Beam Drop

Beam Drop stands in Antwerp’s Middelheim Museum sculpture park as an outdoor work by American artist Chris Burden. More than one hundred steel I-beams rise at sharp angles from a solid concrete foundation, creating a scene shaped by both design and chance.

Created in 2009, the sculpture began with a twelve-by-twelve-metre pit filled with wet concrete to a depth of two and a half metres. Cranes lifted each beam to forty-five metres before releasing it, while gravity and collisions determined the final arrangement. The live installation unfolded before spectators, connecting the finished work with Burden’s earlier performance art and his interest in industrial materials.

Rust marks the steel as the beams jut outward, collide, stand alone, and appear to break through the concrete edges. You can walk around the permanent sculpture in the open air, viewing how its planned structure gives way to unpredictable forms.