Frank Gehry Icehenge Liquidation

an array of cast green glass jagged blocks are placed and stacked around a green glass desk in the black terrazzo floored, steel and glass lobby of the inland steel building. behind the desk is a sheer white curtain, and the revolving door. image via freemans auction
Security theater prop: Frank Gehry’s Icehenge desk looking its absolute best, images all via Freeman’s

I knew but didn’t really clock that Frank Gehry made his massive cast glass security guard station specifically for the lobby of Skidmore Owings & Merrill’s Inland Steel Building in Chicago.

That realization came from reading the auction listing: “Although conceived specifically for its site, Gehry reportedly entertained the possibility of reconfiguring the 16 elements over time, allowing the work to evolve over time and in new settings.”

the thick cast glass slab tabletops of a security desk rest on cast glass cubes and a mirrored chrome cabinet in the black terrazzo floored lobby of a mid-century office building in chicago. across the desk is a spindly star of poles threaded all about with fine wire, and suspended between a barely there reflecting pool and a lighting panel, an artwork by richard lippold
Now that you mention it this is a helluva thing to have put in front of this perfect Richard Lippold sculpture, but I guess they had to put something. s/o to the mirror finish chrome cabinet on the lower left

Which, hmm, “reportedly entertained the possibility” better be enough to work with, because Gehry’s dead; his partners defaulted on the $56 million mortgage; New York Life seized the building in 2025; and the security desk known as Icehenge is being sold this week, sold and evicted: “Buyers will be responsible for arranging transportation, shipping, etc. from the lobby of the Inland Steel Building.”

Auction in Philadelphia, pickup in Chicago. Which is wild, because photos and slideshows really do not capture the sense of what this thing is; and buying it without seeing it in person feels crazy to me.

a cast glass desk made of two thick glass slabs on glass cubes and a chrome cabinet, with a black computer monitor and a black office phone, in the steel and black terrazzo lobby of the inland steel building in chicago.
the view from the pile of Amazon packages behind the desk of the worst monitor and phone imaginable for this situation. s/o mirror finish chrome cabinet on the lower right

The concept seems clear enough, in that it seems like a sculptural jumble of iconic Gehry-esque forms, but in cast glass. But what you’re buying is actually two slab tabletops resting on two cast glass cubes and two cubic plywood cabinets laminated in mirror finish chrome, surrounded by freestanding blocks and towers of blocks of freeform cast glass. I think there are twelve, and that the 16 elements mentioned above is just the glass and not the cabinets. I have to think the stacks and towers of chunks are fused together; there’s no way they would’ve survived just being perched on each other.

The mirror cabinets disappear and distort like they’re in a Paul Mpagi Sepuya photo, and the whole thing toggles from sublime to banal to ridiculous, depending on the angle. That monitor and phone feel like found objects stuck on a Rachel Harrison sculpture. And that’s without a keyboard, a mousepad, a chair. It’s as if Gehry never entertained the possibility a human being might actually do a job here.

[UPDATE: lmao it sold for $243,200, plus shipping, and will soon become the sickest private equity guy’s home office zoom backdrop it was destined to be. Great work, everybody.]

15 July 2026, Lot 108: Frank Gehry, Icehenge Desk, 2013, est. $100-200,000, opening bid: $50,000 [freemansinc]
Previously, related: Inland Steel Curtained Wall