Keep the Big Mirror in the Big Apple!

No fair! Chicago gets to keep its bean, but New York can't keep its "Sky Mirror"? Where's Mike Bloomberg, the art collector-mayor, when we really need him?

Anish Kapoor's literally and metaphysically dazzling 35-foot heaven-and-earth mirrored microcosm is up for grabs when it leaves Rockefeller Center on Oct. 28. A cool $5 million, more or less, will buy it, according to the artist's dealer, Barbara Gladstone, who has been contacted by several interested parties, including one municipality (but no one, so far, from New York City). Money's not enough: You must also give this polished stainless steel orb a good home---a site with "a good vantage point and optimum conditions," Gladstone said.

This piece certainly has the "wow" factor, but it also radiates a profound spirituality. Its convex side, tilted down to reflect Fifth Avenue's pedestrian hoards, show humanity in all its vanity. People raise their arms so that they can be easily spotted in photographs of the piece taken by their companions. CultureGrrl, ever the egoist, positioned herself dead-center in this mirrored world.

The flip side of the terrestrial is the celestial: The mirror's reverse side, concave, tilts up to the sky, reflecting a dazzling blue expanse with intensely white clouds that emerge on one side and slide away on the other. The press release from the Public Art Fund, which organized the installation, says that "'Sky Mirror' literally brings the sky down to the ground." But to me it represents a heavenly spirituality that we vain mortals cannot yet attain. (Maybe it seems different on a stormy day!)

However your regard it, the piece is visually and interpretively rich. New York would be much the poorer without it.