling on people to move London's Marble Arch 17.78 centimetres (7 inches) to the left on Saturday.
The arch is a white marble-faced triumphal arch, the kind of monumental gateway built to celebrate a victory. The architect John Nash designed it in 1827, and it stands at the north-east corner of Hyde Park.
The distance is borrowed from Chicago. ArtNews reports that people in Chicago recently tried to push Anish Kapoor's Cloud Gate the same distance. That sculpture, a silvery, bean-shaped piece from 2006 in Millennium Park, is nicknamed the Bean. The Chicago attempt failed, according to the same report, mainly because the sculpture weighs 110 tons.
The London listing gives its own reason for the move. It says the top floor of Marble Arch was once used to hold prisoners, and that people could still be trapped inside. A representative for the artist Stuart Semple said London supporters of the Chicago bean-pushers plan to push the arch to send a message that "the bloke in the Bean must be freed."
Semple has had public disputes with Kapoor in the past, including over paint colour. The representative's comments link the London plan to the Chicago effort.
The link to Chicago also runs through social media. The Instagram account @Maninabean was created in 2025. Its first post, on 28 July 2025, carried the caption "HE IS IN THERE."
Whether anyone actually moves the arch on Saturday is not yet known. A listing is an invitation, not a confirmed plan from the arch's owners or any public body, and the arch is a stone structure that does not shift easily. For now, the stunt is a Saturday meet-up in London with a point to make about a sculpture 6,000 miles away.
