Truck‑nuts jokes aside, the $900,000 bonded‑for artwork is set to anchor Courthouse Plaza for Lexington’s 250th.
LEXINGTON, Ky. — The city’s next “largest‑ever” piece of public art isn’t fully installed yet, but the punchlines have arrived early. On Reddit, locals have called it everything from “truck nuts for downtown” to “a giant tetherball set,” with a few votes for “rosary beads.” One budget hawk even volunteered to do the job “for half,” which is not how sculpture works but exactly how the internet works.
Here’s the substance beneath the snark.
🎯Five fast facts
- Artist: Benjamin Ball (Ball‑Nogues Studio)
- Site: Robert F. Stephens Courthouse Plaza, Main St.
- Purpose: Signature piece for Lexington’s 250th anniversary
- Budget: $900,000 total — $850,000 artwork contract + $50,000 future conservation; funded by public debt from 2023 bond projects
- Status: Construction underway; target debut fall 2025
🪩What’s coming
The project is a mirror‑polished arrangement of suspended steel spheres designed by Los Angeles artist Benjamin Ball of Ball‑Nogues Studio. It’s planned for the Robert F. Stephens Courthouse Plaza on Main Street as a signature installation for Lexington’s 250th anniversary. The target is a fall 2025 debut, with construction already underway around the site.
🤑How it’s funded
City paperwork is explicit: the total project allocation is $900,000, with $850,000 of that amount funded with 2023 bond projects.
This amount includes:
- An artwork contract not to exceed $850,000 with Ball‑Nogues Studio in July 2024.
- The original call also set aside $50,000 for future conservation/maintenance.
🤨Who approved it?
The 250Lex Commission—made up largely of volunteers—selected Ball’s design from three finalists in summer 2024. (You can view the other proposals at the end of this article.) The Urban County Council then unanimously approved the project on July 2, 2024, suspending the rules to hold a second reading the same night it was introduced—a move that limited opportunities for public comment.
The only person who served on both the 250Lex Commission and the Council at the time was Vice Mayor Dan Wu.
The Lexington Times requested comment from Vice Mayor Wu and his spokesperson but did not receive a response before publication.
🫠Why the comments are roasting it
(Albert Lee, City of Philadelphia)
Some of it is just the internet doing internet things. But there are a few consistent themes:
- Sticker shock. Redditors have compared Lexington’s price to a similar Ball‑Nogues stainless‑steel “knot” installed along Philadelphia’s Delaware River Trail in 2020 that was budgeted around $200,000. That number has become gasoline for the meme factory.
- Local vs. not‑local. A portion of commenters argue a commission this visible should have gone to a Lexington artist. Others counter that the city ran a national call and chose from finalists with large‑scale fabrication chops.
- Taste and context. To some, mirrored spheres feel like a greatest‑hits move cities buy when they want an easy selfie magnet. To others, hey, at least it’s not another horse.
💸Are we overpaying?
That depends on factors that don’t fit neatly into a one‑liner:
- Site complexity. According to the call for entries, Courthouse Plaza is a security‑sensitive civic space with heavy foot traffic, strict sightlines, and egress rules. Foundations, engineered cabling, crane work, and nighttime lighting in that setting cost real money.
- Scope and risk. Public art budgets aren’t just for shiny surfaces. They cover structural steel, custom fabrication, rigging, insurance, shop drawings, stamped engineering, coordination with utilities, and a year of “please don’t drop this on the courthouse steps.”
- Time and scale. A 2020 trail‑edge installation in another city, procured under that city’s program rules, isn’t a straight apples‑to‑apples with a 2025 downtown build after years of inflation and supply‑chain weirdness.
None of that means Lexington had to pick a national studio or spend this much. Plenty of cities deliver strong, locally rooted work at smaller budgets. It means the comparison takes more than a screenshot and a price tag.
🧐What success looks like
If this lands, it won’t be because everyone suddenly agrees on spheres. Success would look like: people stopping to take photos; the plaza feeling more alive at night because the piece actually glows instead of disappearing; and the sculpture becoming a reliable backdrop for graduations, protests, and prom pics—i.e., the messy civic life of an active downtown.
If it flops, it’ll be because the work reads as a shiny import with no Lexington DNA, or because the plaza design around it doesn’t invite anyone to linger.
Lexington has a habit of arguing about land use and public space, then quietly accepting it once it’s part of daily life. Whether this one ends up an icon or an eye‑roll will come down to how it feels in the space—up close, in daylight, and after dark—long after the Reddit jokes scroll off the page.
🏢 City hall weighs in
The Lexington Times requested comment from Mayor Linda Gorton through a city spokesperson and received the following response:
The sculpture, “The Woven Path,” is part of our 250th anniversary celebration – a lasting reminder of our historic anniversary. Public art stimulates dialogue and attracts visitors. There is always a variety of reactions to artwork, and this is no different. We encourage everyone to come downtown in October to see it for themselves.
Here are a few facts about the sculpture:
Susan Straub, city spokesperson
- A competition open to all artists was held to choose an artist for this sculpture. This artist, Benjamin Ball, is from California, and he has sculptures around the world.
- Like all artists, Mr. Ball, an artist and architect, has a style, and elements of this sculpture are found in other pieces. Still this sculpture was designed for this spot.
- A fountain on the Robert F. Stephens Courthouse Plaza was removed to make room for the sculpture. The fountain had been in disrepair for years and it would have been costly to repair.
- The installation of the sculpture is not complete – additional elements are planned that highlight local connections.
🫣 Read the other proposals
Three total finalist proposals were submitted, according to documents released by the city under the Kentucky Open Records Act.
Check out the proposals that weren’t selected here and here.
You can also read the full winning proposal here.
(Ball-Nogues)
This story has been updated to include comment from city hall.
